I have noticed many screw ups and technical faults on the movies. The producers all seem to think "Its just a radio it will look good and do the job nobody will ever know that this is the wrong radio for the job" WRONG haha. MOTOMAN is absolutely right. I came across this website once that sold "Fake" radios to studios they just use the real cases with all of the radio stuff hollowed out, so you are basicly getting a radio with no electronics inside, and they rig it so that the LED on top will flash. The ASTRO Saber III which I saw on the site looked real - if it didn't have "This is a FAKE radio" all over the page I would of never been able to tell the difference (untill it was switched on and the LED Blinked). Apparently they also just use the casing of the batteries too, to make it lighter for the actors, they just put a tiny 9V or AAA inside the hollow battery case to power the LED.
I remember I was watching an ep of COPS once, and as they do the cop tells the crew a little about himself, his family, his job, interests or whatever elce. He said: "We can't catch all of the criminals out there, you know...Its still hard to get away though. A criminal may be able to outrun an officer on foot, in rare cases a criminal can outrun a cop while he is in his Caprice or Crown Vic, but It's nearly impossible to outrun a MOTOROLA RADIO." That was the BEST line I have EVER heard from a cop about radios, and I'll never forget it!
Also in The Blues Brothers 2000, when Elwood and the gang are fleeing from the cops after leaving the diner, he talks to the other band members who are still at the diner, on what i believe (from memory) were GP300's. The line went something like "We'll see you at the gig tomorrow night in Kentucky" "How are you going to lose the cops, you must have half the cops in the state out there after you" "Let me worry about that, we havta get off this road. They have called ahead by now and you can't outrun a MOTOROLA". Great line from Dan Aykroyd!
I love Third Watch, and especially how they promote the Sabers they use, by not removing the Motorola symbol off of the radios or the speaker mics. Must be some pricey contract goin down there. Funny how in an effort to make the radios sound "real and working" they put the squelch tail sound effect in just as the PTT button is pressed and then right again (where it is supposed to be) when it is released.
One of the other things I will remember is that old TV show from about 1997 called High Incident. Loved the ASTRO Sabers in that show!, and how it was a show about a Californian Dept. The show wasn't half bad either. Some of the actors from that show went on to play in Third Watch and similar shows.
And as a last thought, it would be SWEET if the people who made Third Watch did a spin-off series about the same type of thing, but this time using different actors (of course) and making it in the city of Los Angeles. Now that would be great, especially if they used real ASTRO Saber III radios
![:D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)