In Flight Entertainment

Back in the early days of jet travel, TWA was the first airline to offer in-flight movies back in 1961. When I started flying as a flight engineer in the 707's in the late 60's the 16 mm films were still the state-of-the-art for in-flight entertainment. By today's standard this was crude, but it did keep the passengers occupied on long flights. It also kept the flight engineer busy since it broke a lot.
 
The 707's had the projectors mounted up in the ceiling of each of the three zones. One up in first class, and the mid and aft zones. Each of these projectors was a pull-down version which was hinged at the front and had two hefty clips to keep it from falling down. There was also a safety cable which had to be un-hooked before the unit would fall more than an inch or two. There was a small control panel on the flight engineers station in the cockpit labeled FWD MID AFT. Each zone was controlled from this panel. There were two sets of lights a green and amber light. Green was good, it meant the movie was working normally. Amber told you something was wrong, not what was wrong. We depended on the cabin staff to keep us informed if something went wrong.

The purser would give the cockpit a call and tell us they were ready for the movies. The captain would then make a short announcement  for weather, ETA, etc. then the F/E would start the show. Usually, if the green light stayed on after a few minutes it would continue to do fine. This was not always the case!

One time during an ocean crossing the purser called me to say something was wrong with the movie in the AFT zone. I looked at the lights and they were all green. Well, I took my trusty tool bag and headed aft to see what was happening. First class was looking fine as was the MID zone. When I arrived at the AFT zone and looked at the screen I noticed there was some picture, but it was very dim and blurred.  As I went to the projector and started to un-latch the cover I could hear the projector was running. When I opened the second latch and started to drop the projector out of the ceiling hundreds of feet of movie film flew out of the compartment.

What had happened was the film broke after it had gone through the projector but before the take-up reel. This had been going on for some time as the film flew out all over the passengers in the area.

I can tell you that I got pretty good at fixing the in-flight entertainment systems, but this was a new problem. There was a small control panel at the projector, so I stopped the unit and thought about how to fix the problem. All the passengers were amused at the situation, but one boy was laughing pretty hard at my dilemma. I decided to put the laugh-er to work by enlisting his help. These reels were big 30 inch reels and heavy. I needed to collect all the film without doing any damage to the lot. I took a screw driver out of my tool bag and stood the young boy out in the isle to hold the screw driver as an axle through the middle of the take-up reel.  

After carefully going through the hundreds of feet of film I found the break. In my tool bag I carried all kinds of tape and a small splicing kit that I was able to glean from one of the movie service people for just this kind of event. I placed the beginning end of the 16 mm film on the take-up reel  and with the help of the boy was able to slowly start to wind the long piece of film onto the reel. It took a few minutes, but soon we had the bulk of the film back on the reel. When I got to the break I spliced the film and then re-wound the movie back to the beginning by hand. Now I was able to re-thread the film and re-start the film from the beginning. I don't remember the exact weight of the loaded reel, but it was pretty heavy. Once all the parts were back in place I closed up the unit and was made" Hero of  the AFT Cabin" by the passengers, but more importantly by the cabin crew.

Today, the in-seat video screen has replaced all this nonsense of large projectors and big reels of film. This is not to say it always works, but almost always works. Now we've gone from one in-flight movie per flight to hundreds of choices.

Lou

Another F/E story...


In my last story, I described fixing an old type entertainment 16 mm film on the 707 of the sixties. Well, that also brought to mind the 8-track type music system on the old 707's. These were of course leading edge back in the day. Today we just smile and enjoy almost endless types of media in-flight. The flight in question was a charter flight from Hartford Connecticut in the northeast USA to Paris. The flight was filled with a large group of young teens from a Catholic school in the Hartford area. Their chaperons were about a half-dozen nuns.

Well  wouldn't you know it, some dimwit in JFK loaded the plane with an "R" rated movie. The nuns would have NO part of that I can tell you. OK, so we had the 15 channels of music, so that should hold them. Soon after we got to cruise, the Purser came to the cockpit to tell us that almost ALL the music channels were NOT working, and would we write it up in the log to get fixed.  

Wow, an eight hour flight with no entertainment - movie or music!

I was the F/E as you may recall, and I told the Captain I thought I could fix the sound system. The Purser said that no others were able, in the past, to get the system working once in flight. I said, "that's because it will require a bit of work."  The Captain said "if you think you can get it to work, have at it."

Well, if you own the CS 707, you will recall it has 7 fuel tanks and that makes for a busy F/E during most of the trip keeping the tanks in balance. I carried with me a small key-chain timer. I would calculate the burn and set the timer to go off and remind me to check the fuel panel.  It worked very well and I almost never had to let it ring since most of the time I was sitting at the panel, watching the fuel.

On many of my "walk-arounds" I would see the ground folks loading the tapes into the entertainment bin in the forward cargo compartment. If you remember the old 8-track cassettes, these were like them but about 18 inches long and wider as well.  It was an OK place to put the tapes until the baggage smashers would hurl the bags into the compartment and bang into the entertainment unit.

I set-up the fuel cross feed and set the timer. I told the Captain I would be back in a few minutes. I opened the hatch in the floor just behind the Captain's seat and crawled down into the "lower 41."

I wonder if I could fit into that little tunnel leading into the electronics area, today!  

The lower 41 is fairly small, with racks of radios and gyros' all over the place and the nose wheel well right smack in the middle. In the 707 the F/E had to descent into the lower 41 to lock the nose wheel if they were extended manually. Pretty archaic and time consuming.

When I reached the aft part of the lower 41 area where the small door into the forward baggage compartment was I looked through the viewing port and could see the bag smashers had piled up a bunch of bags against the door. I un-latched the three locks on the access door into the cargo compartment and pushed the door. It would only move a few inches. Drat! This was going to be hard to access. I was able to get one arm into the edge of the compartment and push a bag aside. After repeating that many more times I finally moved enough bags to get the door fully open. This is a very small door and I had to squeeze sideways to get into the cargo compartment.

Now I had to move more bags that were in front of the entertainment bin so as to access the tapes. Using my trusty screw driver I was able to turn the quarter-turn DZUS fasteners that held the cover in place. The bin was indeed full of tapes, so I pulled each tape out of its slot and re-set them. There was no indication of whether the system was working or not, so after re-seating the last tape, I closed the bin and exited the cargo compartment. After latching the access door I climbed out of the lower 41 back into the cockpit.

The pilots were very happy to see me since I forgot to tell them that the FORWARD CARGO light would illuminate when I opened the small door between the lower 41 & the cargo compartment and they wondered if I was with the fishes.  Aslo, the fuel alarm reminder I set had just gone off and scared the hell out of them!  

I called to the cabin and asked them to check the sound system....IT WORKED! Yea!

They all promised to buy me a drink on the layover!!!  

Yeah! Keep them coming Lou. 

LOU wrote on Jun 5^th, 2014 at 7:50pm:

You politely smile and accept all the free beers heading your way. 

Oh and this...

Great videos, tks for posting

Jay, I got it recorded and will look at it soon.

Lou

This is why we use concrete for runways and ramp areas....

The engineer who signed off on the construction of the ramp at Pakistan's Sialkot International Airport likely has some explaining to do after a Shaheen Air International Boeing 737-400 rearranged it some during a routine engine test.


http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/737-Damaged-By-Ramp-Bricks222245-1.html

https://www.facebook.com/AME.World/posts/10152248845712798

http://www.avweb.com/gallery/Photo-Gallery-Engine-Test-Tears-Apart-Runway-222259...

That's the first thing I wondered too Lou. I guess Scarebus didn't automate that yet