Kristen Nuss • August 3, 2026
Progress Report - July 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!
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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!!
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!!!
April was a historic month in the restoration of 23-003 N200Y!! First, on April 14 th , after final leveling, the fuselage cradles, jacks and supports were secured firmly to the hangar floor with a special plaster mixture containing hemp fibers (some ropes are made with these fibers). This plaster mixture is commonly used on the factory floor to set tooling jigs so that they cannot move ensuring accurately produced parts and assemblies. With the fuselage secured, we were able to start the removal of skins from the fuselage that need replacement or repair. On April 21, 2026 Hartney Hummer removed the 1st skin panel!! This panel is on the left side of the fuselage, just aft of the engine pylon. This particular panel is not repairable and will have to be replaced. Removal of this panel will also allow the non-destructive inspections (NDI) of the aft fuselage to continue. The NDI test equipment is too big to fit inside the aft fuselage so it will be positioned outside of the stringers pointing inside. International Turbine Industries (ITI) has started the restoration of our CJ610-1 engines. The inspection of the engine cases has started in preparation for them being shipped out to have a coating applied. During earlier discussions between ITI and CLJF, we decided that during the restoration, the engines will be upgraded to the ‘dash 4’ (CJ610-4) configuration. The CJ610-4 engine is a previously approved FAA configuration for the Model 23.
