8mm Forum: GS 1200 2400ft Reelporter

This is topic GS 1200 2400ft Reelporter in forum 8mm Forum at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Steve Carter (Member # 4821) on June 15, 2015, 08:49 AM:

I've never seen this before;
web page GS reelporter

Posted by Joel Whybrow (Member # 1377) on June 15, 2015, 09:53 AM:

It was a recent invention, though there was debate as to wether the motor and gearing in the GS was up to the task of pulling the extra weight.

I think most decided to err on the side of caution given the age of these machines and how difficult it'd be to replace parts should this contraption cause a failure. I think it was pretty expensive too.

Shame really as it'd have been great to run a whole movie on one machine (give or take) but he's not selling them anymore as far as I know. Who knows it may not affect the machine at all in practice. Probably not worth the risk anyway.

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on June 15, 2015, 05:26 PM:

Great music however to accompany the advertising video.

Try a Beaulieu 2 Blade for playback purposes of full features Joel.. You'll never look back!

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on June 15, 2015, 06:22 PM:

It looks nicely made, however years ago a South African film collector made one that used an old "micro-wave" motor as take-up. If the take-up was driven by a separate motor then he would be onto a winner.

For myself I made up this attachment for my GS1200 out of all kinds of bits and pieces long ago [Roll Eyes]

...about 3hrs worth of film non-stop [Cool]

However I don't use it anymore... might one day just for fun [Wink]

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on June 15, 2015, 06:24 PM:

Why did you stop using it Graham?

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on June 16, 2015, 12:22 AM:

Video projection [Big Grin]

...just kidding, these days I am quite happy to have the 8mm features on either 1200ft or 800ft reels. I used the long play a lot more when I was putting on a film show for others, prior to the days of video projection of features.

One such film shown in this old photo, was "Great Expectations" 1946. The thing with this film, you really did not want breaks as this would to certain extent spoil the flow of the story. Also as in this case I added some shorts on the front so all up its quite long.

The GS1200 is only really up to running a max of 1200ft of film. The take up motor is dinky toy stuff "I pulled one apart" its just not up to it, especially at the present age of those machines.

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on June 16, 2015, 03:43 AM:

You are absolutely correct Graham regarding the size of the motors used for the GS rewind and take up arms.
At the end of the day, the Elmo was the only machine to ever use separate motors to transport the film so praise should be given for that alone. Obviously the design team knew the specification was 1200ft therefore they fitted just about the correct motors for doing that job with little extra Power and torque to spare.
The reelporter looks a fantastic device but in reality it needed its own separate motor(s) building into it for it to have been a complete success.

I still enjoy watching my features in one run where possible but I do store my films in either their original boxes or on 1200ft and 800ft reels and boxes wherever possible.
Simply because this is the sizes I have library boxes for and can therefore give them all decent artwork.

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