In the story, the owners of the Waynesville Drive-In dont have enough people employed there to get the place open. I have never met these people. They are an old couple. She has a huge beehive-type hair-do.

I am thinking of riding the 35 miles out there and see what they are trying to do over the weekend.

Suggest that they ask for volunteers from the community (local high school?). They could even put a message asking for help on the marquee.

See if they have a tube amplifier for the speakers.

I wanted to have a look at the equipment, but they have metal doors over the ports.

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I conneced with the owners of the theater today, and got the grand tour. They are running 6000' reels on a pair of Simplex XL's with Strong 60-B 4000 watt xenon, with the original Ballantyne sound system and amplifiers feeding the 15 rows of speakers.

The scope lenses are B&L with red rings. Unknown prime lenses.

Everything is glorious MONO, including the FM sound from Radio Shack.

About half of the window speakers are bad because he cant find 4" replacements anymore. Many of the speakers (mostly Eprad) have been stolen over the years, but the screen is in good shape, the lamps are new, and the sound optics are clean.

Radio sound is decent. We fired up a reel of something that is used for testing. My car stereo sounded good.

The reason that they did not open last weekend is because the entire consession staff quit, following the lead of one girl.

I am now the relief projectionist there. I am also going to attempt to find the cause of the slight hum in the Ballantyne amp.

HEY KEN!!! ITS ALL TUBES!!! HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY!!!!

One good thing is that I have many of the tubes that the system uses on hand!!!

I'm gonna have fun this summer.

Hum in the sound? Do the speaker junction boxes have lights in them? If so, try turning off the lights and see if the hum goes away. If it does, then you have bad wiring in the field (light circuit is leaking to ground) or a lamp socket wire touching something it shouldn't inside one of the junction boxes. If the hum is still there after isolating the lamp circuit, then check to see if the Radio Shack FM transmitter could be the cause by removing it from the circuit. If it's still there after all that, then check the amplifier power supply (rectifier tubes and filter caps).
We have mostly Eprad speakers and ALL Eprad "Glo-Top" lighted juntion boxes at the Skyline. I just got finished installing and repairing 100 speakers with parts I got from SPECO (Systems & Products Engineering Company). For the replacement 4" cones order # 9137-C and SPECIFY YOU WANT THE LONG HOLD DOWN SPRINGS WITH THEM TO USE ON EPRAD SPEAKERS.
Here is drivein speaker parts suppliers:
Speco
1-800-633-5913
(913) 321-3978
fax:913-321-7439

Projected Sound
(317) 839-4111
fax: 317-839-2476

Reed Speaker Mfg
(520) 453-0055
(805) 934-1582
fax: 805-934-4992
Ask for Shawn Gran and yes those 2 different area codes are correct!

I wish I could come out and help you at the drivein. We could have a real blast!

Keep posting updates. How many posts to a row on an average? What's the population it services?

I was telling him about polyester film. He said that film is film to him.

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Somebody contacted me once about this theatre you speak of, heard I was a drive-in
"expert". Well, I'm a real fan for sure, and
I tried to refer her to some people who could help. I'm sure glad to hear that it will survive. You guys will have a lot of fun with it. Thanks for allowing me to participate in your forum.

I "Mis-Spoke" the number of rows. I believe it is more like 8 rows. When I go back, I will do a complete count of posts. There are several rows that dont work. On looking, its probably just the bad flex cables on the speakers. Some are rotton. Mr CLARK, the owner, said that most people anymore just use the radio sound. BUT I will fix any speakers that I can, after I give him the list of numbers that you sent me, Ken, here at Film-Tech.