Hey, wanna buy a fighter?
 

Reuters
Czech government aims to sell 47 used fighter jets
Wednesday July 7, 10:28 am ET

PRAGUE, July 7 (Reuters) - The Czech government on Wednesday approved a plan to sell 47 used but relatively new subsonic L-159 fighter jets, hoping to place them in neighbouring Hungary or in Africa by the end of this year.
The central European country's army will keep just 24 planes and has been in advanced talks with several potential buyers.

"We hope to finish the talks by the end of this year. We are quite optimistic," a defence ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman declined to comment on who might buy the aircraft. "We will seek to find a solution that may reduce our costs of maintenance of the fleet."

An industry source told Reuters the state might compete with the planes' producer, Czech company Aero Vodochody, in which U.S. aerospace giant Boeing has a minority stake. But they might also join forces to provide servicing of the planes.

"Hungary, Egypt and Algeria are the territories that are often being mentioned in the press and that are not completely out of the picture," the source said.

The army, which is undergoing a cost-saving programme, bought the planes between 2001 and 2003.

An Aero spokesman said his firm hoped to benefit from the government decision but declined to comment further.

did I notice a "Lightning"? mounted on a concrete plinth on the outskirts of Liskeard in Cormwall, a few years ago ?

it certainly caught ones eye and I often wondered who owned it ......

ps. I may be wrong on the type of Fighter

Yes you did see a lightning. The company who own it are called CastleAir - the same company that flew Annica Rice around England all those years ago.

From what I've heard, they had an immense fuel to noise ratio. Must have been fun though. Small airframe, tiny wings and two erking great donks hurtling you through the sky. Oh for the cold war......

Ive been lucky enough to take a squirrel into there a few years back. Can be tricky with the wind direction and power cables !

(well it felt like it when I was in training)

:p ;)

That old Lightning is still the best performing fighter the RAF ever had until Typhoo gets into the front line.

As a junior pilot on Lightnings, I once had to give a briefing on the engines. Just for a laugh, I had a single slide which was a sideways cross section of the aircraft. I simply said " the Lightning has got 2 engines, one on top of the other. The one on top is slightly further back so the pilot has somewhere to sit!"

L159 - fighter !?:D :confused: := :E

Drove home from Cornwall some years ago. As I got to Liskeard, I happened to glance right for a fraction of a second. Nearly wet myself, I thought that bl@@dy Lightning was taking off straight at me.

I count the trip I had in a Lightning from RAF Leuchars in the late 1960s as one of the clinical pinnacles of my flying career - certainly on a par with a trip I had in a RAAF Mirage some 15 years later in Darwin.

Supersonic in the climb - no worries. More poke than a cat launch. What an aircraft. Almost orgasmic. Pity about the endurance!

Argus,

That sounds very much like a girl I once new!

:E