>> That is a fun job.
I work about five days a week,
sometimes six every morning
with another engineer and a number
of retired blackie mechanics
and other people with interest
in airplanes and abilities.
And one of the projects that I'm
personally heavily involved with is
the restoration of that prototype,
C141 prototype stretch airplane.
That particular airplane has a unique history,
but not only but was it
the prototype for all of
the follow on production airplanes,
but it was the very airplane that was
used for the Bob Hope Christmas tours.
It was kept in beautiful condition,
and they put a palette
or a mobile home thing inside it with
very plush quarters where Bob Hope and Lucia Ball
and all of that entourage that did
the Christmas tours to Vietnam in places.
If that happens to be a 141B,
we originally designed it as a 141A,
and after they got in service,
the Air Force found that it was volume limited and that
when they the requirements were to carry
a cargo of let's say of lead engants, as an example.
And they found out they were carrying ping pong balls.
In other words, the cargo was totally different,
and so it was volume limited.
And so during the late '70s,
we and the Air Force decided that it would
be a good program to stretch the airplane.
We brought the first one in,
we cut it right at
these production brakes right in here
just for and after the wing and
inserted barrel sections here and
here and linked the airplane by 23 and a third feet,
which increased its volume by about a third.
And the prototype for that airplane
was done in around '75 or '76 somewhere in
that time frame and I worked on that program. And that
ironically is the same airplane that we
are restoring for the Aviation Museum,
which we can talk about later, that product.