Tag Archives: Radios in Movies

The Avengers: Mark spots a room full of radio gear in Season 5

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Mark Hirst, who writes:

Thomas,

I picked up Season 5 of the cult TV show “The Avengers” at a street market last weekend.

In the episode “Never, never say die”, Mrs Emma Peel follows a lead and meets a radio ham playing chess with other radio hams around the world.

With all the little details in the room, I wonder if someone involved in setting up the scene knew something about amateur radio?

Mark

I bet they did, Mark! How many of these fine radios can the SWLing Post community identify? Please comment!

Famous Collins Transceiver in Apocalypse Now

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by Dan Robinson

We have seen so many great receivers and other equipment appear in movies, it’s surprising that this one may have slipped by our Radios in Movies radar.

In Apocalypse Now, the classic 1979 epic war film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is briefed in a hotel room in Saigon about Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando), the renegade Special Forces officer who is accused of murder and presumed insane. The scene includes Harrison Ford (by the time the movie came he had become a big star with Star Wars) who tells Sheen that Kurtz is to be “terminated”.  

But as we’re reminded in a post on the Collins Collectors Facebook page, a famous radio is sitting on a file cabinet in this scene — identified in the collector group as a KWM-2A.

It’s another reminder of how many great examples of amateur radio and other equipment have played roles in great movies!  

 

Radio Sighting in “Let’s Get Harry”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Perry Lusk, who writes:

Guess what kids? Another radio sighting from the 1986 film Let’s Get
Harry! Lots of big names in this one including Mark Harmon, Robert
Duvall, Gary Busey, and former founding member of the Eagles Glenn Frey.

While on a covert rescue mission in Columbia, they found the bad guy’s
hideout with some old Yaesu equipment among other radios.

Hmmm… I wonder how far they could get out with that mag-mount
antenna? And what band is it tuned for?

Paul spots an AOR AR-3000A in “20 Days in Mariupol”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul, who writes:

Hi Thomas,

“20 Days in Mariupol” won this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary.
The movie is about the Russian siege to that city in the opening days
of the Ukraine invasion, as recounted by a filmmaker located there.

There is a segment of the movie about Russia’s use of propaganda to
demoralize the local population. The still photo shows an AOR AR-3000a
communications receiver playing a Russian broadcast, trying to
convince the city’s inhabitants that they cannot stop the invasion.

That radio was reviewed on The SWLing Post a few years ago:

A review of the AOR AR-3000A Wideband Receiver

The sad and grim movie is available for free viewing at PBS:

20 Days in Mariupol

The part showing the radio starts around the 35:16 mark.

Thank you for sharing this, Paul.