BALLSTON — Richard Voehringer has had a love affair with airplanes for more than 60 years and his latest fling is with a 1962 Cessna 172B that he rescued after a crash.

Voehringer, 76, has spent more than five years rebuilding the plane and now he’s offering it for sale at the Saratoga County Airport.

“Now I’m working on a Luscomb 8-A. It’s a light sport model from 1946,” he said Friday afternoon.

Voehringer, of Ballston, began a long career with aircraft as a teenager when he admired an old plane his shop teacher had. By the time Voehringer joined the Navy when he was 19, he already had a private pilot’s license.

“I was in the Navy from 1951 to 1954 and my duties were to maintain and fly with planes,” he said.

He was based on Rhode Island, and often the flights he took were in planes towing targets for the ships below.

“One time we got back to the air field and found they’d hit our rudder,” he said. “We were towing a 7,000-foot cable with a target on the end.”

He said he left the Navy with a Federal Aviation Administration certification to work on plane engines and he immediately went to school in Oklahoma, where he attained certification to repair aircraft frames.

The skills kept him employed at various jobs through 1998 when he retired as an aviation safety inspector for the FAA at Albany International Airport.

Voehringer said he has worked on almost every size airplane during his long career and he can’t imagine not having one to tinker with in his barn.

The 45-year-old Cessna that he finished restoring last month is considered an antique, he said.

“It won’t fly as fast as the newer ones, but it’s a great plane,” he said. “The toughest thing about restoring it was finding parts.”

As an example, he said he tried without luck for months to find a piece of the frame that fits on the front of the plane just outside of the windshield.

“Nobody had this piece. The manufacturer said they might be able to make a new one for me, but it would cost $2,000,” he said.

On a trip to Ontario with a friend, he asked a local distributor if he had one. The distributor called Wichita, Kan.

“An old guy in the back of the shop dug around and found one that was covered in dust. They shipped it up to Canada and I got it for $168,” he said.

Voehringer said patience is needed for long-term projects.

“When I got the plane in April of 2002, it was wreckage,” he said. “The guy who had it had crashed near Round Lake and the wings were bashed in, the tail and forward fuselage were a mess. I did what I could to salvage what was here and mostly restored other parts that I found that could be serviceable.”

He said it was shocking to see that aviation fuel, with 100 octane, cost $5.10 a gallon for his first flight in the restored plane.

“I remember flying from Schenectady to Allentown, Pa., one time to play golf with a friend. I fueled up to come back and it cost $1.92,” he said.

He admitted that flight was many years ago and said the fuel tank in his small plane held only 12 gallons.

Voehringer said he’s owned six planes and his favorite is one that’s on display in the Empire State Aerosciences Museum in Glenville.

“It’s a Mooney Mite,” he said of the single-seat plane constructed of wood and fabric that weighed a little more than 500 pounds.

“Boy, that was a fun plane. I wish I’d never sold it,” he said.

The plane was donated to the museum by the estate of a man who had purchased it after Voehringer had sold it.

He said he’s not sure how much piloting is in his future, but he can’t imagine not working on planes or flying with friends.

“It’s a great hobby,” he said.

The Cessna is offered for $39,900 and it’s on display at the Saratoga County Airport.