Those were my memories - how about yours?

Two weeks after the dust has settled from the previous, and at the time final blog post detailing my experiences of UK-based shortwave free radio during the 1990's, I had hoped to receive a greater level of reader feedback than the amount my memories have effectuated. 

There has been some very welcome contact with a couple of well-known station operators of the time, one of whom is still relatively active on 48 metres to this day. I have also been pleased to share many emails with my Norwegian correspondent, someone with a depth of knowledge of the 90's scene that could only have been developed by a listener as immersed in free radio to the extent I was at the time. 

I admit that a lack of visual cues in the form of back in the day QSL cards and stickers has not helped to stimulate conversation, but my collection of free radio memorabilia has sadly long since bitten the dust. It would be easy for me to crib pertinent verification cards and the like from the internet but doing so would miss the point which my blog aimed to achieve but never quite knocked out of the park: to entirely reflect and encapsulate memories of a now very distant but once important time of my life.

Therein perhaps lies the issue - too much time has elapsed and those who listened with great interest and anticipation have long since left the scene, with nary a look back over the shoulder to reminisce, or even become reacquainted with today's scene that would be flattered by deception if described as a poor imitation. The same can be said for station operators, who perhaps have 'grown up' and in some cases would prefer to not look back to a time that might even embarrass them. Each protagonist, whether part of an expectant audience or as a broadcaster has whether they wish to impart it or not a story to tell from the 1990's, an era of free radio that undoubtedly heralded the inexorable decline of the medium.  

My writing is not to everyone's taste, nor would I ever intend to strive for something that is impossible to achieve. Although my research was as thorough as it could be for a niche within a niche whose presence on the internet was already more or less conspicuous by its absence, there will inevitably be gaps in the content where I have not done certain stations justice, with perhaps some broadcasters inadvertently overlooked altogether.

It is including these circumstances that I respectfully request the comments and memories of those who were there in the 1990's, in whatever form that took. This is not a request to stellify my blog or any particular stations, nor indeed to court pejorative observations, but field the views of those who perhaps saw things the same as I did, in a completely different way, or somewhere in between. I am not looking to rewrite history but ascertain what, if anything, my blog has brought to mind for those with this once upon a time shared interest. If though you remember you might not actually have been there; who can say...

Over to you. There may yet be further mileage to be had out of this blog, but not at the expense of tenuous, digressive, or discursive content that veers off topic to a point where a dead horse is being mercilessly flogged.