Lockheed Constellation - Walkaround & Interior Tour

okay Carly weeks here fantasy of flight leaving my office and I'm gonna go do a quick little kermy cam for the viewers they have asked that we do something on the conic so let me go see what I can put together I have not been in this thing in forever so let's see what over there the guys have gotten me up a ladder hopefully figured out how to open the door and anyway at some point this thing is going to be a display at act 3 we hope I think it's flying days [Music] heading up to Connie over here by the Museum [Music] all right how sue oh we got here [Music] so oh my god this thing if you notice we've got the from the last hurricane that went through we went it had put some wing spoilers up there strapped them around they look like they need to be tightened up because it's basically the beginning of hurricane season next month and oh my god this thing needs a little bit of TLC no question and we're gonna do a lot of work on it at some point it's interesting how this whole thing came about maurice Roundy thank God he had the passion and the interest and the wherewithal at the time although limited to save three Connie's they're all 1649 star liners which was the last and the ultimate deal they didn't have the wing tips out on them the wing tip tanks but basically you know I guess they put all the fuel in the wings and stuff and you know basically this was the third one that he was getting anywhere ferrying it from Fort Lauderdale up to Maine which is where they had a Harbor and me and I believe and the other two were already up there and he was basically taking him up there and he they had like a double engine failure they had one thing some one thing led to another anyway so they detoured they landed at Sanford and that's where the airplane sat forever I didn't really even know was up there Maurice came to me he was living in the in central floor at the time you know said hey karma you know I'm paying tie-down over here it's behind the airport fence and nobody can see the airplane you know you got your museum over there is there a chance if you give me a little bit of seed money you know to kind of get this thing going we'll fly over to fantasy a flight you know the people can see the airplane there wouldn't you know you don't charge me anything so we did that and there's a there's a video out there and when we brought the airplane over I taxed it around a little bit Frank Lange who was a Connie pilot at the time he used to fly my friends of burn ray burns airplane out in Tucson and you know the airplane flew over on a ferry permit it was a gear down ferry he didn't have any problems except the first time they made the the approach they couldn't get flaps down they had to go around had the hand pump him down or something like that anyway they came in landed fine you know the airplanes I've been sitting here ever since something told me this was going to be a cockroach hotel the airplane was going to get in but it wasn't going to go out and so we had a five-year deal which in due time ended up you know the five years aid itself up and then we just kind of just on a handshake deal so you know Maurice had been a great guy the airplane had some interest you know people walked around and looked at it and basically what happened was Maurice got into a little bit of a you know financial trouble or whatever and ultimately the airplanes all three of them and whatever spares he had went up for auction on the courthouse steps while prior to that Carlos Gomez down in Miami that just moved the one out to the JFK Airport you know at Idlewild there's gonna be a little kind of a addition to a hotel there where people who win have a little cocktail but it's pretty cool and anyway so there was three of these things and prior to that Carlos was interested using them for Freight this is a frayed airplane there's no there's no interior and basically what happened was the look there was some luke taunts of potential people that had an interest and there I think started a little not-for-profit or something I can't remember but anyway the bottom line is they were interested but they were concerned that what were they gonna do with this airplane they actually had an interest if they did they ultimately were the the the highest bidders and and prior to the auction we actually had signed an agreement that if they basically ended up with the airplanes even though they wanted to get this one flying they'd already done some research and looking at it they thought this one had a little bit too much corrosion or the other one was a better in better shape that was already up in Auburn the more complete one and they gave whether they could take all the air worthy parts off this because we had engines that had flown in on it the props all that stuff they would take all the air where the spare parts off of this airplane to support the other airplane and basically replace any parts that had been air worthy would on air worthy parts so the airplane basically looked like you know you know a pretty nice airplane sitting on the ramp they would give me the title of the airplane let me tell you something with the cost that I paid Maurice too for the fuel some oil a little bit of parts you need it in every way I hate to tell you this constellation cost me $12,000 so anyway good for a Kermit and hopefully we'll do something pretty cool with it down the road okay as you can see it needs a lot of TLC every time they painted this thing they were putting some kind of a you know the blue and the yellow is some kind of I don't know cheap house paint or something we have never put a paint job on it Maurice had done it while the airplane was being you know on display here and you know just see it's faded the the silver paints pretty good you know so I'm not I'm not too worried about you know any external corrosion at this point of course this this particular constellation with the 33 50s had PRTs and there was a couple of power recovery turbines that would actually as the exhaust came out it would spin like a kind of a not a compressor but a turbine and would you know be directly shafted back into the engine and create you know take horsepower that was lost and actually you know put it back into the engine you see the ropes here where we've got the got the I'm