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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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Pioneering Radio Days

by willingCorporal

Contributed by听
willingCorporal
Article ID:听
A2107180
Contributed on:听
04 December 2003

I am sure I can claim to be one of the first pirate radio stations in the UK. It was almost at the end of the Second World War when things were lapse. I built a 2 valve transmitter which required an accumulator, ht battery and a grid bias battery. I strung an aerial along the garden (measured to a half wave) and transmitted at a frequency of 8 Megacycles (now Mhz) or 37.5 metres. I sent out programmes twice a week for an hour during the evening. I played popular music (mostly big band stuff) using a throat mike to introduce them. I liked to think it encouraged people who were war-weary and I asked people to phone in requests. Being at the top of a hill I could cover a 4 to 5 mile radius. If my home-made transmitter gave trouble I switched a an army-type 'Walkie-Talkie'. The idea took off and people were phoning in with more requests - I played what I could but my 78 record library was limited. Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, and so on. All went well until I noticed this van with a rotating aerial on it going slowly up and down my street. When it hovered I disconnected and shoved the transmitter in a drawer. Next day when it hovered nearer I covered myself by hanging washing along the aerial. 'Radio Pandora', as I called myself, lasted long enough to give, I thought, a bit of fun to a lot of people.

I closed down later but when out locally I overhead two men in a shop who worked at the 大象传媒 monitoring station at Tatsfield, Surrey. They had clearly picked me up but in the euphoric days post WW2 they hadn't bothered to really chase it up.

Tatsfield did a tremendous job during the latter part of the war. It monitored German broadcasts seeking out very useful information. It also, I had understood, sent out a fake programme across Europe, called Soldaten Sender Calais, with false news and German music to confuse the German military.

All this is a far cry from today鈥檚 VHF radio and now digital radio and television. How easy to press a key on a remote and the world is before you. So easy to take it all for granted. My own station Radio Pandora of nearly 60 years ago may not be recalled by anyone today but may I claim to be the fore-runner of Radio Caroline and other off-shore pirate stations?

Leslie Oppitz

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