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G0TEZ > TV 25.07.13 15:27l 71 Lines 3209 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 270255G0TEZ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Are they lying or ignorant ?
Path: IZ3LSV<IK6ZDE<VE3UIL<GB7COW<GB7CIP
Sent: 130725/1356Z @:GB7CIP.#32.GBR.EU #:30563 [Caterham Surrey GBR] $:270255G0
From: G0TEZ@GB7CIP.#32.GBR.EU
To : TV@WW
I saw a TV programme the other day which said that pirate radio began in
England in 1967.
This got me a bit puzzled:
In 1960 when we had three radio programmes, th Home, Light programme and Thrd
programme; all extremely boring, I decided to build a transmitter, highly
Illegal at the time.
I called it Radio Enchmarsh, the name of the very remote place where I lived.
NB you can type Enchmarsh into a browser or Google Earth and it will find it,
it seems it is the only one in the world..
My set up was crude, I had an autochange record player to provide 12 records
over 20 minutes in parallel with an Ex WD tank commander's mic for brief
announcements, no attempt at being a DJ. This fed a radio which could act as
an amplifier. Plugged into the LS socket of this amp I had a LS transformer in
reverse.l This was in line with the DC feed to my Osc/RF amp, made from two
1928 general purpose valves from days when they didn't care much about RF and
AF. I went up and down the medium wave band and found that the only clear spot
was 199 metres.
This was quite a bit of fun in some ways, it was satisfying to see a young lad
driving a tractor with a transistor radio held to his ear and another benefit
was that young girls would walk for miles to bring records for me to play.
This I did after getting them to mark ttheir records. I would make an
announcement such as "The next record is from Margaret in Cardington who wants
me to play it for Roy in Hope Bowdler.. I would then imagine the girl blushing
as she heard herself mantioned on the Wirelsss. I played records most of the
day (I could leave it alone for 20 mins) until about 7 pm when the lift
allowed us to start to receive Radio Luxemburg with it's many mega watts of
pop music.
Within a year or two, I moved to Manchester and the first official Pirate
statio, Radio Caroline had opend up on the MV Carolie, south of London. This
cused a huge influx of teenagers bringing transistor radios to be retuned for
peak sensitivity on 199 metres, my old QRG, as the signal wasn't so strong in
Manchester..
There was a big battle between the government and the pirates as well as
having to scrap radio licences because it is impossible to chase a teenager
with a pocket radio down a street to confiscate his unlicenced radio.
In late 1965 I moved further north to the area I live in now. The BBC started
Radio 1, a copy of the pirates and the pirates disappeared.
All this was long befor 1967 so why does the BBC air a programme saying that
pirate radio started in 1967 ?.
Could it be that the above is my imagination ? Senile dementia ? I know that
people who are too young to have been there will believe the BBC or just not
care but I find the thing a puzzle. I know that most countries had commercial
radio broadcasting without licences from the start so this probably means
nothing except to illustrate that the Brits have been known to fight their
government. Something similar happened around 1976 with the highly illegal CB
radio, we faught them again and we won, it can happen.
73 - Ian, G0TEZ @ GB7CIP
Message timed: 14:56 on 2013-Jul-25 GMT+1
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