sure this thing doesn't even turn no that is locked up I don't think it's because it's got a oil on it a little bit of corrosion there this thing just needs to be like really cleaned up it's not been a focus of ours he's a good wash when it was out also too you know I haven't done it in a couple of years but I need to again we would go through and we would spray corrosion X on the inside of it you know to keep any kind of corrosion from getting started of course the tires need some air but what we did a while back is we actually poured some concrete slabs because you know this thing in a hurricane we don't want this thing leaving the ground and we basically created some I thought we doesn't look like we did anyway oh here oh this thing somehow freaking rolled I can't remember no this way we had it tied down anyway we were in the process well we never finished doing it now that I see it anyway we were going to put this thing up here we're gonna jack it up to get it up off the deal I guess we never got around to finishing that so that's good I need to sort that out we need to fix all these tie-down straps here a few dings and dents here probably had a little scream that went over it somebody's busted the light there of course that probably didn't necessarily got hit it probably just deteriorated from just being too old of course everybody knows how the triple Connie tail came into being and originally I think the prototype had a single tail but the problem was it wouldn't fit in any of the hangers of the day so they went back to the drawing board and came up with his triple tail which made it the you know the iconic you know airplane of the day and looks you see we've had birds up there there's some corrosion on the leading edge up there they had birds nests and there of course you know so we cleaned all that out and make sure we don't any bird crap in there because that helps cause corrosion when act 3 basically really kind of gets going we're gonna start we're gonna probably pull all this off and we're gonna set this thing up to preserve the heck out of it for a very long time of course we got to recover the rudders and just the rudders our fabric everything else I think is pretty much pretty much metallized the elevators and probably the rudders you know as I said before this thing is just set up as a freighter so there's no interior of course the cockpit was reasonably complete but I got to tell you when the guys came down that I did the deal with and they started taking parts off they took more parts off then they were supposed to and as you can see there's no PR T's left and a very very very sad fact is the fact that the people working on you know trying to get the one airplane flying ended up giving up after an ungodly amount of money more money than anybody spent on any freaking airplane ever in a restoration and when they they made the decision to I think take the airplane apart which means you got to break the wing apart I did that airplanes never gonna fly again I seriously doubt especially after some of the couple ease the looked the the yonkers 52 accident in switzerland there's the Breitling Connie not the Brighton Connie was a it was a kind of a group club kind of a thing of the Connie but Breitling was kind of sponsoring I believe that's all kind of gone a defunct now and they have to spend I think I read somewhere you know like 11 million dollars to fix the wing or something for their let'em flaw which you know they want to keep the public safe which is the job of the aviation departments you know so it's gonna be interesting to see what happens so anyways you can see the PRT s are missing and what happened was after the after the they made the decision to not go ahead with the airplanes they were gonna get flying the other airplane which was kind of a parts airplane became available and this gentleman that is in the hotel business had a hotel at JFK which used to be Idlewild and he said hey it would really be cool if we had a Connie there you know kind of just kind of reminisce into the old days so Carlos ended up getting the job of making that thing look like a static they came down here they did a lot of patterns here to make some fiberglass parts so there are plane look pretty good most people are gonna just walk around it on the ramp or basically you know just get in it from different positions so you know like a normal walking up the stair stairs or whatever and go in and have a nice drink inside I haven't seen the inside yet I don't know if they've actually done that yet but yeah the outside looks really great and they actually had a chance to take the the airplane not a friend of mine I've been naturist owns worldwide aircraft recovery and he got the job to actually take the airplane apart and move it down and when they did that I think they actually had the airplane on display in Times Square for a couple of days which was pretty cool it's all done and TWA Connie colors and more than likely that's probably what we're going to do with this one and of course you know got some Howard Hughes connections here was America it'd be pretty cool to honor Howard that way as well the reason this one is a little bit in kind of like looked haunts that kind of colors it's my understanding this airplane was actually the airplane that was the like the Air Force one a Germany it was the Chancellor of Germany's national airplane so pretty cool anyway just to finish the story on the PRTs when Carlos was up there working on it and the guys had pulled the plug on you know getting the other airplane flying they threw all this stuff we found it in the dumpsters Carlos had he not been there so he was pulling through the dumpsters pulling stuff out very very very sad deal shame on whoever made those decisions anyway anyway we'll get this thing looking pretty nice I have not been in this airplane thank you for inviting me to do this because I swear to God I think it's been eight years maybe since I was in this thing so here we go there's the tail okay I'm gonna go in here of course we're gonna have to find some way to make this handicap accessible man it is moist in here - its muggy yeah see actually this whole cargo door here opens you can see here's the passenger door here but there is this whole thing in this whole whole door here either hinges out on that