First, the tubes. These are the brake pedal interconnect tubes (the two small ones), the control stick elevator interconnect tube(the medium sized one), and the elevator push pull tube to the bell crank just aft of the baggage compartment.
A close up of one off the ends. The black end piece is machined to fit the ID of the tube and is threaded for the rod end bearing and has six pull rivets in a staggered pattern to hold it in place. I coated everything with zinc chromate prior to assembly.
I also assembled the elevator rear bell crank and installed it. It connects to the forward bell crank with two cables.
The bushing on the right will attach to a control rod that goes up inside the vertical fin.
As I said one of the things we did was to move Henry's J-3 Cub to his son Joe's strip about seven miles west of here. The Cub has been here seven or eight years though the last time it was in the air was when Monte and Eddie Griffin found me in the woods the day after I crashed my Breezy five years ago. Henry has been maintaining it but we still changed all of the gas for fresh. It fired up and ran fine. I climbed to 2000 feet and everything was normal and then headed to Joe's. Here we are at his place.
This leaves an empty spot in the outside hangar that looks lonely without the Cub.
I put about 100 hours on that plane over the years and saw many bears from the drop down door. It is the end of an era at Hood Field.
I also want to mention the passing of my good friend Bobby Byrd. Bobby came to flying late in life but had a real love for it. He flew a lot with Mr. Tilghman, the mid eighties gentlemen who had a Champ here for a few years. Mr. Tilghman gave it up at 87 deciding he was getting a little loose with his flying skills. Bobby was a good friend and helped a lot around fly-in time. The next time I go up I will be flying over the cemetery in Pink Hill.
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