Kodak Pagaent 8k5

[Nick Casey]

Hi Everyone I am new to the forum, I am a Star Trek Fan. My daughter for my birthday last year found and bought me a 16mm with optical audio reel of Star Trek The Original Series Bloopers from the second season. I searched high and low for a projector. I bought a Kodak Pagaent 8k5 the worked except for audio.. I tracked down a bulb at Optech in Andover Mass. Got it working!!!! then it stopped. I am looking for assistance, a manual and possibly someone near Saratoga Springs NY to assist in getting it up and running. It may be used for a live william shatner event and i need to make sure its ready. any help would be appreciated. I have two other fims i just ordered today from optech so i can play with it without ruining the blooper reel. Thanks to all of you in advance.
Santa Nick

[Steve Klare]

Hi Nick,

I'm a Pageant fan myself! Having one at the house, I can pretend I'm in High School Biology and the teacher just doesn't feel like working at the blackboard today!

These kind folks have provided a Pageant 8k5 manual as a .pdf.

Kodak Pageant 8K5 Manual

I would imagine you could save it or print it out if you wanted. (-be careful of unknown files, of course...)

The Pageant is a beast! I can't imagine either damaging it or wearing it out. (Let's hope not: at least for now it's the only 16mm machine I have!)

My best advice for dealing with these is make sure those two sprocket clamps are both closed before you start the film moving. They are too easy to forget and OH! -the Mayhem when you do! It's just kindness to your films to stop everything, review your threading in general and make sure these are closed. (It's a little like a pre-flight check.)

Say! When I was a little kid we used to vacation upstate in the Lake Champlain Country: we went to North Pole, NY a couple of times. Do you have anything to do with that?

Best of luck with your event!

[Douglas Meltzer]

Nick,

Welcome to the Forum. The Film-Tech Warehouse site has the operator manual for your projector here.

I see Steve got here first!

[Steve Klare]

Hmmm!!!!

-you'd think I'd check that first!

My Pageant is a 250S, a much later machine (-actually the latest and the last of the Pageants). There are differences of course: for example: mine has a transistorized sound circuit, a more modern projection lamp and the take-up reel high and rearward instead of low and forward, but the fundamentals are very similar. (I could identify this as a Pageant just by touch if I had to!) They basically figured out what was workable and as much as they could left it that way.

[Nick Casey]

Hi Guys thanks for getting back to me on this and thanks for the manual.. Though i did see something about a Vacuum tube as well. I was talking to the guys at OPTECH in Andover mass (Bulbs and parts as well as repairs.) Bought a couple films from them so i wouldnt ruin my Start Trek on .... I did a test and still no exciterbulb working... I just checked continuity on the exciter bulb that i replaced and the bulb is good. Not sure where to go next.


The North Pole NY park is one that is very old at this point. I have been as a child in the 80s. If i won that BIG powerball that happened a bit ago I was going to buy it... refurb the old stuff there to make it look new and ad new attractions... THEN build one in Tennesee So i could visit! LOL

[Steve Klare]

Hi Nick,

as I remember it, the exciter lamp lights up as soon as the power-switch in "on".

Somehow or other, the volts (6???) are not getting through to that lamp. What you need to be happening is just for the socket contacts to be oxidized. It's possible that a little attention with a pencil eraser will brighten them up and put you in business.

-other than that, I'm guessing it's pretty simple: probably just two wires running up to a 6V secondary winding on the main transformer.


Do you remember Frontier Town?

If there is still the ruins of a post office there, five year old me is probably still on a wanted poster on the wall. You see, we were staying at a summer camp on Schroon Lake and Mom and Dad decided they should do something "fun for the kids", so we went over to Frontier Town for the afternoon.

There we were riding the little narrow gauge train into town when all of a sudden the engineer applied those brakes hard!

-we were being robbed!

This bad looking hombre in a black hat and bandana mask (-some college student with a summer job...) confronts headed-for-first-grade me, and points a shootin' arnn right at me. I sized up the means of self-defense I had on-hand and I formulated a plan worthy of a five-year-old:

-I spat on him!