quite sure how that works but this whole section here opens up there's the deal there oh you have got to be kidding no yeah that's right anyway one of the things that the guys also did was they were gonna like do me a favor and there we're gonna replace all the windows which were foggy which we're not gonna use anyway because we have some other plans and they took all of these special really difficult pieces that fit here and basically there's a you know the thickness here because it's all insulated you know for the pressurization and stuff and then the interior fits in here and basically what they did is they left me with these cheap-ass fiberglass pieces and I'm going well why did you all take these things off because now I can't put an interior on this airplane anyway I whined a little bit may finally sent me most of them back bolt kids off there okay as well the old windows here we go you see kind of a pressure bulkhead back there because of the you know the deal there so this is what we've got not particularly inviting and certainly not the way it was originally configured in passenger configuration got some seats here and there I'm thinking what we're gonna do see this was all laid out as a freighter and you know they would do the tie-downs there all this oil I think flew in with the airplane and nothing's rin really move this was the the application method for when they did the paint jobs before and they stripped out anything and everything that was a potential actuator a you know any of that kind of stuff and you know there's just it would be astronomical to think you'd ever get this thing flying again you know there's no corrosion or anything on the inside here I'm sure we're gonna be dealing with some little stuff here and there and I think what what makes sense it's kind of interesting it almost looks like there's a hump in the floor here that goes over the wing spars and you know I think what what what my plan to do is there's a pretty good amount of space here I think what my plan is is we're gonna set this up with some club seating and you know I don't think it's gonna actually going to be a restaurant inside but we'll find a way for you know like a bar and grill or something like that there is the possibility that you know I don't fit everybody's been to like the some of these different exhibits Harry Potter and the Train thing you know Universal Studios but you can actually take windows and do projections inside of them you know so I thought it'd be cool to possibly you know people could sit down and be air conditioned inside you know you could buy a hamburger somewhere or whatever come in and eat or maybe I maybe we sell them in here and we just keep delivering them from a from a separate kitchen or maybe we actually have a kitchen in here I don't know well we're gonna figure it out it'd be cool to sit there and kind of a Club seating environment with a table there and out the windows you're like flying over the Alps and across the ocean and New York cities off in the distance you know and it'd be kind of cool to do something like that so we um figured it out yet but at some point this is gonna be what I call a ramp route and it's just I just don't see it flying again there are another way to load in and out of here you know maybe this is our handicapped Deal or something like that but it's actually a pretty nice interior here I mean this is about as wide as a you know 7 737 or whatever jump seat would have been a radio guy up here alright let's check out the cockpit obviously we need some window work changes that looks like oh here's the flight engineer and we had a radio go back there so pretty basic actually up here you know more than likely what we'll do is we'll talk with Carlos since he's familiar with the airplanes and stuff we'll probably get him to do a lot of the interior if not everything I think my guys are gonna be focused on this would have been a radio racks for if somebody else could possibly sat back here as well I'm not sure what the configuration was but this looks like the flight engineer obviously there we go we got fuel cross feeds we got all the pitch throttles engine superchargers that looks like mixtures this looks like fuel tanks shut offs it says of course you see there so there's nothing you know there's the throttle so there's four of them circuit breakers fire extinguishing system emergency escape hatch up here and we've got engine oil blast air fuel and oh this would be like for shutting anything down probably in case of a of an engine failure or something like that it would just shut everything down I gotta tell you man it's pretty freakin basic up here this is like weig basic I don't you know this it's just like we're discs introducing and this I don't know how that works there we go that's the reverse oh they got to be back oh that's interesting yeah you can't pull the you can't reverse it up there but once it goes past a detent then it goes to reverse that's pretty cool you got elevator trim I don't know where anything is some kind of an approach deal there that's looks like nose wheel steering of course they don't trust the copilot but to be able to do that what is that this is horn release Oh control locks looks like the control locks that's kind of cool weather radar Oakland here for you so I'm sure there's probably nothing in there that needs a little work but dust that off that'll be just fine yeah I know that seats are tapped I've seen anyway whatever this is the way they left me the airplane some panels over here anyway fuel corner to fuel melt in that our fuel flows dgb manifold pressure for the four engines fuel quantities anyway so this will all gets spiffed up I'm sure we'll probably a lot of people to come up here and you know check it out if they buy a burger and then naked in Jamaica drink anyway you see how it all used to be insulated and stuff so anyway so this is going to be a pretty big job and that's basically it but you gotta admit it's not bad for $12,000 a car me cam over and out you [Music]

Channel: Kermit Weeks Channel - Over 340 Videos to See!

Views: 238,685

Keywords: Kermit Weeks, Fantasy of Flight, Connie, Lockheed Constellation, Howard Hughes, TWA, TWA Hotel, Kermie Cam, VIP Tour, Airplane Tour, Lufthansa

Id: ezDhBHIiyLM

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2019