The aim of this blog has always been to impart my personal experiences of hearing UK-based free radio stations on shortwave, but that doesn't automatically guarantee that I can fully do justice to the entire scene of the time just by compiling a compendium of operators that caught my attention during the 1990's.
Even if I had had some of the finest listening equipment at my disposal, which as previously discussed I emphatically did not, it would have been nigh on impossible to not only have heard every UK-based station who ever transmitted during the decade, but to be a self-styled authority on the subject. I neither claim to have 'heard it all' nor to be an oracle on this strand of shortwave broadcasting, but my memories of the time, which have to some extent flooded back when initially stimulated, and a deep dive into what little research material there is on the internet have at least allowed me to give listeners who were there at the time, and those that were not, an as definitive as possible impression of what could be heard on the 76, 48, and 41 metre bands.
I do feel to be able to do this that the stations I never actually received but whose existence I was aware of in real time, and in many cases after the event, also merit some column inches. To do this is perhaps counter-intuitive to the blog's reason for being, but in a free society the theory goes that all are equal; in the world of free radio, whatever stripe, persuasion, or prominence every operator represented, I think it only fair that each gets as fair a hearing as possible. I will leave it to anyone who wishes to impart their own knowledge of any station mentioned, and those not, to do greater justice than perhaps I am able, but a more or less complete overview of the 1990's UK shortwave scene would not be worthy of the name without acknowledging those operators that I was not fortunate enough to receive.
Just because a station wasn't heard does not mean it never existed. You may ask as to how I can give credence to those whom I never received, and am therefore relying on loggings of the time to excuse my ignorance. Well, nobody could listen to free radio 24/7, with it being inevitable on this basis that broadcasts would always be missed. Also, as already stated, hearing low power operators was not always a certainty when using the basic receivers and rudimentary antennas that characterized my modest listening post. With an absence of internet message boards that now give listeners a real time 'heads up' as to who is broadcasting and where, the 1990's greatly relied on three things to hear the vast majority of stations: 1 - a half-decent receiver and antenna 2 - ample spare time and patience and 3 - being at the right place(frequency, band) at the right time, especially when the length of some broadcasts would be of the 'blink and you've missed them' type.
Some of the names I recall and that my research has confirmed include Radio Lion, Radio Fox, The Edge(with a London mail drop) and Radio Utopia. I have not been able to elicit any further information on this quartet but they were there, as were the equally elusive Power 48, UK GM(Good Music?) and Lightning International, a station fronted by the correspondingly meteorological-affiliated Steve Storm and that used an east Manchester P.O.Box number. My scrutiny has failed to ascertain if UK GM was a variation of the name used by Good Music Radio(GMR), a station I did receive and one mentioned in a previous blog post.
A Scottish-based station, Radio Freedom International, afforded Andy Winter, the frontman of relay station Radio London and a guest on several other stations, his first chance to get on the air - at the age of 12. This would have been at some point in 1989, and perhaps a whole year before my transition from conventional shortwave listening to its alternative attractions. Although this would suggest Freedom was an '80's station and therefore a non sequitur for this blog, it did continue to broadcast into the early 1990's but was never actually heard by myself.
Relay station Overflow International - in this example I define the term 'relay station' as I do for Radio London as a station without its own transmitting equipment - was another who used the spuriously-named Belgian International Relay Service, and might also have benefited from a broadcasting leg-up from Radio Mirage. There was some crossover between Overflow and Hampshire-based Freesound Radio, for whom DJ's of the former would guest on occasion, but in its own right this is another station whose path never crossed mine.
I have been informed by a very reputable source that Telstar South, a station familiar to those who listened in the 1970's and '80's, was also active on shortwave in the 1990's. Rebooted in the early part of the new millennium, albeit again not heard by your correspondent who at that point had stopped listening for perhaps a decade, original operator Horace Cracksman was once more at the controls and often heard on 5 MHz but by the time I had returned to taking an interest in free radio, he and Telstar South had once more escaped my attention.
In a previous post that ruminated on the change of names undertaken by several stations, Total Control Radio, later The Nitrozone, was among those mentioned. It didn't make any difference as to what the station, and its operator, were known as, insomuch that its infrequent but not extremely rare broadcasts remained elusive to me. The only time I actually heard Steve Collins/Des Francis was when he guested on a Subterranean Sounds broadcast.
Perhaps the most unusual station which in truth most UK-based listeners probably never heard, Wrekin Radio International(WRI) only to my knowledge used 12 MHz, a higher frequency where daytime broadcasts would normally skip out beyond the UK, but be heard in continental Europe and perhaps beyond. As is often the proving ground for shortwave operators Wrekin began life on FM, in the county of Shropshire, taking its name from the eponymous hill, The Wrekin, that forms the most prominent part of the county's elevated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty(AONB).
Situated at over 1,300 feet above sea level, The Wrekin would in theory be an excellent spot from where to conduct mobile broadcasts, but I am not aware if this occurred. It is said that WRI used 12 MHz to not only avoid a then crowded 48-metre band but to also position itself near a popular established broadcaster, in this case Radio Fax - 12255 kHz being one of its frequencies - to hopefully attract the attention of the sizeable audience who listened in to Trevor Brook's station.
Another station that a previous post touched upon was Radio Experimental, who might have also been known as the abbreviated Radio EXP. The brainchild of vocal free radio mainstay Gar(r)y Stevens, Experimental and indeed EXP, was a station I saw logged, I think on 6210 kHz, but was another that never darkened my radio, unlike another of Stevens' projects, Britain's Better Music Station(BBMS). The operator has over the years been heard on many stations, in particular those based in the south of England, but is not the same Stevens behind the https://members7.boardhost.com/PirateRadio/ website and forum - the latter often being more bear pit than a friendly talking shop. I am thankful to Kai Salvesen and XTC's Matt Roberts for their help untangling this Gordian knot.
I would of course welcome the fleshing out of any of the stations mentioned above; as ever, I am also happy to put more meat on the bones and where applicable, correct any inadvertent errors.
No comments:
Post a Comment