Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who writes:
I noticed recently in an episode of the BBC series, “Death in Paradise“, a Yaesu FRG-8800 sat on a book case.
[The screenshot is] from Season 4, Episode 1 “Stab in the Dark”, with the radio off DS Camille Bordey’s right shoulder. [See image above–click to enlarge]
The Yaesu FRG-8800 (Source: Universal Radio)
So far, it has never been used. As the show is set on a fictitious Caribbean island, perhaps the props people figured a radio like that might be part of a busy island police station where seemingly someone dies every week.
I wonder what other shows people have noticed amateur radio gear in (Season 2 of 24 comes to mind, when Kim Bauer is taken in by a survivalist).
Thank you, Mark. I like how the FRG-8800 is just sitting there on the shelf–doesn’t look like it’s connected to anything.
Only recently, I noted a classic shortwave receiver in the trailer of a film. I think I captured it and made a note, but forgot to post. I’ll see if I can find it and post. Hopefully, seeing the image will jog my memory!
There was another view of a shortwave radio in a James Bond film. In one of the final scenes of “Diamonds Are Forever” the villain Blofeld is listening to a Norelco FM AM SW De Luxe model L6X38T/54.
Over the guys left shoulder on a desk looks to be an old clock radio? and a cassette deck on top of it.
“Dr. No”, the first James Bond, has shortwave almost at the beginning, someone in Jamaica having a schedule to keep with England. Maybe he has one Eddystone gear. The station in England has a room full of Racal receivers. Watching it now, I do wonder why in the early sixties shortwave was seen as the safest mode of communication. It’s not like an agent in the field. Surely telegrams and telephones were more secure, and les obvious.
A room of Racal receivers appears in one of the later Bond films, with Pierce Brosnan, but I can’t remember which. In Dr. No, I’m sure they were able to find a room full of Racals, to film in, thirty years later that seems less likely, so maybe special effects, a sort of homage to the earlier scene.
But if it’s god enough for James Bond, maybe it’s good enough for a current tv series.
Michael
More radio on the right of the frame next to the CRT monitor.