Trying to make a GTE Airfone operational
 

First, apologies if this is the wrong forum - I wasn't sure about this one...

I picked up a set of F seats from eBay that came out of an old Continental MD-80 for use in my office/screening room. They're in really nice shape, and they still have the old GTE Airfones in the back of the seats. I know it was a satellite calling system when it was actually in use, but they also have regular old telephone jacks on them (I assume for servicing and testing). Simply plugging them into my home phone line doesn't work of course, but I'm wondering if anyone has any sort of knowledge about these systems and if my plan to make them into a usable "house phone" is feasible. I imagine they also need some sort of power source at the least, but I'm having trouble finding any sort of technical info online about them.
Any info or direction is appreciated very much!!

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ab2c65c988.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...673609eee1.jpg

You have to swipe your credit card before it will w:prk.

Can you take some photos of the connectors? Is there anything other than the RJ11?

It actually was a ground based system using low frequency and a surprisingly small number of base stations. Some widebodies had satellite equipped phones but all domestic stuff was routed to the ground. Interestingly, this ground based network is the same system that GoGo is running on.

Im pretty sure the RJ-11 was for a dial up modem.

When Verizon acquired GTE they’ got creative and enabled calling for Verizon customers for something incredibly cheap like 10 cents a minute.

This is all I can find, short of tearing the whole seat apart. As you can see, there's nothing immediately behind the phone holder

https://imgur.com/a/10dxL

You can always hold it to your ear and pretend you're waiting for a CSR to answer during a blizzard at Chicago.

CO had MD-80's?

But, to directly answer your question.... I can't even see where anyone has attempted it.

If your feeling adventurous, open it up and lets see what we need to solder! At worst.... it can basically be used as a headset only.

From the looks of it you're missing the actual communications module. Think of this as just the handset end of a cordless phone, without the base station, except it's connected by a 4-wire, which presumably includes power and data. The base station would presumably handle the billing and dialing (plus maybe the box for communicating with the ground-based receivers).

Your best bet might be to see if you could hollow out the handset in part and put in some other phone parts - perhaps an old princess phone would be suitable?

Well, that what the seller told me. He said he was friends with an ex-executive there, and when they did re-fits, he asked for some. He has/had another set of F seats as well as a set of J when I picked mine up. So I'm just repeating what was told to me!

@drewguy That would make sense to have all the calls routed to a central "base station" rather than in-seat.

Your suggestion may be the most reasonable option.

Lots of them in the late 80s. I can remember a hop LAX-ELP-IAH.

I can remember GTE Airfone, too, but nothing of use to the OP in his current task.

Your only option here will be to hollow out the inside and put in "regular" phone guts.

The RJ-11 was for connecting a modem, not for plugging in a telephone line. The intelligence was all in a module in the belly of the plane.

I'm going to move this to our Travel Technnology forum as you might find more assistance there.

l'etoile
UA moderator

deleted

Found this on Ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/MagnaStar-C...4383.l4275.c10


Can you hear me now?

@cyborg - that's cool! thanks!
@birdiedouble - oh jeez - good find!

Cool idea to put those seats in your house!