Syracuse, New York

[fyreline]

Here is a shot of Rescue 1 taken in August 1977 when a few of us bunked in as guests of the SFD.

 

Chief, I recall at the time of our visit the SFD was testing remote control on one or more of Hendrickson-Pierce Telesqurt engines.  We had a demo of it.   I recall the officer had what looked a like a portable radio with buttons to increase or decrease engine speed and hence pump pressure.  I also recall the discharge valves had remote control with servo-motors and were controlled from the hand held device.  I also vaguely remember the 1.75 in. discharges were color coded and each had its respective remote control hand held device.  Is my memory failing me on some of the details?  How long did Chief Hanlon's experiment last and was it on all the engines?

 

Thanks

 

Ian Stronach

Montreal, Quebec 

 

 

 

During the 1970s, the idea of "Automated Handline Control" became quite popular in the fire service. More than one manufacturer offered such a system, ours was pretty much custom-built with assistance from Fire Research Corporation. The SFD Training Division even hired a full-time engineer to assemble and service the system, which, as you remembered, included four color-coded handsets (one for each crosslay), and radio-controlled, motor-driven valves on those crosslays. The idea was that the pipe man could just press a button and "send the water" whenever he or she wanted. There was also the provision to remotely shut the line down, plus a "panic button" that activated a visual and audible alarm at the engine. While the system did work (surprisingly well, actually) it was not popular with the troops, who disliked one more thing to carry and who never fully trusted the system to work reliably and quickly when needed. The handsets did NOT control engine speed or pump pressure, these functions were maintained at the pump panel by the driver via an Automatic Governor that was part of the system. Each SFD engine had to have its own four handsets (and radio frequencies), and at that time we had 12 engines so that's 48 different handsets and frequencies - and obviously you didn't want to confuse 'your" handsets with another company's. While the idea did have some merits and the system did function, in the end it represented a very complicated and maintenance-intensive liability rather than an asset. It was abandoned by 1980, although the Automatic Governor function was retained.