![]() ''I have a gun sight hooked to a camera,'' he said. ![]() We got into a dogfight and they shot me down. ''There's a lot of P-51's up there, and I went after them. ''When I first got my fighter jet, I headed up to the Wisconsin border,'' Mr. But the most fun may well be the mock dogfights they get into on weekends. About 20 of the jets - many with their Russian warning signs intact - showed up here in Oshkosh. The pilots fly just enough to keep in practice and they fly to air shows, where they all seem to know each other, standing in groups on the tarmac near their planes, laughing. But they do use a lot more fuel: the L-39 burns about $300 worth an hour. Rudy Beaver, president of International Jets in Gadsden, Ala., the country's largest importer of the surplus fighter jets, said, ''I know there's a certain mystique when you say jet - even a certain apprehension.Īnd, the jet pilots say, their engines are more reliable. ''The airplane community knows these jets,'' said Jon Galt Bowman, who owns several of the fighter jets and is a director of Warbirds. In addition, the jets file flight plans and maintain routine contact with air controllers. Real military jets carry a ''friend or foe'' warning system, but in the surplus jets that system has been disabled, said Jack Harrington, an aviation lawyer who is also president of the Experimental Aircraft Association's Warbirds of America, a group dedicated to the preservation of fighting aircraft of all vintages. The sight of one of these fighter jets bearing red stars and Russian warnings doesn't exactly make the Pentagon tremble. Others say they see the two-seater jets like the L-39's - used by various Soviet forces for training - as a way to educate the young about flying.Īs Ian Johnson, the doctor's 22-year-old son and an aspiring jet pilot, said: ''We grew up with jets.'' He'll paint the sides with the name of a new product, Race Glaze, and fly the jet to air shows. Ron Whitt, a shampoo bottler who just bought his L-39 on Thursday, said he bought it to ''crank and bank'' - and to advertise. Petersen, a bachelor, said flying the jets was ''better than anything - except sex.'' That's close enough for a thrill, especially in a stripped-down military cockpit, peering over a gun sight, doing a triple roll. While the newest MIG-29's - which one importer has on order - fly at two and a half times the speed of sound, the older jets, those used in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia, fly close to the speed of sound: at Mach. When they're not running their businesses, these middle-aged men - their average age is about 55 and no one can name any women who pilot the jets - like to fly high, fast and noisy. ''They're usually pretty well off and, at our get-togethers, what you get is a bunch of bosses, everybody bossing everybody else around,'' Mr. Then there's a few physicians, a few lawyers.''Įsper Petersen, 48, a building contractor from Chicago with no military flying experience, termed his fellow jet owners ''a pretty interesting group of overachievers.'' ![]() ''There's a fellow who built a business in janitorial services in Utah others who distribute widgets and make odd things. Johnson, a burly man wearing a dark green flight suit with a Soko patch sewn on the sleeve. Most of the owners are businessmen, said Dr. These military jets, which now often sport real, but nonfunctioning, guns, are not just owned by former Navy and Air Force pilots. Now, the fighter jets owned by civilians are allowed in the United States but with a passel of rules: no flying more than 600 miles from home without the F.A.A.'s permission pilots must have at least 1,000 hours of flight time, planes must have regular maintenance and Federal inspections - and no live guns. ![]() In 1993, the Federal Aviation Administration, unprepared for the growing number of surplus military jets coming in from former Soviet bloc countries, stopped issuing the permits that let them fly here - a moratorium that lasted two years. That's a minuscule percentage of the country's 186,000 private planes - but in 1989, when the group was formed, there were only 10 in the country. Starting with a handful of planes, the fad has caught on, and now there are hundreds of these jets owned by civilians: the Classic Jet Airplane Association lists 423 on its rolls. Since the end of the cold war, more and more Americans have been rushing to buy surplus Russian MIG's, Czech L-39's, Polish Iskras and Yugoslav Sokos as private playthings.
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