Holiday Special Edition - December 2025

If you receive the RECHARGE newsletter, we assume you are already a valued supporter or donor to the Classic Lear Jet Foundation. We want to wish you a happy holiday season and we feel it appropriate to provide feedback on just what exactly your support has provided over the last year. Our mission is to restore the aircraft to an airworthy condition and return it to its 1964 original appearance.

Due to its historical significance, we are looking much more in depth than a traditional aircraft inspection. Every part of this aircraft is being removed, inspected and cataloged for future repairs, restoration and reinstallation. Our electricians are fully documenting the electrical wiring in the aircraft, carefully identifying each individual wire and preparing to re-manufacture that wiring. With 147,000 inches (2.3 miles) and hundreds of engineering changes that’s a big job.

We also spend a lot of time evaluating the necessary repairs and restoration of the aircraft structure and systems. We have made many field trips in search of aircraft structural and system components. Most of which are long obsolete, some of which we have found, some remain elusive, some we will have to fabricate. Another area of activity is seeking out donors for services, such as fabrication of replacement parts, (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) and necessary aircraft verification services. Behind the scenes, these hours are worked by a team of 7 individuals who donate their time every Tuesday and Thursday. As of this writing our volunteers have donated approximately 1900 aircraft labor hours with 1400 being logged since January 1.

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Progress Report - July 2026

By Kristen Nuss • August 3, 2026

How time flies! A short four years ago, on July 20, 2022, we made our trip to Bartow Executive Airport, Bartow, Florida, to do an inspection of 23-003 to see if she was restorable. Today 23-003 is in Wichita, Kansas within a few hundred feet south of the Lear Jet factory where she was built in 1964. CLJF now owns 23-003 and the restoration project is well along! The latest work by the volunteers has been working on the removal of the aft cabin floor in order to proceed with the structural inspections of the fuselage. It is a slow process because of the large amount of sealant used between the floor and the surrounding structure that has to be manually cut loose before the floor can be removed. Also, all the parts removed from the airplane continue to be identified, inspected, and dispositioned for service, replacement or overhaul. A big THANK YOU to all the volunteers! We greatly appreciate all that you do!

Progress Report - June 2026

By Kristen Nuss • July 2, 2026

Throughout the construction going on in bays 1 and 10 in building 14, our dedicated volunteers continue to make significant progress. On June 4, 2026 they removed the leading edges from the horizontal stabilizer. This will allow us to start the structural inspection. Once completed, it will be transported to DAS Aviation for restoration. Also, on June 4th, the wing from 23-028, that we acquired for parts, was removed from the wing dolly and installed on the ‘rotisserie’ by volunteers Jim Tidball, Dan DeMott, Hartney Hummer and Al Goodwin. Next, we will check the condition of the wing by performing a leak test on each wing and start removing parts from various wing systems. The daunting task of making a new wiring harness to replace the existing 62-year-old wiring harness continues. On June 9th we caught volunteers Bud Ledom, Rob Bielman and Dave Dendurant hard at pouring over drawings identifying the wires, connectors, switches, etc. A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the CLJF and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) was signed on May 28th. This MOA details the responsibilities of each of us for the restoration of the landing gear. On June 10, 2026, Jim Long and his son, Zach, of Noble Jet, picked up the landing gear retraction actuators and the box of various hydraulic actuators. There they will be tested and rebuilt. Thank You Noble Jet!!

Progress Report - May 2026

By Kristen Nuss • May 31, 2026

This month we removed the skin from the top of the aft fuselage, above the engine pylons. Three more fuselage skins are in the process of being removed as shown in the photo below. Removal of the skins is the only way for us to do visual inspections of the structure and to give access for future X-ray inspections. Areas of suspected corrosion, circled in the following photo, will be exposed with the removal of these skins. Visual and X-ray inspections will be conducted to verify the condition of the underlying structure. Then, if required, repairs or replacement of the structure will be accomplished. On May 22, 2026 the landing gear and several actuators were loaded onto Chris Marshall’s truck by Chris, Ron Forshee and Dick Kovich to be driven to Florida by Chris and his wife, Darla, where they will be restored. The landing gear will be restored by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in Daytona, Florida. The landing gear actuators and a box of miscellaneous smaller hydraulic actuators will be tested and rebuilt by Noble Jet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A huge Thank you to both ERAU and Noble Jet!!!