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>> That is a fun job.

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I work about five days a week,

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sometimes six every morning

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with another engineer
and a number

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of retired blackie mechanics

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and other people with interest

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in airplanes and abilities.

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And one of the projects that I'm

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personally heavily
involved with is

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the restoration of
that prototype,

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C141 prototype stretch airplane.

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That particular airplane
has a unique history,

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but not only but was it

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the prototype for all of

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the follow on
production airplanes,

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but it was the very
airplane that was

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used for the Bob Hope
Christmas tours.

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It was kept in
beautiful condition,

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and they put a palette

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or a mobile home
thing inside it with

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very plush quarters where
Bob Hope and Lucia Ball

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and all of that
entourage that did

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the Christmas tours
to Vietnam in places.

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If that happens to be a 141B,

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we originally designed
it as a 141A,

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and after they got in service,

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the Air Force found that it
was volume limited and that

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when they the requirements
were to carry

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a cargo of let's say of lead
engants, as an example.

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And they found out they were
carrying ping pong balls.

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In other words, the cargo
was totally different,

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and so it was volume limited.

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And so during the late '70s,

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we and the Air Force
decided that it would

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be a good program to
stretch the airplane.

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We brought the first one in,

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we cut it right at

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these production
brakes right in here

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just for and after the wing and

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inserted barrel
sections here and

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here and linked the airplane
by 23 and a third feet,

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which increased its
volume by about a third.

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And the prototype
for that airplane

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was done in around '75
or '76 somewhere in

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that time frame and I worked
on that program. And that

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ironically is the
same airplane that we

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are restoring for
the Aviation Museum,

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which we can talk about
later, that product.