AMH bought the Al II exclusively for film work. Aerial Camera Systems - the late Peter Allwork - had recently moved to Fairoaks and it looked like there would be a fair bit of film work coming in.
The Al II was chosen for a number of reasons - large flat floor, large door opening, it could fly as fast sideways as it could forwards - and there were several approved mods for various camera installations in existence.
I spent many a happy day with FILM bodging it up on locations around the place - P2 air switch intermittent so starting the engine with a paper clip, bleeding the oleos before first flight every day, regularly removing the m/r dampers to self-bleed overnight, etc....
One memorable occasion was at Butlers Wharf on the Thames during filming for 'The Professionals' (
). One of the m/r dampers had lost most of its oil on the previous 10 minute sortie (it happened from time to time, never worked out where it went - no sign of oil anywhere on the blades, etc). I got someone to get me a syringe or something to nick some oil out of the hyd reservoir as a get-you-home fix. He came back having visited the local chemist shop with an enema pump thing which worked a treat.
All of the above snags were permanently fixed prior to going to Yugoslavia for the film mentioned above, and it ran like a sewing machine. We were often told that it was the smoothest Al II that anyone had ever flown in.
.... (and the Jack) on the nose
I put that on the day before it left Fairoaks by road for Yug.