From a point at Sea, to the Circles of your mind...... on these pages you will find part of my collection of radio related items.
I wish I was good at creating flashy and imaginative index pages, but I'm not - so this will have to do!
See my main index page for reasons why this site doesn't have a fancy layout!
I have never understood why some of us are fascinated by the magic of radio, whilst others just treat it as an everday object. Follow the links below to see/hear/discover stations which have played a role in shaping my understanding of the world, contributed to my strange hobby and sent me along great pathways of discovery:- musically, intellectually, and spiritually. Gosh! Doesn't this sound rather hippy-ish? Now where did I put my Loving Awareness album......
Quite what the fascination of "Pirate" (and related) radio is, I do not know. Suffice it to say, whilst assembling and researching these pages, I have found many websites from people with similar interests, but have yet to find a site dedicated to BBC local radio or 1970's ILR !
Anyway enough of the waffle, now explore further into your mind.....
Without doubt, Radio Caroline is a legend. Named after JF Kennedys daughter, and launched on Easter Sunday 1964, the station has lived through unimaginable odds to this present day, and shows no signs of quietly going away. Conceived by a record producer as a means of promoting new bands and acts that the BBC refused to play during its 2 hour weekly pop-music
programme at that time, the station quickly became a huge success, and led to a proliferation of offshore based radio around the UK until August 1967. The stations was off air, between 1968 and 1972, but since then has taken on a life of its own. The original ship, The MV Mi Amigo was lost in a storm in 1980, but 1983 saw
the comeback from the MV Ross Revenge. The stations offshore career came to an end in November 1990, with the introduction of the new broadcasting act (several pieces of legislation from 1967 onwards had failed to squash the station), and in 1991, the ship was taken into docks for maintenance, whilst the stations operators and band of dedicated supporters
investigated methods of keeping the dream alive. Thirty three years after its creation the latest ship, Ross Revenge, spent the summer of 1999 at the end of Southend Pier where it was visited by thousandss of wellwishers and plain curious.
By all accounts 2000 was just as much of an eventful year - web radio launch, 600 kilowatts of AM and pictures from the August convention.
For the technically minded, take a look into Carolines Transmitter Hold, without doubt the most comprehensive source of technical information on the web - under continuous re-construction. And for admirers of Carolines modulation curves, a page just for you!
The Irish Pirates It had long been known that due to a quirk in Irish law, anyone could start a radio station, as long as your transmitter served another function, eg. heating your house, scaring the birds away, etc. However, it took two ex-Caroline people to make something of it, and in so doing, change the course of history. At a time when UK radio was limited to 9 hours of music per day (by law!),
and full of lost dogs, jumble sales and public service announcements, Dublin was rocking. Read a short history, and hear the sounds.
One problem with Pirate radio was the hush-hush and cynical nature that the official media treated it with. Organisations such as the Caroline Movement, and Anoraks UK helped spread the word about what was going on. Take a trip to a London hotel in August 1987, to see Driftback 20 - a radio fanatics extravaganza.
And then see how the Caroline Movement commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, with the UK's (and probably the worlds) first fully licenced radio station to transmitt offshore from a boat. Offshore Radio 1584 was on air for just 28 days in August 1992, but it is said that in that short time,
went through as many mini-trauma's as a real station went through in its full life.
Feeling brave? Had a good breakfast? Want to see far you can go? Then step onboard a bobbing little boat for a Tender Trip. I didn't get very far due to rough seas, but it was fun, and better than spending a boring weekend at home.
Want to hear what radio sounds like when its run by people enjoying themsleves and not controlled by accountants? Take a listen to my Real Audio Page. Almost an hours worth of air-checked recordings from the last 17 years. And I still have loads of other tapes to add in the future......
I had, of course, discovered Pirate Radio. Now then, I would never condone any illegal activity which inflicts harm or suffering on others, but these guys were using otherwise unused frequencies, for the benefit of anyone who cared to listen in. Even with the many hours spent searching out the most unusual or obscure station, I have never heard anything broadcast which could be
construed as harmful, offensive, racist, inciting to riot, destabilising of authority, or whatever other political rhetoric the powers that be levelled against these stations.
I started making the occasional recording of these stations, mainly to show to disbelieving schoolfriends, that such things existed, and little did I realise at the time, what an addiction this was to become! I started to read the right kind of radio magazines to find out what was going on, and found out that I was not the only one spending my time
trying to hear these stations. My interest quickly started to take two lines, one of hearing the stations which were appearing on the North Sea, and one of hearing what was happening in the Republic of Ireland, where it seemed, anything could happen.
Its been a lot of fun looking through 15 years old dusty boxes of tapes, books, stickers, etc. Many laughs, smiles and memories have come my way putting these pages together. I've enjoyed it, so I hope you have too.
The original Radio London closed before I was even born when the British government introduced its first attempt to legislate against offshore radio. To mark the 30th anniversary of its closure, some members of the original station, and other lifelong supporters obtained a 28day temporary licence, and with their boat
the Yeoman Rose, set about recreating the sound of the original station. See the "Wonderful Big L" anchored off Walton-on-the-Naze in August 1997.
The original Radio Scotland 242 broadcast from the MV Comet from December 1965 until August 1967. Read the story of this unique pirate station, and see never-seen-in-public-before photographs taken by Bob Donnelly, one of the ships engineers. See also a remarkable selection of QSL cards
sent in by listeners in far away places.
And if none of that appeals to you, go straight to my links page and surf out of here....
Why did I put this page together? Well....... Ever since I was really young, I was fascinated by radio. Just by turning the dial you could hear so many sounds, and just how did all those people fit in that little box? As I grew, I discovered that there was nothing in the radio, except a bunch of
electronic components, and the sounds were all carried by some form of invisible magic radio waves. In the years before I was a teenager I listened to everything I could hear on the dial, and soon learnt the art of tuning in by night, with hundreds of stations out there. Early discoveries at that time (late 70's) were the Great 208-Luxembourg and AFN.
As my teenage years loomed, I quickly grew tired of some stations such as the BBC, and some locals - they had such an attitude problem - almost to the point of pretending they were the only real station and that all others were a waste of time.
As my collection of radios and other equipment at my disposal grew in the early 80's, I started to hear stations that nobody seemed to know about. They were rarely, if ever, mentioned in newspapers or magazines, and any mention of them seemed to brush them off as being nothing more than harmful parasites. But to me these stations were the most interesting - they almost
appeared to broadcast in their own world, away from the boring officialdom that other stations seemed to cling to. They often changed frequencies for no apparent reason, presenters and programmes would come and go, giving the stations a fresh sound, they often sounded amazingly big and professional and most of all, it sounded as though they were having fun, and enjoying themselves.
