By William Allen, EAA 1574687
This piece originally ran in the January 2026 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
I had always wanted to dip my toes into the warbird world and finally got inspired by a gentleman named Norbert Steinwedel, EAA 460072, to do so with the purchase of a 1959 Pilatus P-3-05. I had a partner I had flown with in the Air Force who was stupid enough to go along with me in this journey, so we found an airplane in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic and bought it sight unseen (after extensive photo and logbook examination) with a delivery arranged to the United States. Thus began what amounted to an inspect and replace as necessary journey that involved rewiring the entire aircraft and refitting it with modern avionics.
It is interesting when you start redoing something, the tendency is: “Well, while we are at it ….” This logic ensures a bloated budget. We knew the aircraft had a new prop and low-time engine and a pretty good paint job — it was the wiring that was at issue as it was more than 60 years old and degrading rapidly. No one wants to fly a fire trap! So, using Pilatus’ original wiring diagrams and a lot of help from SteinAir and Norbert, we embarked on installing all new wiring, to include circuit breaker panels (aft bulkhead and cockpit) along with Garmin avionics (G3Xs forward/aft), autopilot, angle of attack instrument, carbon monoxide detector, ADS-B In/Out, bespoke tuned exhaust, canopy, custom auxiliary fuel tank, seat belts, parachutes, smoke system, LED lights — on and on it went, ad nauseum. We even sent out the original clocks to be redone by a horologist.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. And while the experimental exhibition category seems to give many people pause, it does mean that avionics cost much less. It took a year to get it put back together, airworthy, and jump through all the hoops, but we couldn’t be happier with the results: +6/-3 g’s, 155 knot cruise, 270 knot VNE, and a real joy to fly with a light flight control balance and the direct pushrod control linkage. The P-3 is the grandfather to today’s U.S. military T-6 Texan II, and you can see the lineage side by side. Pilatus is known for the quality of its engineering, and the P-3 has only four ADs on the airframe. Now go look at the ADs on a T-34 and tell me which one is better made! The truth is the P-3 is built like a brick house. Look at the landing gear and you realize the guy who designed the Panzer tank must have been pulled in to engineer this beast. This thing will not buckle to a student landing, and with trailing linkage, it makes every landing smooth.
There are some gotchas in the airframe. The parts could be a problem moving forward, but I haven’t experienced that so far (only 79 total were built). The engine is geared, but if handled and maintained correctly, it served the Swiss military in a safe and reliable fashion, and I find it to not be an issue like some people want to make it out to be (I have a Lycoming GO-480 installed with a fuel-injection system). Note: The original engine was a GO-435 and isn’t well supported any longer and, in my opinion, was a bit underpowered for the airframe, but this was a jet airplane lead-in trainer, so there was logic to the underpowered nature of the original concept to teach energy management. If you are looking to purchase one, find one that has been upgraded to the GO-480 or -540. Also, you need to make sure the wiring has been redone or plan on doing so (most are more than 65 years old now and need the love), and there is a landing gear maintenance procedure/rework that should be done every five to seven years.
Annuals have run around $4,000 a year over the last three years, which for a complex aircraft seems reasonable (and I am aggressively proactive with maintenance). All in all, owning a P-3 has been a wonderful experience. Our airplane is extremely reliable (I had an A-36 previously that was more problematic) and an absolute joy to fly. This was built for student pilots as an initial trainer, so it is very forgiving, and I have qualified my 70-hour private pilot son in it. It doesn’t take a professional pilot to operate this machine. It is forgiving and doesn’t have any bad habits other than requiring power maintained until fully in the flare (chopping the power to float in is a no-no). And the view from the cockpit is hard to beat with the PC-7 style canopy. So, if you’re looking to enter the warbird world without a huge bankroll, I would strongly recommend considering the Pilatus P-3.
Attention — Aircraft Builders and Restorers
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