From: Rick v100 (rickv100@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Dec 03 2004 - 10:17:54 PST
On the same site under aircraft and parts there is a
hull for sale in California and if you look in the
background of the Cessna for sale in Texas you will
see a few more UH-1's parked together.
Rick
--- chance wolf <chance_wolf@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sandman9" <sandman9@optonline.net>
> To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List"
> <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
> Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 8:47 AM
> Subject: [MV] UH-1H in CA F/S
>
>
> > http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/aucalcat/
> > John Peterson
> > MTA
> > CJMMP
> > MVPA
>
> Yup. Minus every nut, bolt, screw and washer they
> could nick. I just read
> that the UH-1 'Huey' fleet is forecast to be
> officially retired at the end
> of FY2004, which means Davis-Monthan will be sitting
> on top of rows and rows
> and rows more.
>
> They're actually at a bit of a loss to figure out
> what to do with them all,
> as police departments are finding them too expensive
> to operate where
> something like a Jet Ranger will do just as nicely,
> and the FAA doesn't want
> to see tons of them released onto the market because
> they don't want to see
> the military-origin parts find their way on to
> regularly flying existing
> civvy-side 204s and 205s because "they're maintained
> to a different
> standard" (or so I remember reading - I don't claim
> to be any sort of
> expert.) Foreign (friendly) governments have little
> interest either, as
> they've been the beneficiaries of a lot of later
> model Bell-family ships in
> the more modern 'Twin' configuration (Bell 212s and
> 412s) thanks to the
> largesse of the U.S. Government through the years,
> so going back to aging
> singles can't be too attractive a proposition
> regardless of the price.
>
> Some have been doled out to local small museums
> across the U.S., but if one
> fellow I know of is any indication, the Homeland
> Security pricetag that
> comes with them isn't worth the trouble. He told
> one of our members that
> The Authorities came by something like weekly at
> little or no notice to make
> sure his museum exhibit hadn't suddenly flown off
> its pedestal or
> disintegrated into a pile of black-market parts, so
> he told them to take it
> back. If it were me, I think I probably would've
> suggested an appropriate
> fleshy hangar too. :)
>
> In terms of a domestic swords-into-ploughshares
> market, I think they run int
> o trouble there too because of the different
> maintenance schedules they had
> during their life in the military vs. what an
> equivalent Bell 204/205 would
> have to have undergone in x-number of years of
> flying over civvystreet. I
> *think* the FAA restricts non-Governmental use of
> the singles to things like
> helicopter logging and pleasure flying under the
> 'Experimental' category,
> but doesn't allow much else. In any event, I
> *think* it's illegal to fly a
> single commercially over a populated area unless
> it's a Gov't agency doing
> the flying (Police Dept., Dept. of Forestry., FEMA,
> etc., etc), so again,
> any potential commercial market seems a narrow one.
>
> I'd very much like to see some of them make it into
> collector hands as
> either 'Experimental' category flying restorations
> for those with deep
> pockets, or static examples so people can get a
> closeup of a huge part of
> rotary wing history (and the first new chapter in
> modern military mobility
> tactics) without having to travel half the country
> to see it. Knowing the
> rampant paranoia in official circles at the moment
> though, I bet they either
> sit at Davis Monthan until they're baked into
> aluminum puddles, or DRMS will
> decree they're getting into the aluminum beer can
> business. That would be a
> shame. Some of those ships have some serious (and
> documented) history
> behind them back to the rice paddies of Vietnam, and
> the U.S. Gov't should
> be aware that there are people who would line up to
> help preserve that if
> given the opportunity.
>
> (The U.S. had something like 960-plus left on the
> books in FY2003 from what
> I remember, with only some 330 of those in
> operational-ready condition.
> That number's set to become zero by next April.)
>
>
>
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