Scrolling through Netflix today (no luck finding CHiPs, Ted) I came across "Emergency", and sure enough, episode 6 was available. This is where Roy talks down a kid in a Cessna whose Dad had a heart attack.
Turns out Roy had 20 hours and "almost had his license". It was actually not too bad, aviation-wise.
Heh heh... my wife and I are totally addicted to watching those old re-runs of that show. I missed the Cessna one, but she told me about it.
Season 2 has a pretty fun "heart attack on an airliner" with some decent shots of a DC-8...
The part that floors me about the whole show is that in just one generation we've gone from paramedics who had to have direct Doctor's orders to do ANYTHING other than CPR, to rolling mini-hospital/trauma units where sometimes the hard part is convincing the paramedics to "scoop and go" and get someone to a Level 1 Trauma center.
That's a lot of change in basically just one generation... heck, less than a generation. And the mobile communications tech changes are vast, too. The show was careful never to show the public just how badly those early walkie-talkies that had to use a repeater in the fire-truck to reach the dispatchers, and those early medical data transmission devices really were.
Those tools however, were far better than anything that had come before them and shows like that one pitched them to the public well enough that they were willing to pay the bill when it came time to cough up more tax dollars.
The whole show is giant commercial for raising the tax base of the LA County Fire Department... but it managed to do it without being blatant about it, and still providing entertainment. Motorola made a fortune off of that show without paying for "product placement", which is oh-so-common in modern entertainment TV.
Definitely fun to watch. I freak out when I watch them doing the climbing scenes, having been trained more recently under newer OSHA rules... they hop around three of four stories up untethered, with the old leather climbing belts that are illegal today, on their hips, but not hooked to anything... jumping around like monkeys... whereas today we're in full-body harnesses, using fall-arrest gear that's drop-shock protected, and never not clipped on in at least one spot -- if we're doing it right. Of course, there's guys that'll climb 100-200' of ladder and never hook into the annoying ladder cable-arrest system... but once they're off the ladder, they're clipped in. On the show, those guys are walking around on cranes and things with no tie-off at all. Makes me want to yell at them through the TV.
And the old radio ID rules... everyone ID'ed... "KMG 365"... at the station when they acknowledged calls...
Fun (historical) Emergency Services/Public Safety stuff.
