Most things in life are never perfect.
If you're successful, they're sort of half
perfect and the best you can hope for.
But with a jetliner home, there's precious
little disadvantage.
I never really perceive any downside.
That said, it's a salvage jetliner.
It was hardly the perfect execution.
Hi. Welcome to my airplane home.
My name is Bruce Campbell. I am 73 years
old and I live in a Boeing 727 jetliner in
Hillsboro, a suburb area of Portland, Oregon.
I'm an electrical engineer. I'm a classic
nerd. I'm a circuit design engineer.
I no longer work for income, but I'm as active
as ever as best I can judge.
A jetliner home is a different kind of
environment. It's a very strong, very long lived,
sealed pressure canister.
The design and elegance of the structure is just
heads and tails above any conventional home I'm
familiar with. And when you live in a structure
like this, you feel a little more dignified,
you feel a little more fulfilled with your life.
And if you're an engineer or a scientist
or anyone who appreciates the elegance
and beauty of aerospace technology, it's just a
happier place to live.
This is a futon sofa and it folds flat company and
an electric blanket on top. Don't know if I'd be
alive right now if it weren't for the electric
blanket.
That's just a simple futon sofa, but it serves
as my bed and also especially during the
winter, my working surface, because it's
warm and most of my real work is simply on the
laptop. This is a Faraday cage.
Radio signals don't penetrate aircraft well,
so currently I just have a cell phone which leans
up against one of the cabin windows, one of the
polycarbonate windows, which is radio
transparent and receives an adequate, though not
perfect signal. And hopefully at some time in
the near future, I'll be able to acquire an actual
Wi-Fi signal from Hillsboro, which provides
a free Wi-Fi service.
She understands my love of the vision, but it's
not really her take on a home environment.
However, it's no problem, of course.
Those sorts of differences are what
makes relationships so rich.
This is my primitive shower and it's only
partially fabricated because in earlier days I
needed an indoor shower, but I had much higher
priorities. However, the outdoor shower was so
harsh that I had to establish at least some
place where I could take an indoor shower.
Here's a guest lavatory.
My lavatory is a temporary sink.
And a clothes washer.
Kitchen area.
Not much of a kitchen.
I'm a nerd. I don't cook.
727 food service cart, which serves as my
pantry. The microwave oven and the toaster oven
are sufficient, and in fact, I almost never use
the toaster oven. It's almost always the
microwave oven. That's my fridge, which is
getting a little sparse so I'll have to make a
trip into town and load up again.
When I was a kid of perhaps about 15, my
family and I were watching the news.
They showed file footage of one of the Bowen
Yards. At that time of my life, I had no idea
such places existed.
It was amazing to me.
There were aircraft parked, wingtip to
fuselage as tightly as they could pack them for
as far as the eye could see.
My jaw dropped and I thought, "Oh my God,
that's incredible.
There are thousands of them and they're just
sitting there.
Why can't I have one?" Shortly after graduating
from college, I purchased this real
estate property, the ten acres of land which my
aircraft resides upon.
And I paid the mortgage off quickly.
These are circuit breaker panels and many are still
active.
For example, this is dome red.
Once I break the circuit breaker and we lose dome
red.
That was a big mistake.
That was a whopper class mistake.
I'll never do that again.
Salvage companies are wreckers.
I highly recommend just buying a jetliner
completely intact and completely functional,
except maybe removal of the engines.
That was a mistake too.
Their choice was not optimum.
But it is a passenger jetliner.
However, it has a little history.
It's also the very last flight for the owner of
the airline, Aristotle Onassis, who, as everyone
knows, was married to Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis after the Kennedy assassination.
And so, what you see in the forward galley now is
Aristotle's ghost.
This aircraft was all tourist class.
There was no business class, no first class.
It was tourist from flight deck all the way
to the tail.
And so the few seats I've retained are tourist
class seats because that's all she had.
I didn't finance anything. I don't think I
could have. I don't think anybody can.
The jetliner flew from Greece to Hillsboro
Airport. That's about 20 kilometers from here.
The engines and APU and and many other elements
were removed at the Hillsboro Fair Complex
and shall never fly again.
This is an image of the aircraft during
transport.
We started at midnight from the Hillsboro Fair
Complex and then weaved our way through downtown
Hillsboro with just literally centimeters to
spare. But everything went smoothly.
First time here. Oh, okay.
How do I say hello in Italian?
I forget. Ciao.
Oh, of course, ciao. Okay everyone, slippers
and roam around anywhere.
And let me introduce you to some friends as well.
This is Naomi-San, Naoka-San, Junko-Chan,
Kaori-Chan. Over there Taca-Kun and Sai-Chan.
I think Sai-Chan is displaced for the moment.
My friends are trying to warn you that the seats
are not currently secured in their tracks.
And they have no outer legs.
So if you sit in an outer seat like my
friends are, the row will flip.
My guests, fulfill my life in very great
measure, and I love them dearly.
They're like family.
Nerd cave.
This is currently a work area for a variety of
projects, some of which are simply recreational
in the form of restoration of old
computer systems, primarily Apple products,
but also projects associated with the
aircraft. For example, restoration of
illumination systems and a thermal wall so as to
be able to separate the aft section from the
forward section so that during the winter months
I can retain a little bit more heat in the aft
section. It's still very cold.
You've seen this motion.
The two forward wing exits are here.
I use the right one a lot because I'm often
interested in working or socializing on the wing.
This is to keep velociraptors out.
One overhead compartment, which comes from another
aircraft. I have two more.
I'm eager to mount these, but this aircraft
was not designed with mounting structure for
the overhead compartments. Observer,
Inspector, Captain.
The sole authority for the flight.
This person may bark out orders to any of the rest
and they must obey.
First officer and flight engineer, and the flight
engineer station is now obsolete.
Aircraft are much more refined and automated,
and this position simply isn't necessary anymore.
And the main entrance door is there.
It's the largest access door in the aircraft.
The first step is a big one.
This is the main landing gear and main landing
gear strut and gets inflated to very roughly,
1,200 PSI.
Only about 800 PSI is necessary to support the
aircraft. The rest is excess.
My temporary left landing gear support structure
was rotting, so I needed to support the aircraft
in such a way that I could levitate the left
landing gear, remove all the old material.
I put a lot of it back in, but I restructured it
in such a way that the rotting elements were in
the outside or discarded.
And rebuilt the structure. It's good
physical work.
It's also dangerous.
You must be very careful because basically you're
lifting and lowering a house and if you make a
mistake, it can kill you.
I have no regrets about pursuing this vision.
It's fun. Jetliner homes are really cool, and in
my experience with my guests, I do believe that
humanity will embrace this vision
wholeheartedly in enough proportion that we can
utilize every jetliner which retires from
service. The most awkward element of my
life right now is that this jetliner, which I
adore, is in the wrong country.
It's the wrong place for me.
My dearest friends and loved ones are in Japan.
I want to live in Japan or share time between
Japan and New Zealand.
My challenge is to execute a second project
and then hopefully a third one and then
hopefully a fourth and a fifth and sixth and the
99th and the 999th and so on.
And of course version two is for Japan, and
it's intended to put a home, which I love, in a
land I love, with the people I love.
And then if I can simply regain my youth,
everything will be fine.