How the world has changed!

[pete892]

My wife had knee replacement surgery this morning (it's the second knee) What is outstanding is that the hospital now has wireless internet connection from all waiting room, patient rooms, cafeteria, etc. My daughter is a CPA with a large regional firm as was able to sit in the surgery waiting room and get some work done. I was able to read the firehouse.com forums instead of a two month old Sports Illustrated. It was all "Free" but I'm sure is figured into the room rate.

After the surgery and the doctor talked with us, I was able to use my Nextel direct connect to talk with my son and others waiting for news.

When I first became a firefighter we had no such thing as a radio. If we needed something we went to the closest house and used the phone.

Ain't this tech stuff great?

Stay safe,

Pete

[AFD368]

pete892

When I first became a firefighter we had no such thing as a radio. If we needed something we went to the closest house and used the phone.

When I first started in the Fire Service, we had to pick up the phone and give the Operator the number we wanted to connect with. My parent’s number was 89W. Also, if there was a fire call and we wanted to know where it was, we just picked up the phone, and when the Operator came on, we just said “REO”. That was the code word for the firefighters, which in a small town, got around to everybody.

How Far We’ve Really Come !

[firenresq77]

I saw an advertisement the other day from 1986.

A 26" color TV was $600+.

An RCA front loading, programmable VCR, with wireless remote......... a mere $437!!!!!!

[hwoods]

First, Pete, Hope Mrs. Pete is doing OK. Life before Radios on Fire Apparatus: Radios had things called Tubes, remember them? Radios were prone to fail when you really, really, needed to call someone. Low Band (33.86) Link Radios had a neat side use, hold a 8ft flourescent tube in your hand near one end. Place other end near the antenna, then key the mike and watch the tube light up. Response without Radios was all about learning a lot of tricks. Early on, I picked up on following other apparatus by looking for water spilled on turns. One day, the radio failed in my Brush Truck right after I left the station. A few miles down the road I spotted a water splash at an intersection, so I followed it through several twists and turns until I caught up with a CONCRETE MIXER! Never a dull moment.

[Driver76]

We had a '47 LaFrance 100' ladder truck. It was replaced with an 85' Sutphen two years after I became a firefighter, so my initial training and experiance was "at the end of the big stick". I saw guys who thought they were really hot stuff until they had to work 80 or 90 feet up in a brisk winter wind or with a charged ladder pipe (some of the only 3" hose in use at the time).

Today's firefighter is certainly better trained and equiped, but the men of the fire service 30 or 40 years ago usually did one hell of a job with what we had to work with from apparatus to radios to protective gear. -bob-