Anubis_TPF wrote...
superblaze1 wrote...
that's cool. now, here are couple of photos i have. they're from my traveling days long time ago.. yeah i own old military aircrafts that's noncommissioned.
this is my F-14A.
getting ready to fly in middle of night.


here was bad storm that night i had to contact a navy carrier that were in the area and had asked to land and wait for calmer wheather. i knew they had experience with F-14A so it was strange for them to see it on their deck again, it kinda brought back their memories with the Tomcat. by the morning it was nice sight so i took this photo.
Did you have any issues restoring the instruments and controls? That's been part of my friend's issues with the older jets. The F111, they were lucky with (since the jets are just out for display). The cockpit looks completely intact. When they decomissioned it, they took a hammer to the back of the instrument panel instead of removing everything.
the Navy did't want to wreck this "213" by accident because it was owned by me before the last day of wrecker order was carried out.
so in that case the Tomcat thanks me for saving its life. when i arrived here, it was not trashed or wrecked.
they turned over the keys to me so i could fly on my own. after 4 hours of night flight i ran into the bad storm (as mentioned above) i had to call in the nearby carrier. for this part, they never seen someone land it so flawless. i spent whole night tweaking the controls and improved it by 120% margin, i also took look at instruments, noticed it was working okay.
decided to speak to the chief mechanic to see if they got some updated instruments that i could switch out for flying.
i also spent next 5 hours into the dawn morning finishing the improvements and updates made to F-14A.
i did't need to stay here too long on a carrier they got job to do. so i decided that morning i would leave.
i had no problems with updated instruments and improved controls since then.
they were pretty suprised i had experience with F-14As that's because i used to work on 4 of them when they were used for air shows back then before they were phased out of air shows. so i even don't remember when it ended. but still would like to bring it back someday.