From Chopin to Kim Appleby - the memorable signature tunes of shortwave

The world of shortwave radio has always been a complex arena for all manner of broadcasters - from the legal to not so, along with mysterious bursts of utility and baffling numbers stations. Whilst free radio was not the instigator of my interest in shortwave, far from it, it soon took over to become the dominant part of the hobby despite at the time 3 - 30 MHz being a necessary 'go to' window on the world now all but engulfed by the internet's all-consuming tentacles. 

Within this blog I have previously chronicled how stumbling upon Radio 48, Live Wire Radio, and Ozone Radio International one Sunday morning in October 1990 opened up a whole new world of broadcasting which made even the exotically-located shortwave stations I had received up to that point seem staid and predictable. They of course were not, but to a then fourteen year old hearing everyday people broadcasting from their homes or out 'in the field' on the same bands as for example Radio Havana, Voice of America, and Radio Pyongyang really blew my mind. Throw in interesting chat, live interaction with listeners, and eclectic tastes in music I was sold from the first time of asking, but without my initial interest in legal shortwave stations I would never have known about or heard the likes of Weekend Music Radio, Radio Confusion, or Radio Fax.

For perhaps eighteen months prior I had listened to, and communicated with, all manner of stations using my modest, analogue listening station with the accompanying telescopic antenna complemented by a short long wire  - an oxymoron if there ever was one - connected to my bedroom curtain rail. At that point I was a slavish devotee of QSL cards, and anything else national broadcasters would send me. It was interesting to see how some obviously had far larger budgets than others, but that would often be allied to individual ideologies being promulgated by the country in question through their shortwave mouthpieces. 

One of the most interesting aspects of 'legit' shortwave free radio in those days was the interval signals broadcast at the top of the hour, in other words between the ending of one programme and the start of another, or once a station had come on the frequency at the point between a dead carrier and the commencement of their next broadcast. Interval signals would often be short bursts of classical music, for example an excerpt of Chopin on Radio Polonia, or a vignette of a musical style particular to the country in question. Others were just random, or so they seemed at the time, but without overthinking things too much they perhaps simply sought a more distinctive sound to differentiate from the rest.

The most haunting and mysterious were inevitably from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, in a time when the Warsaw Pact bloc were just about in tact but as the Berlin Wall fell, the USSR was not too far behind. The interval signals weren't defined by the presence of the Iron Curtain, but there was always a certain frisson of excitement when the 'calling card' of Radio Tirana or Radio Prague wafted across the airwaves. I always felt there was a certain irony that part of RAI Italy's interval signal was incessant bird song; a bit rich from a country so fascinated with killing as many migrant birds as it can.

I do not know if many of these shortwave stations still exist let alone their interval signals, but there is a tremendous number of resources on YouTube to allow a healthy does of wallowing in times past. As my interest in shortwave free radio grew at the expense of the likes of BRT, Radio Australia, and Radio Damascus I became accustomed to different types of music that became emblematic with certain free radio stations, for example Acker Bilk's Fancy Pants on Weekend Music Radio, with Station Sierra Sierra favouring Kim Appleby's Don't Worry, whilst we all knew the Wizard was in town on hearing Sniff 'n' the Tears' Driver's Seat. An honourable mention should also be made for Prince Terry's fondness for Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. These were great, far simpler days.

What follows are a few examples of correspondence I had with Radio Moscow and its Soviet compatriot, Radio Station Peace and Progress. There is of course a certain modern-day irony in the latter's title, but I continue to hope for peace in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.