Junked pits anywhere?

[all-fired-up]

:bigsmile:

Does anyone know where you can actually get junked cockpits? Like scrap pits etc.? Specifically older Military junk areas. I was watching Mythbusters and they seem to have a good place around San Fran area but it's all civilian.

I was just curious to locations and what range of prices they usually are. I'm in the Los Angeles area.

:smile:

[BHawthorne]

I went through this phase of interest about a year ago and did the research on it. Basicly, real demil fighter cockpits are pretty rare and the ones I priced out were all around the $10,000 - $15,000 USD range in price for gutted cockpits. At most optimistic, you'll get some of the original instrumentation but most will be pulled. You'll get the cockpit part of the airframe. None of the cockpits were current inventory fighters, all old retired fleets of demil stuff. You simply aren't gonna find a F-16, F-15 or F-18 cockpit delmil unless you have some incredible luck. I know of only one hobby sim guy that has a real current inventory cockpit. He has an F-15 demil that was used for training before scrapped. I spent months digging around in my spare time. All I found were attack aircraft or support aircraft, not fighter aircraft. Going this route you're going to have to deal with scrap salvage yards, airplane movie prop yards, or collectors inventory. All 3 of those sources have their own reasons for being rather uncooperative and expensive.

[all-fired-up]

Yeah I figured I probably wouldnt be able to find the newest fighters, but even an old, let's say F-5 or a T-38, or A-7, or F-111, things like that. Still to "supe" it up and sit in it, still has that fascination level, no matter how old the jet is. Heck I'd even consider an F-86. But the pricing is difficult though, If they are in the level of 10-15,000 dollars, that's far out of my reach, I was thinking of around $1,000-$2,000.

[Nikolas_A]

I don't think it's worth it. Even if you're not good with tools, you could pay a macine shop a fraction of the price to have them build you an exact F-16 cocpit replica with Killn's stencils.

Nikolas

[all-fired-up]

I don't think it's worth it. Even if you're not good with tools, you could pay a macine shop a fraction of the price to have them build you an exact F-16 cocpit replica with Killn's stencils.

Nikolas


Hmmm good point, I guess realistically I can make a wood version of the F-16 pit a lot easier than trying to hunt down a junked pit and try to work on it with little to no metal experience.

[BHawthorne]

Yeah I figured I probably wouldnt be able to find the newest fighters, but even an old, let's say F-5 or a T-38, or A-7, or F-111, things like that. Still to "supe" it up and sit in it, still has that fascination level, no matter how old the jet is. Heck I'd even consider an F-86. But the pricing is difficult though, If they are in the level of 10-15,000 dollars, that's far out of my reach, I was thinking of around $1,000-$2,000.

To give an idea on pricing, I saw an F-86 cockpit sell for $4500 USD about 2 years ago. I price inquired about an A-7 a year ago and got price quote of $12,000 USD with 90% of the instrumentation still there in it. Even if you home-build something $1k-$2k is going to be your bottom end. All the switches, panels and LCDs that go into the project add up. Scratch building something like that is a big time sink. I'm not saying this to discourage you any, just hoping it sinks in that there is a big chunk of time that will be involved in such an undertaking. When all is said and done, I'm guessing my materials cost for my scratch built F-16 cockpit will be around $2500. If you do yours in steps, it'll probably be pretty managable. I'm going to start mine by building the cockpit tub, then move to the ejection seat, then move onto the panels and panel electronics.

[lowwing_99]

There is one one Ebay now the link is
http://cgi.ebay.com/Douglas-TA-4J-Skyhawk-Aircraft-Cockpit-Airplane-Navy_W0QQitemZ6616187565QQcategoryZ14050QQrdZ1QQcm dZViewItem
On Ebay go to home, & type in cockpit, then select newley listed items.

It is a Douglas TA-4J cockpit.

Looks like it could be made into a great pit.

[Gecko6]

Hey!

There are affordable pits out there, you just have to know where to go. There is no shortage of idots out there that thing thier parts are worth a freaking fortune! It seems to me that there is a magic number of parts that they aquire makes them become greedy and ask unrealistic prices. I guess they think that some government is going to bring A-7 Corsairs out of mouth balls and pay them Millions for thier stuff. pfft!

F-4 pits are huge!
Cost around 5k to get but that will be a pretty beat up one with little or no avionics.

A-4 pits are small (My big ass will not squeeze into that)

A-7 pits are tall.
My pit was a victim of a front strut failure and the intake was shaved off so it sits about chest high.

I have seen F-8 pits that are awsome and are able to fit into a normal garage.
Again rare and priced as so.

F-111 capsules run about 3 - 5k depending how complete the pit is. (sticks throttles, seats are rare!)
They fit very nicely into the space of a small car and you have room for your buddy!

Things to consider.

Number of engines (you have to purchase more gauges)
Type of aircraft (size does matter)
Mission
Interface type and simulation (only a handful of sims out there export flight data)
Loyality to one aircraft. (My A-7D will only be flown in the ATG role)


Other then that there is great fun to be had with real pits. The history of my bird really makes me feel good. The fact that it was in several combat sorties to include Lybia makes for some good stories. Half the battle is tracing your birds history back through the years.

[all-fired-up]

Hey!

There are affordable pits out there, you just have to know where to go. There is no shortage of idots out there that thing thier parts are worth a freaking fortune! It seems to me that there is a magic number of parts that they aquire makes them become greedy and ask unrealistic prices. I guess they think that some government is going to bring A-7 Corsairs out of mouth balls and pay them Millions for thier stuff. pfft!....

Thanks Gecko for that valuable info, and BHawthorne too!

Just FYI, that pit that Gecko is talking about, I'm doing the noseart for his plane, looking pretty cool. :wink2:

I'll post some screenies shortly :tongue: