OT: The St Louis Zoo

I went to the Zoo yesterday with my wife and little girl. I hadn't been in a long time. I had forgotten how much fun the zoo is, especially with a little girl. The best part is, the St Louis Zoo is free, that's right free. No admission charge. You can walk around all day, sit on a park bench in the shade and eat your sack lunch and enjoy ambiance of the Zoo.

 

 

My wife and daughter pet the Rays.

 

The new Seal exhibit is killer! It has a viewing area that goes underwater!

Here, two seals cruise over our heads in the viewing room.

 

Hipp's!

 

My daughter was surprised by how big they are.

 

Great view of a Seal doing a slow roll.

 

The King of the Jungle wakes up from his nap.

Giving the airplane her Spring Bath

Finally got the Fairchild back together and bought her out into the light of day this morning to give her a belated Spring bath.

 

Skyler cleaned the right side of the aircraft for me.

 

Hosing off the soap from the top of the wing.

 

 

Lindsay helped out by cleaning the tail.

 

 A good Father's Day outing (a little early.)

Night Currency

We went up and did some landings to maintain our night currency.

And the crank dials out to.....

 

in tolerance....by a long ways!

 

I'll finish tearing the engine down to replace the bearings and get a good look inside but we're off to a good start.

Poking around the hangars today.....

I saw this beauty. Her engine came back and was installed last week.

New engine for the Cub-a Continentel 85!

Loading the 85 into Glenn's truck.

We sat it on a tire and strapped in down.

 

Headed home-another 9 hours of driving!

 

Yea! I have a C85-12 for the Cub. It's in need of a little work but that's okay as we had planned on tearing it down anyway. I found it on Barnstormers, convinced Glenn to go with me and we left Friday afternoon on our journey to get it.

 

The engine has what was described as a "minor" prop strike but the seller dialed it up and it turns out the crank should still be in round. I really bought the engine as a project, something to build upon, so if it needs a new crank, I'll probably put an 0-200 one in it.

 

It came with the oil tank, mags, carb, starter and generator. I'm going to pitch the starter and put on a new, lightweight Skytech model. Throwing the gen overboard also so I won't need a transponder. I just don't want to hand-prop it everytime and want the bigger horsepower engine.

 

We'll tear it down once I get the wings ready to cover...or maybe earler.



Curtiss Robin

Rainy Sunday morning in St Louis. I was sorting thru some things on my computer desk and came across
this picture I took of the Historic Aviation Restoration Museum's Curtiss Robin back in '01 or '02.

Wish they would take this out and fly it again so I could take some good pictures of her.