I almost bought a real Harrier

[Xpendable]

Last week I almost bought a real Harrier. Sort of. It was the front 14.5' section of a real AV-8B fuselage. The real deal. It included the cockpit and the front 2' of the engine intake nacelle. It would have been an incredible project to restore. I worked on logistics for 3 days to figure out how I was going to get it from a warehouse on western Massachusetts back to Chicago. The seller was only asking for $2k. I figured out how I was going to drive a trailer across the country to get it and drive it back, with the help from my brother-in-law. I mapped out how I was going to fit it in the garage and what I would have to move and get rid of to make it fit. It was going to be a huge undertaking. I had an initial impression that he was including the ejection seat. When he later told me that was an additional $6.5k, I backed out. To be fair, that's an excellent price for an ejection seat that is complete, which it was. I however, could not afford to spend that given I just bought a Jeep Wrangler Sahara JLU. Also, the fuselage itself had a lot of damage. It was cut in two, and would have to be rejoined. The AV-8B is mostly a carbon fiber fuselage, which means doing either carbon fiber or fiber glass epoxy to rejoin. Someone took a blow torch to the right engine intake and melted a huge crater into it. All fixable, though. Probably. The cockpit itself was missing almost everything. No instruments, no stick, no pedals... Even the center console frame and side console frames were completely missing. It did have the frame for the main instrument panel, but it was an early version of the AV-8B and not the right current day layout. But probably workable to convert it.
I got the story on where this thing came from and how the guy ended up with it and why he was selling it. This originally came from Boeing plant building 101 in St. Louis, Missouri, where the AV-8B was made. It is believed to have been used as a test fixture of some sort. It likely never flew. The guy bought it from a guy who lives in St. Louis who is friends with the guy that got hired to scrap old stuff from building 101 about 10 years ago. The scrapper gave it to that guy who then sold it to the guy in Massachusetts. The guy in Massachusetts collects and restores cockpits as a hobby and intended to restore this one but never got around to it. Probably because it needed a lot of work and parts are virtually non existent given that so few airframes were ever built. He was pairing down his collection and consolidating his 2 50x50 warehouses down to a single warehouse.
Ultimately I decided against buying it because it is just too big and would take up almost half of my small 2 car garage. My cockpit would be permanent in the garage and not in the basement where I want it. While my wife was going to let me do it, I could tell she had a sigh of relief when I backed out of it. Overall I think I made the right decision. This fuselage would have set my journey back maybe 10 years. I don't really know. But the cost and time needed for such a restoration was beyond my means.

[Trichome]

That's wild. I think it would have been awesome to work on that over time but I think you made the right decisions.

That's a massive task. You'll have years of enjoyment out of your coming setup before having that done would be a reality.

[Bones]

The museum I work with decided to pass on this. They said the biggest problem with something like that is getting parts. They said that before 9/11 it was pretty easy to get parts but now it is hard to find parts and the places you can get them from are stupid expensive.

Thanks for the offer though!

v6,
boNes

[Bones]

Another thought: I wonder if airsoft/paintball fields would buy it as is. One of the fields I play at has an old Sikorski on the field that they obviously don't care about maintaining or anything. I can see a field buying it and tossing it onto their field as cover or for rescue mission games.

v6,
bones

[PanzerMeyer]

LOL! You reminded me of the one and only time I played in a paintball match. Never again.

I had like 3 bruises on my body and it was a typical hot and humid day in South Florida. And I was a rookie so I had the crappy baseline paintball gun that kept jamming every other round and I was up against experienced players who had these fancy higher level paintball guns.

[Bones]

Well, to be honest, I never played paintball. I've only played airsoft which is to me much more realistic. I would surmise that it hurts more to get hit with an airsoft BB than it would a paintball being they are ~400 fps plastic BBs hitting you. I've had welts but also I've had broken skin from taking hits. Once I got hit in the head in such rapid succession I was stunned and seeing stars. So yeah, after all that, I have no need or desire to play paintball. Wussies, haha!

v6,
boNes

[PanzerMeyer]

Um yeah, I'm too old to play airsoft now anyway. LOL