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I should have mentioned the name of the place: Historic Aircraft Restoration Museum, Dauster Flying Field, Creve Coeur Airport, Maryland Heights, Missouri, 314-434-3368.  They're closed Mondays.

I was in St. Louis last weekend, & discovered a little known air museum there at the Creve Coeur Airport just NW of St. Louis itself.  They've got 4 hangars with 60 some aircraft crammed into them.  I had the place all to myself, because, I was told, they don't advertise much, & people do not know it's even there.  They've got several WWI aircraft, quite a few WACO's sprinkled amidst some I have not heard of before.  The aircraft are close together, so I'm sorry I didn't take a camera with a wider wide angle.  However, it was a pleasant surprise to find it on the map, not to mention visiting.  The cost per person is $10, & a docent takes you around into each hangar.

This is an old film camera trick, & I don't know if it would apply to the digicam.  Use a big lens hood that keeps sunlight off of that scratch, &, if you can, take the lens apart to use a sharpie pen on the sides of the lens elements.  The black sides of the lens element glass will lessen the amount of reflected light bouncing around to eventually hit the film plane, er, sensor.  I would not try to buff that scratch out, as it will affect the optics of the lens with unknown results.  Just my 2-bits worth.

Not that it makes much difference, especially after a year +, but the first photo, the nose less photo, doesn't have a cloud in the sky, & the over corrected photo is nothing but cloud below the fuselage.  I can see where the computer application used parts of each photo to make the composite.  Like I said, not that it means much, but I find it interesting.

I was using a 1956 Kodak Retina IIc in 1976, working on the Van Nuys airport for American Jet.  Several of the Pregnant Guppies were there.  American Jet fabricated them, & so they collected there.  I remember climbing inside one of them & thinking that a basketball game could be played inside them.  I was sorry to see that they were in various states of disrepair.

I think he said that they were working to put all 3 in the air, starting with the Conny.

Hello-
I was driving through Kansas City, Missouri a couple of weeks ago, & noticed The Airline Museum on the map of the town, & decided to pay it a visit.  They've got 3 airliners there: a Lockheed Constellation, a Martin 404, & the ever present Douglas DC-3, as well as other artifacts such as uniforms & other airline related items.  The 3 photos of the aircraft were shot with a film camera, hand held, 1/8 second, f/2.8.  We (my son & I) had a museum volunteer walk us around, & he seemed to know his stuff.  I had a good time.  It's just south of the Kansas City Downtown Airport, right on the state line of Missouri & Kansas.