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Sea Harrier revived by ex-USMC pilot for air show circuit By Stephen Trimble Not long before the UK Royal Navy decommissioned the last British Aerospace Sea Harrier in March 2006, Maryland resident and aircraft mechanic Christian Vlahos received a phone call from a close friend. Art Nalls, calling from England, immediately got to the point. "He said, 'Christian, I want to buy a Harrier,'" Vlahos recalls nearly four years later. "I was like, 'As in, a 'Harrier'-Harrier?!'" As unusual as the conversation may seem, it was not entirely out of character for Nalls. A former US Marine Corps test pilot-turned-real...

Not long before the UK Royal Navy decommissioned the last British Aerospace Sea Harrier in March 2006, Maryland resident and aircraft mechanic Christian Vlahos received a phone call from a close friend. Art Nalls, calling from England, immediately got to the point. "He said, 'Christian, I want to buy a Harrier,'" Vlahos recalls nearly four years later. "I was like, 'As in, a 'Harrier'-Harrier?!'" As unusual as the conversation may seem, it was not entirely out of character for Nalls. A former US Marine Corps test pilot-turned-real estate-millionaire, Nalls has an eccentric streak. Not only had Nalls restored - with...

St. Mary's County Regional Airport is home to a fleet of single-engine Cessnas, many of them owned by amateur pilots and parked in tidy rows just off the runway. But in a hangar at the edge of the grounds sits a Harrier, a hulking jet that takes off and lands vertically, cruises at speeds in excess of 600 mph and is similar to the Marines' primary attack aircraft. That is Art Nalls's plane. Nalls, a 53-year-old former Marine test pilot who made a fortune in real estate, has turned flying into an extraordinarily expensive hobby. He believes that his newest...