The vast majority of this blog's content has been drawn together from my own personal experiences of listening to free radio between 1990-2002, but has never pretended to be the last word on UK-based stations heard on shortwave during this era.
There was always an attendant risk of my memory playing tricks on me to the point of embellishment, but it cannot be said that the limited amount of archive material available online pertaining to my decade or so of regular listening has in any way convinced me that I heard stations I didn't, nor did I even hear the overwhelming majority of broadcasts from UK stations, usually 'thanks' to my hardworking but ultimately limited listening station, and the simple fact that at times I favoured sleep to listening.
Nevertheless, a relatively deep dive back into researching this blog has unearthed some fascinating (to me at least) information which although not revelatory, has at least highlighted just how prolific many of the better known UK-based stations were in the early to mid 1990s, and how their sound and listenability remained fresh and engaging despite an at times relative ubiquity on the bands.
Free DX was a weekly news sheet - 50p a week I seem to recall - written by a very well-known free radio operator of the time who through changing the name of his station seemed to precipitate a similar process at Total Control Radio which became The Nitrozone, Radio Mutiny that morphed into the Xenon Transmitting Company (XTC), and Radio Confusion's rebranding as Subterranean Sounds. Prior to Free DX becoming a pre-internet staple it had been known as Activity Magazine, performing a similar function to its successor.
It is easy to be dismissive in our internet and Social Media saturated world of typewritten news sheets that in theory were out of date before they landed through physical letterboxes, but the likes of Free DX, Pirate Chat, and Pirate Pages served a noble purpose of keeping listeners and operators abreast of new stations, those which had been raided, news of forthcoming broadcasts, and new maildrops. Nowadays instant messaging, WhatsApp groups, and fora do all this and more but lack the personal touch and considerable effort undertaken by publishers whose perseverance was for no reason other than to keep free radio's numerically fluctuating listenership in the loop.
My recent research has shown just how prolific in terms of the number of broadcasts, the length of programmes, and a desire to QSO with other operators many UK station were between 1990-1994. The main protagonists were Weekend Music Radio, Live Wire Radio, Radio Confusion/Subterranean Sounds, Radio Galaxy/Merlin, Radio Orion, Total Control Radio/The Nitrozone, and Station Sierra Sierra.
Thanks to Free DX archive material I have also been able to reinforce my assertion that far from having 'heard it all' during the 1990s, I missed every single broadcast by Total Control Radio/The Nitrozone and Lightning International, but also those by Renegade Sound, although did have my memory jolted by the logging of a Capital Radio International, which I heard at least once during the period. I was also surprised by how many broadcasts I missed by for example the daddy of them all, Live Wire Radio, and Station Sierra Sierra whose low-power and often 'blink and you'll miss them' transmissions often proved elusive for my limited receiver and inefficiently matched antenna.
When Free DX called it a day in the early weeks of 1994 a new phase of UK-based free radio had already started to be subtly ushered in. Radio Armadillo became one of the most listenable stations, and the programme's of WMS (Wizard's Magic Spell) began to reflect not only the operator's intelligence and personality but also how the giants of UK-based shortwave free radio during the early-1990s wielded considerable influence over his output. It was also in this year when Radio Blackbeard rose to prominence, and whilst its operator and that of Station Sierra Sierra formed the 'out in the field' Galaxy International side project in the late 1990s, Radio Blackbeard remained a standalone entity until some years later. Today, Mr. Blackbeard can sporadically be heard on mediumwave around 1494 KHz, under his 'where it all began' alias, the dance/trance music-focused Buzz FM.
Radio Atlantis (6210 and 6400 KHz) was for a time another prolific broadcaster, but whilst Weekend Music Radio, Live Wire, and Subterranean Sounds continued to bang the drum for UK pirate radio on shortwave, broadcasts would become less frequent but no less memorable. I recall Live Wire successfully broadcasting on the area of the mediumwave band characterised by some listeners as the Dutch trawler band (approximately 1620-1700 KHz), but the aforementioned triumvirate along with WMS and others would increasingly be found on 3 MHz as the 48 metres became a Dutch colony and conditions became less reliable.
Over the last year or so writing this blog I have occasionally questioned myself why I am doing it. After all, as a media professional in his mid-forties with all the usual responsibilities it could seem rather odd to the untrained eye (and ear) to be writing so gushingly about what were (and still are) illegal radio broadcasts which I first listened to from the age of 14 into my early-twenties. I am unapologetic; free radio was a huge part of my teenage life and introduced me to music much of which I favour to this day. There was though something unquantifiable about listening to free radio during my formative years, an intangible quality which I am still unable to adequately identify or encapsulate. Maybe as an adult I would not have enjoyed(as much) the radio I heard but there is little value in overthinking the whys and wherefores; it remains a fascinating part of my life which will always be viewed with fondness, albeit one that must not be vulnerable to revisionism or hagiographies.
Links to some of the free radio publications of the time can be found here:
Radio-Magazines2 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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