2011 Creve Coeur Christmas Lunch.

Little Boo poses as part of a Winter Scene.

Casey Miller Peters was here with her new baby!



A couple of dim bulbs? The kids do their best Uncle Fester imitation.

Santa Stix passes out presents.

Santa Stix with two of his grandchildren.

A new Robin in the nest.

A Curtiss Robin awaits its turn in the restoration shop.

Paul Glenshaw stops by Creve Coeur.

Paul Glenshaw, a St Louis native and co-producer of the film Barnstorming stopped by Saturday to see the museum. I gave him the quickie tour as he had to catch a flight but all he could say was "Wow!"

Headed towards Indy.

Headed towards Indy in our Citation V.

Happy Birthday Doug Watanabe!

Happy Birthday to my great friend Doug Watanabe.

Test-fitting the Monosport Gear.

Went out to visit my friend Glenn Peck this morning. He was in the process of test-fitting the Monosport landing gear. He says he has about a month worth of work left to do on the airplane including painting the cowling, finishing the wing and painting it.

Morning in the Museum.

Spent part of this morning helping out in the museum as they shuffled some of the airplanes to another building to perform routine maintenance on the building. I was able to get this aerial view from the scissor-lift they're using to change the light bulbs.

My F-24 inflight by Gilles Auliard.

My good friend Gilles Auliard shot some air-to-air pictures of my airplane up at Blakesburg and sent them along today. Bottom is me and friend Mike Tindall in his Warner-powered Fairchild 24.

Photo Day at Creve Coeur

John Cournoyer had some of his airplanes out yesterday (which was a stunning fall day!) for pictures for his new website. John has a few of the airplanes for sale, so if you're interested, drop me a line.

Scott Johansson flies one of John's Waco UBF-2 at sunset.

A Spitfire graces Creve Coeur.

A Spitfire Mk IX runs up it's engine at Creve Coeur on Sunday before going flying.

Or at least we can dream-it's a Park Zone RC flyer.

Watching the storm go by...

Watching a nasty storm go by in Gulfport yesterday.

Headed home.

Gilles Auliard gets ready to shoot us with his camera Sunday morning.

Photo by Skyler.

Blakesburg on Saturday.

One of the two rows of Monocoupes at Blakesburg.

Greg Herrick parks his Stinson Tri-motor.

Waco on takeoff. This picture was an experiment and

I really like the way it turned out.

Bellanca

Sky runs the flight sim for the kids.

Monocoupe under clear skies.

We're going to Blakesburg!

We're headed up to Blakesburg for the annual Antique Airplane Association Fly-In. I pulled Sky out of school after his 2nd hour Algebra class and we went out to Creve Coeur and pulled the airplane out of the hangar.

Sky munches on a sandwich before we depart.

Hot and hazy were the words of the day. When we left it was 96 degrees out
with a heat index of 102. We had to go up to 4,500' to get out of the bumps.

Headed North.

Bill French climbs out on takeoff in his 1935 Waco CUC headed towards the Antique Airplane Association Fly-In held at Blakesburg, Ia.

Building the Monosport Exhaust

Glenn Peck adjusts the jig for the Monosport exhaust he's building.
He won't have the airplanes at this years AAA Fly-In up at Blakesburg, IA.

Bill Austin gets a Rawdon T1!

Bill Austin returned this week with his recently acquired Rawdon T1 from North Perry Airport in Miami.

The airplane had been built as a sprayer and owned by a banner-towing operation. The airplane hasn't flown in years but is complete having set inside a hanger the entire time. It's serial number 31 out of the 36 built.

This will make the second Rawdon at our field, the other being Phil and Terry Chastains. Their father, Jack Chastain, formerly worked for Herb Rawdon and served as Test Pilot pilot for the T1 series.

T-28 Trojans make a pass.

The Aeroshell Aerobatic Team.

Gene Soucy and Teresa Stokes.

We were asked by a magazine photographer to go for a

photo-shoot alongside our friend Mike Thern in his

yellow Fairchild 24 Sunday morning.

Sky snapped this great shot during that shoot.

This was the most exciting part to an otherwise drab and rainy Oshkosh.

Oshkosh-Long Post

Sky and I on our way up to Oshkosh Monday morning. Clear weather and smooth flying.

The view of Oshkosh looking north from the final to 36L.




A panorama of the Vintage West parking/camping area. That's right, it's empty. Why? Maybe it was the weather...but the homebuilts and warbirds made it. Maybe the economy in general or the price of gas? Or maybe it's just the owners of Vintage Aircraft have finally got fed-up with the way they're treated by Vintage and EAA and they no longer attend.
You decide.

Aerobatics.

The CAF's B-29 "Fifi" attended, its first visit since 1995.

A Corsair takes off runway 18. Several Corsairs were in attendance as part of

the Salute to Naval Aviation.

Always a crowd favorite, a P-51 Mustang lifts off the runway.

A Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, the only one flyable in the world.

Sky tries out Eric Presten's Bleriot.

Sky and a F4F Wildcat.

Sky in front of Fifi.

Andrew King sits in the Curtiss Pusher.

A Harriet Quimby reenactor poses by the Bleriot.

-continued on next post-

It starts!

http://youtu.be/3d4F2XP26c8

It started for us twice this past week! But we still have some figuring out to do. The first time, we let it run for about a minute and then shut it down because we had no oil pressure.

After clearing the block in the line, we tried to start it again. No luck.

We tried again two mornings after. It lit on the first blade. This time we had oil pressure and we let in run for 2-3 minutes. It was idling at 550 rpm's. Glenn pulled the throttle back and you guessed it, the engine quit. Couldn't get it started again.

Glenn is gone for the weekend and I have to go back to work tues pm so we'll probably try again mid-july.

Testing the fit.

Jimmy Johnson had his Emeraude wings ready to test fit on the fuselage this morning. The airplane was built by someone else and put into storage during the '80's. Jimmy bought the airplane, stripped the fabric and is in the process of rebuilding/restoring the aircraft.

It wouldn't be spring in St Louis...

unless I had to change a least one cylinder on my Ranger.