O-59 through L-4J FAA registered aircraft list

[Speeddemon651]

Over the last several months in searching for a L-4 to buy, I went through every serial number that was delivered to the US military during WWII in the FAA data base starting with the O-59 (serial # 7842) through to the last L-4J delivered (serial # 14033).

Essentially I've compiled a complete list of every registered L-4 in the country based solely on their serial number and then sent out a series of post cards to try to find a cub for sale, you might had seen a previous post of mine about it .

From this search I've found several interesting things:

• Over the years as aircraft were wrecked, there is no telling how many were rebuilt completely from J-3 parts but have L-4 paperwork.
• Interestingly enough you can see patterns of certain groups of serial numbers seem to have stayed in regions of the country where they were sold surplus.
• By searching strictly serial numbers only, I've found several L-4's even in driving distance that the owners had no clue were actual L-4's with military history. They were converted years ago to look like J-3's and painted yellow and they had no clue.
• There are quite a few mistakes as to registered type, for example there are aircraft registered as one model L-4 but are actually another
• There are a lot of incorrect manufactured years listed. (In my spread sheet I have the correct model and manufactured year listed as cross referenced from Piper books)
• There are 355 aircraft total on the spread sheet
• About 58 of them have dead registration that has not been touched since 1977. (For any Warbird barn hunters, there could be great projects waiting to be found out there.)
• This list does not include any L-4's that were noted to had been exported post WWII and this list doesn't include NE-1's or NE-2's.

I built this list solely in my pursuit to find an authentic L-4 and if anyone would like to have a copy please send me a pm. I would be happy to pass it along and have someone else make use of it. All of the info is easily found in the FAA data base, I just took the time to query 6191 serial numbers and then organize it in an excel spread sheet.

 

[bob turner]

 

[43-491]

 

[Martin]

 

[43-491]

 

[Martin]

 

[flyboy461jd]

 

[Speeddemon651]

 

[Speeddemon651]

 

[43-29080]