Long ago, and not too far away, I used to fly a J-3 which was owned by
our flying club.

Well, one day, one little link on the chain that connects the rudder
bell crank to the (Scott I think) tail-wheel broke. No problem, I
thought. I looked at the multi-link chain and I knew immediately why
it had failed, and how to fix it. The cable was exactly the same as
my mother used to hang plants in the green-house. Any moron could
tell you that the failure was from fatigue. The remedy was to get
about 12 inches of the chain link from mom's bag, and replace both of
the chains before they broke again. And I did, but Captain Bob U.S.
Air Force (not his real name, but anyone who flew out of the
Tullahoma, Tennessee airport in the mid-1960s will know who I'm
talking about) saw me installing the new chains on the J-3.

I was "allowed" to ferry the plane to a mechanic, who installed a set
of $25 airworthy chains. I was also allowed to keep the un-used
links of the airworthy chains. And I had the original chains that I
had replaced.

A group of us tried to find any difference between the airworthy links
and the ones my mom used. We looked at them really close, put them in
pliers and bent them back and forth. Duh? No difference!

Mike Weller