Aquisition.

Side view looking in to the huge interior

Sarah (my daughter) and I chose the plane we wanted  It had been built in 1985, and had less than 2000 hours on the airframe and only a couple hundred hours on the engine. The fuselage was in fair shape, although all the glass would have to be replaced. The fabric surfaces were all rotten and the plane would need a total recover job. The engine was (and still is) a total unknown, after sitting in the humidity of Seattle for 10 years without any protection. The interior was totally unlined and had 12 military style metal fold down seats attached to the sides. Static lines run fore and aft, and it has jump lights in the rear of the cabin, so at some point it was used as a jump plane .
We discovered later that our plane had been in service with Aeroflot and another air service as we stripped the paint off the fuselage. In Russia, it seemed that if the plane needed a new paint job, they just kept building it up layer on layer over the old one. We found at least 2 sets of markings under that blue and white paint scheme. Most of the paint was pretty chalky, and we wanted a military scheme, so the existing paint would have to come off.
Another buyer from SLC was there at the same time and he had an oil service business and had brought his truck with him that had a small crane on the back We decided to help each other pull the planes apart and load them on trucks for the journey. The 3 of us took 4 days to do both planes. While we mostly worked on our own planes, any time we needed extra hands, we all worked on that plane.
One of the flaps on the lower wing was binding a little, so we cut off some of the fabric to have a look. The push-rod had a slight bend in it, and was binding on the hole in the rib it passed through. I showed the Russian guy we were buying the plane from, and asked him how easy it would be to get a new pushrod. He said all we had to do was get a hammer and make the hole in the rib bigger so it would not bind any more. We decided that we would order a replacement push-rod from Poland instead.
The plane is built like a tank. Some of the fittings look like they could be from a bridge rather than an aircraft. Very solid. I guess WWII designs were on the most part overbuilt to provide combat survivable strength and this was designed and first built just after WWII.
We had the opportunity to fly in the demonstrator on a day trip to the Arlington Fly-In. I flew right seat on the way back. You know you are flying a BIG airplane when the pilot flying not only hands control off to you, but then gets up and walks out of the cockpit (without crouching). 

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