Oh good golly.......

I had sent my 4 A-65 cylinders off my Cub in to be inspected. The previous owner had thrown a rocker arm boss in 1996 and had parked the airplane. He had 4 cylinders in boxes in his basement, but never put them on. Good thing.

The shop called yesterday with the results and it was the last thing I wanted to hear. All 4 cylinders had exhaust guides in the intake guide spot. One cylinder was 15-over but otherwise okay. One cylinder has the exhaust valve seat peened into place but was otherwise okay. The last two cylinders were both shot and one of those had deep divots in the head that he didn't think chroming could fix.

I'm going to take the crank and cam shaft in on monday to be magnafluxed and see if they're okay. Then I'll decide what to do about the cylinders.

Anyone have a spare C-85 or O-200 laying around?

Where we are.

Sorry, it's been a while, I know. Lots of things going on here. First of all, I had an interview with an airline in Atlanta. They turned me down, which is good because I didn't have to turn them down. My airline days (being on reserve, being junior available, working all holidays, maintenance delays, lying dispatchers) are fortunately behind me. I've also become a house husband, taking care of our 4-year old. My wife has a temp job that may lead to full-time so my time to work on the Cub is limited.

One of my friends has asked me to fill in for two weeks on his Citation V. We're going to go get me somewhat current next week. See if I can fly a Cessna around the patch. The job is in april so we have some time and I'll be riding shotgun anyway so all I have to know is how to close the door and talk on the radio and I'm set.

That's leads to the question of "Where are we?" Well, I put the brace wires on the tail today. You'd think it would be easy, but no, it's not. You have to clean the holes for the bolts, find all the fittings, nuts, bolts and wires. Okay, that's about 2 hours. Then you can start to fit the parts together to make it pretty. I'll level it tomorrow and hopefully attach the elevators and connect the control cables.

I sent the engine cylinders off to be checked out yesterday. The were either new or yellow tagged in 1996 but they'd been sitting ever since then. We took out the pistons and hot-tanked them before sending them off. Should be back in 10 days.

Sky has his spring break next week so I'm hoping we can make great progress then.

That's where we are.

Amazon Sucks.

I ordered a book from amazon last week, Mark Steinmetz's South East. I had been interested in this book for a while, even before Mike Johnston featured it on The Online Photographer. After he did, the book became unavailable at list price, only used and collectible ones being offered. When I saw one pop up on Amazon for $37 I went ahead and ordered it. I ordered it on Monday, they shipped it on thursday and I received it today. Almost. They sent the wrong book. They sent Greater Atlanta which is an okay book but I really wanted what I had ordered. I went to the Amazon website to see how to send it back. A few clicks later and it told me I had to call customer service. A phone call later and I was talking to Rinja in New Delhi. She said she couldn't help me because they were changing out the computers and could I please call back in an hour?

Now I was mad. I tried calling Amazon's Corporate office in Seattle only to play ring-around the phone tree. When you press either 5 or 0 for the Corporate Operator, it just takes you back to the recorded message. So now I'm on a misson to get people to buy from local booksellors and tell Amazon to take a hike.

BTW Amazon, the person who packed my book at Warehouse Deals in Lexington, KY should be fired. How ironic that a booksellor employs people who can't read the title and the listing on the invoice, compare the two to make sure they agree and then ship the book. It's like ordering Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter and getting Little House in the Big Woods. There's even different pictures on the cover!? You would think you would want them to ship the correct item, it'd be cheaper, but from your response and lack of customer service, it's evident you don't care what they ship. You don't care about customer service because you outsource it to India. When I order something from a US company and have a problem, I want to call customer service to fix it in the United States! The last thing I want is to call and hear the person speaking with a Indian or Pakstani accent. Even my e-mails asking for help are sent from New Delhi. And back up your computers so when you have to take a system down, the customer service people can still access the information they need to help your customers!

Now I could crack some joke about how most of the people in Lexington, KY where Warehouse is located, have some of their teeth, they just can't read. But I'd hate to disparage one of your vendors.

Sign me...a very dissatisfied customer.

"Thank you very much"

ps...the Book is now available from www.photo-eye.com. No discount on the price but at least you'll get what you order.

02-26 Cub Progress

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, I've been looking for and applying for a job with a vengence so I haven't spent much time on the Cub.

Sky is busy building balsa-wood models. We have to run to the Hobby Shop every saturday to get paint or more models. He's foaming at the mouth to cover his models.

Glenn has two of the Standard J1 wings covered with one coat of clear polybrush on them.

In his "spare" time, Glenn painted my tail surfaces for me since when I paint it's "run central." Little Boo and I are headed out to the airport this morning to hook up the tail control cables and the gas shutoff valve cable.

02-09 Hooking up the stab to the trim.

Sky hasn't had school the past 2 days, cancelled due to snow. He went out to the airport this afternoon with me and watched me cut out the fabric where the stab trim mechanism is located. We put in the cross bar and hooked up the trim and tested it out. After that, we gathered the tail pieces and hung them up so Glenn could put on the final coat of polybrush and then silver them tomorrow.

01-31 Front seat and Gear

Sky went out to help me work on the Cub again today. It's getting more difficult as he has hobbies/school activities to do, so his time to help is getting more valuable. He helped me finish putting in the front seat and tightening the bolts and then he put washers/castle nuts on all the gear attach fittings while I ironed down tape edges on the tail.

Now you're probably wondering just how long I'm going to spend ironing tape edges. Good question. What you probably don't know is that I was unhappy with my first effort in taping the trailing edges of the rudder and elevators, so I took off the tapes, cut new ones and put them on this week. Glenn can't paint them until the end of this week at the earliest anyway, so no big rush.

01-19 Cub Progress - It's on the gear!

I thought we were going to do this tomorrow. But things were going so well, we hoisted boo-boo up and had her walk on her own three wheels. I'm just besides myself in disbelief.