Originally posted by NomNamNom If it were me, I'd be very annoyed of that.
I love looking at the photos of F-14s, especially from this angle. The way the intakes and wings are shown here is eye-catching. It's too bad we don't have any flying samples, I would of loved to have seen one.
I'll never forget my first day working for Grumman in Bethpage, NY. At lunch time I walked down the F-14 production line in one of our plants and saw an employee taking a nap, lying down in a F-14 engine nacelle!
As for flying samples, even if you could get through the classification issues (i.e. when your remove all of the classified equipment, what's left would be unflyable), the cost to buy and operate an aircraft like an F-14 would be prohibitive. That's why there's only a single flyable F-5 in civilian hands (that I know of). The owner bought a number of wrecked F-5s and managed to put together a complete example by cannibalizing parts from the wrecks. That will never happen with current (or recent) military aircraft.