The UK stations who slipped the net(part 2)

In the concluding post of a blog that has in the main focused on my experiences of UK-based free radio stations that were found on the shortwave bands during the 1990s, I am straying away from basing the content on purely my own listening experiences. 

When listeners past and present, along with former operators and those still firing up their transmitters eventually decide to digitize any audio and/or written word archive theoretically within their possession, I predict a relative glut of online information pertaining to the 1990s shortwave pirates that will be at the finger tips of those with an interest in the scene, either from a point of reminiscence or to compare today's free radio landscape with how it took shape three decades or more ago. 

Recently, I unearthed a cache of helpful, indeed fascinating sources of information via the archive.org website. It is true that such websites are only as good as the munificence of those who upload old free radio publications, some of which are older than me, and inevitably provoke the internet-age argument as to whether something doesn't actually exist unless it has been uploaded onto the World Wide Web. There is perhaps as much buried away in attic-based boxes that has yet to see the light of day as there is already 'out there' on the internet, but for those who think that life begins and ends with what is available online regarding any hobby, genre, or individual, the future will inevitably precipitate a radical reassessment.

That though isn't to say that we must all assume there is always 'more' to learn about some subjects and niches within niches that are by definition finite, especially when pertaining to a set period of time or era. Where one finds little else to go from circumscribed hard-and-fast data there then begins the process of reinterpreting personal relationships with the subject in hand, how incontrovertible information viewed retrospectively can justify, for example using free radio as an obvious default, where it fitted into our lives, and the hows and whys it did do to such an extent. 

Readers who have perused much or most of this blog will by now be familiar with when my inadvertent interest in free radio began - October 7th, 1990. What I have subsequently written has been based upon my experiences of hearing and corresponding with UK-based pirate stations on a regular basis from that date until perhaps 1997, from when my interest waxed and waned before petering out around 2001 - for at least the next decade. It did though occur to me that for nine months of 1990 I was until very recently unaware of other UK stations that were reported during the year prior my introduction in the October, some of who may have called time on their free radio existences at some point during the first three quarters of 1990.

To give a little personal context to the exercise, I decided to view archived copies of FRS(Free Radio Service[Holland]) Goes DX and Activity magazine, the latter which was to transmogrify into Free DX, dated approximately, or at the very least covered loggings from, October 1989 until September 1990, the full year before I joined the party. 

My findings were hardly revelatory, but did provide some interesting subplots to a scene that had arguably already started to tail off from its 70's and 80's apogee.

It was interesting to read about a certain DX-20 who was an increasingly familiar presence on 6 MHz, primarily within QSOs. This station would eventually become Live Wire Radio - or Light Wire as FRS Goes DX initially reported - and was first logged using its familiar moniker on June 3rd, 1990 with what FRS also detailed at the time as poor audio - from which little could be understood! How soon things would change, with operator Bill Lewis known throughout the free radio world as something of a technical genius. 

Radio Galaxy, not to be confused with a German station of the same name and the future Paul Stuart and Dave Norris-backed Galaxy International, began life on June 24th, 1990. Now far better known in the modern era as Radio Merlin than when it used its former alias, it is rare day when operator Paul Watt is not heard on 6305 Khz. 

Radio Pamela is another UK-based station operated by a sexagenarian that continues to haunt the airwaves, and has I believe done so since 1985. There was though also a station called Radio Tina that was logged several times in the twelve months prior to October 1990, and which was regarded as Pamela's 'sister station'. Another station that might have been linked to the aforementioned duo is Free Medway Town Radio, although there is little to suggest that this was the case. 

Falcon Radio was a relatively frequent broadcaster during 1989 and the earlier months of 1990 on 6.8 MHz but seemed to more less disappear into thin air. Perhaps the operator changed the station's name into one I am more familiar with from my own listening days, but otherwise disappeared as quickly as its avian namesake.

There was a UK-based Delta Radio, which I imagine only served to confuse matters for those reading logs pertaining to at least two Dutch stations of the same name. There would of course be no ambiguity when hearing the respective output of the various Deltas - a theoretical prize for anyone who can think of an appropriate collective noun - but the UK version was never one that I heard, be that because I simply missed its broadcasts or that the station had ceased broadcasting prior to October 1990.

Activity magazine logged a Radio Pythagoras on November 5th 1989, a station that had been particularly active during the late 1970's. To my knowledge there weren't any further broadcasts from this hypotenuse of free radio, although I am happy to proved otherwise. 

I remember a Radio Atlantis on 6210 and 6400 during approximately 1992-1994 which hailed from the West Midlands, but although older listeners will have potentially been confused by it ostensibly bearing the same identification as Radio Atlantis SW, a station with an Ashton-under-Lyne(Manchester) address, from my perspective there was only one broadcaster of that appellation which Plato might have listened to back in the day. As with Delta Radio, I am unaware if the original Atlantis of the two simply faded into the night during the early part of 1990, or rebooted its operation under a different name. Again, I suspect there will be someone out there who can fill in the blanks of what I am party to.

Finally, a R(ock)FM was heard on several occasions on 6 MHz, seemingly a relay of a London-based FM station. Nothing else is known, apart from the station representing another example of a fleeting presence on shortwave that was never to be heard of again. 

Here concludes the most exhaustive examination of 1990's UK-based shortwave free radio that has to date been undertaken, and the realization of your correspondent's best efforts to find its meaning within his own life and the decade in which it took place. 

I hope that further information, if indeed it is gathering dust in loft spaces and garden sheds, comes to light which will offer a more comprehensive overview of just what was out there on shortwave, UK style. Facts are facts, but one's own relationship with a fascinating, but at times strange broadcasting genre and any subsequent subjective opinions are 'each to their own', a maxim which succinctly sums up the concept of free radio, and its reason for being.