Tharr we wuzz, Mano a Mano: I, 4 feet tall with a defiant sneer, and he, maybe 6 feet with a shocked expression (just the eyes: he was still masked) and this rather impressive glob of saliva trailing down the front of his shirt! -gun dangling down next to his hip...

He looked at me, and Mom and Dad, then kind of shrugged defeat and headed for the stairs, hoping he could find a clean shirt before the next train. (-he could'a gotten a summer job at the car wash, but noooooo.....)

-and we never went there again!

If we two were 5 and let's say 20 that 1967 day, we are today 62 and 77. Some days when he's sitting out on his porch with a scotch and his memories, he probably takes a sip and then remembers the "little bastard on the train", and unless he switched over to the gift shop after that, he probably remembers several!

For my own self, I hope that if anybody ever points a revolver my way again, I just give 'em my wallet on NOT spit on them! (-the odds are this can't work out in my favor very many times!)

[Nick Casey]

Steve!

How could I forget Frontier town!!!???? I loved that place The ride there and everything was fantastic. The stagecoach the saloon and the sherriff and robbers... was so much fun!

[Nick Casey]

Steve

There is an amp i beleive. It has some vacuum tubes i havent pulled it completely apart to look at the schematics. it has been a long time since i troubleshot anything electric not sure if i remember..

[Steve Klare]

Hi Nick,

If I understand you correctly, you had a functional exciter lamp in the machine and then it went out. If this is so then you lack a signal source, and until you get one back the health of the Amp isn't the big issue.

I've never worked on tubes after high school electronics class, other than popping the back off an ancient B&W TV, seeing a tube with the envelope broken, getting a new one from Radio Shack and popping it in.
(Easiest troubleshooting I've ever done! -Voilà!!!)

From what I've heard, they are still not hard to find as new, and not too hard to troubleshoot. Sometimes it comes down to looking for a cloudy envelope, or seeing one that doesn't heat up. There are also testers available: I bet eBay has a ton of them!

There could also be a dead capacitor or failed resistor. (Time is not very kind!)

-so maybe a year ago I was dragged Upstate to attend the wedding of a daughter of a friend-in-law. (I was basically there to fill a suit!) Near Lake George we found THIS place!
.

I thought for a while I'd returned to the scene of my crime! (It WAS self-defense....sort of!) On further research, it turns out this was nowhere near the real thing and was basically just somebody borrowing the name.

-I half expected to be confronted by an 85 year old man with a black hat and a six-gun! "This-Here town 'aint big enough for the two of us!"

(I'm too...mature to spit on that guy again! He's too...mature to be spat upon!)

[Nick Casey]

Hi Steve, yes the lamp is still good as well i checked continuity. I have a friend with a vacuum tube tester. I am going to have him give it a go and see whats what... then go from there....

That IS the original sign from the park... it is on a gift store now in lake george like you pictured...

[Steve Klare]

That’s good: quite often it comes down to going through the tubes and finding the bad one(s). The joy of these circuits is they are friendly to being repaired. (They were too expensive to be “disposable” like a great amount of modern devices.)

I like your part of New York State: I’ve had a lot of good times there!

[Nick Casey]

I am happy for that. I am very hopeful that the tubes fix it. The Star Trek Original Series Tour is in Ticonderoga NY. I will be Volunteering there when William Shatner is in Town. I have been told that If i get it up and running I could possibly be showing the blooper reeel on the Bridge fo the Enterprise, With William Shatner in attendance..

By the way... thinking of how these work is there a way to wire two speakers to it. Even temporarilly?

[Steve Klare]

You could connect the photo-cell to speakers, but you'd need some kind of amplifier in-between, possibly including a pre-amp. I've heard of people doing this too. A signal like this applied directly to a speaker wouldn't even be a whisper.

Now, when I heard "William Shatner" and "Northeastern New York", I started thinking about that Enterprise Bridge set. (Among the last words of James T. Kirk: "Sounds like Fun!")

Thinking about Ticonderoga makes me think back to right around the same time I soaked that Gun-Slinger, we went over to Fort Ticonderoga and of course they had to fire a couple of volleys from the big guns. I have never liked loud noises, so five year old me...escaped from my family! Given this and my solo journey into the World's Fair the summer before makes me seem like kind of a challenging child!

(-I'm glad I didn't have to raise me!)