Talk:Bell X-14

Self-contradiction about operational incidents

The operational history says the X-14B was damage beyond repair in a landing accident yet it goes on to say that in its years of service it had "no serious incidents". Am I being picky about what a "serious incident" is? --Donramm 16:27, 19 February 2006

Probably meant to read as 'economical' repair. If it had citations we could look it up. --Colputt 01:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The damage actually could be repaired rather easily. The right landing gear went through the fuel tank on a hard landing and a fire started and was put out quickly. The current owner has it on display in his museum: www.ropkeyarmormuseum.com --68.74.135.15 (talk) 03:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Used as trainer for lunar landing

The plane was used for training for lunar missions due to the similarity of the controls. Control during vertical flight was achieved by routing jet exhaust out of bleeders on the wingtips, nose, and tail section. I have no source for this other than talking to the guy who owns it, but he has copies of flight logs and has talked to several pilots and people who worked on it. --68.74.135.15 (talk) 03:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

No it wasn't. Given the publicity over the Apollo program we wouldn't have to rely on "Some guy said" that this was used for training in lieu of the LLRV and LLTV that were actually used for training astronauts. Now, Bell Aircraft built those trainers and delivered them in 1963. And I don't know what the person was thinking who posted "The X-14A aircraft flight control system was similar to the one proposed for the Lunar Module." but they've obviously never looked in the cockpit of either ship.John Simpson54 (talk) 14:38, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

On display Childrens Museum Indianapolis

For someone with experience editing this article, please check this information and add to the page. The X-14 is now on display at Indianapolis Children's Museum, so I assume restoration is complete. Since no change of ownership was discussed, I assume it is the same private collector who owns the X-14. We heard the plane is on display from local media on March 18, 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.60.173.247 (talk) 00:31, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Fred Ropkey died in 2013. In 2017, the Ropkey family decided to close the museum at it's Crawfordsville, IN location and all information dried up for a while. It wasn't known whether the X-14 was sold or not and if sold to whom. Based on some digging others have done, it looks like the X-14 is still owned by the Ropkey family and it, along with a portion of the rest of their collection, has moved to Eagle Creek Airpark in Indianapolis, IN. They are apparently working on getting some new hangars built for the collection before reopening it to the public.

So, in short, the X-14 is still owned by the Ropkey family, it just isn't on public display. 152.117.79.90 (talk) 03:08, 7 October 2023 (UTC)