KGW 314m-954kHz / 399m-738kHz
This history of KGW is dedicated to Henry Henderson and Bob Lewis,
who are now sadly no longer with us,
and who put in so much hard work to
keep the station operational.
The
transmitter (shown above during dummy load tests), was eventually
obtained from the flats after some scrambling across rooftops, and taken back to Merseyside. Unfortunately
it was found that
the HT transformer had burned out whilst on top of the Coventry
flats. Dave managed to obtain a similar one, and it was soon fitted.
It had been decided to operate the new station on 954kHz, and a crystal
was ordered. In the meantime, the vfo was altered to this
lower channel.
This frequency was fairly clear at the time, with only TTTR
Radio (945kHz) from Dublin and the occasional Sunshine Radio (959kHz)
from Ludlow adjacent to it. Radio Wyvern (954kHz) was not then
on the air. It had been hoped to get the station on the
air by September 1982, prior to the opening of the new Preston based station,
Red Rose Radio. There was an idea that on the morning of its
opening, a 'Red Nose Radio', would be heard just adjacent to Red Rose
Radio!! Of course this was well before anyone had heard of Red Nose Day.
Unfortunately things didn't go to plan. The transmitter
was installed on the balcony of a flat in the centre of Southport on
Lord Street (opposite the Fire Station),
and a longwire aerial strung across the car park at the rear.
However, for some reason that day it was not possible to use 954kHz,
possibly due to Radio Jackie North appearing around that channel.
At the last minute the transmitter was tuned down to 872kHz, not
the best of channels, but there wasn't time to adjust it any further.
The programmes were pre-recorded and were transmitted from a van a
short distance away via a low power FM link. Everything appeared
to be OK, and everyone went down the pub to do some monitoring. After about an hour
we headed off in the car to see how the signal was travelling.
Unfortunately we were to be a little disappointed.
It was only managing to cover Southport, which was not very good for 100
watts!! It was decided to switch off and investigate the problem. The transmitter
was taken away to be looked at, but it was most likely caused by
the last minute change of frequency and not being tuned up correctly on the short
aerial. To
quickly get the station back on the air, the dust was blown off an old 15
watt shortwave transmitter which was converted to run crystal controlled
on 1404kHz. By this time, use of the flat in Southport had been
lost, and one broadcast was made from flats in Preston using
this low power transmitter.
Further transmissions were abandonned until a better site was found and the
higher power rig was repaired. Through a close friend of Dave Simpson, the
late Bob Lewis, the use of a top floor flat of a tower block in Roughwood Drive, Kirkby, was
obtained. Along with Bob, and two other Liverpool musicians, they hoped that the station would promote local music,
something no other station, legal or otherwise was doing in ernest in the area at
the time. By now the crystal for 954kHz had arrived and been
fitted to the 100 watt transmitter. The frequencies around this
channel were now clear,
and the transmitter was installed in the flat in late February 1983.
A longwire of around 300 feet was strung between the top floor flat, and the
balcony of a flat in an adjacent block, above a row of houses in the
middle. For security reasons it was decided to still operate an FM link, and initially
this was installed in the same block as the far end of the longwire. The
first test with full power went out on Saturday 5th March 1983 with good
results. During the test it was discovered that the crystal supplied
was slightly off-channel, and the oscillator had to be adjusted to
get exactly on 954.000kHz. Full broadcasts began on
Saturday 9th April 1983, with Dave Simpson, the late Bob Lewis, the
late Henry
Henderson, and Buzz Carter and Dawn. Robin Ross never
appeared on the station after the Southport broadcast as he went across to
Ireland in late 1982 to work on ABC Radio in Tramore, and by June 1983 had moved
to Sunshine Radio
in Dublin. In July 1983 he apparently left Sunshine Radio
un-announced. There is a tale that an apology was given by Robin to Robbie Dale for having to
leave suddenly, so he could travel to Santander to board the mv
Ross Revenge as it was about to sail for the UK and start broadcasting
officially as Radio Caroline. Robbie Dale probably understood, as he would have
been doing similar clandestine trips to the mv Mi Amigo back in 1967. On 19th August
Robin's voice was heard on test transmissions on 963kHz. Robin had also
been on board the Ross Revenge during 1982 in the early days of the ship being
fitted out when the studio looked like it was in a portacabin on the back deck.
During
that first official broadcast arcing began to occur on the output
capacitors at peak
modulation, and on further transmissions anti corona spray was used to try and reduce this. Installing an audio limiter may have
cured the problem, but in the meantime a pair of higher voltage tuning
capacitors were obtained, although these were never fitted as the
owner of the transmitter decided he needed it back. And so KGW
was without a transmitter once again. An
offer was made of a high power transmitter from a company who were
about to begin production of 1kW units for export to Italy. But
due to hassel from the authorities this never materialised.
At this point it was decided to build a new one. Diagrams were
obtained from a radio amateur, and the construction began. The
RF section consisted of 807's and the modulator was to be transistorised.
The finished product was mounted on two chassis'. The RF
section was housed in its own enclosed case which had been re-purposed
from another use, and was complete with integral cooling fans. The
power supply was built on an open chassis. By the time the the
transmitter was ready, Radio Jackie North was operating on 945kHz or
963kHz and would have caused problems to 954kHz. Also, Radio
Caroline had just dropped anchor off Essex and was about to start
testing on 963kHz. Radio Leinster in Ireland had not been heard
since May 1983 following the Dublin raids, so it was decided to use
their former channel of 738kHz, announcing it as 399 metres. A
crystal was ordered and transmitter altered to operate on this lower
frequency. Everything was finally ready towards the end of the
year. The modulation method initially suggested meant that the
audio level was not very high, so it was decided to go back to using
anode modulation. The frequency of 738kHz, meant any
mal-adjustment may have created a 2nd harmonic coming out on
1476kHz, right next to BBC Radio Merseyside on 1485kHz, and so
everything was designed to avoid this. KGW made a return to the air on 738kHz
at 10am on
Christmas Day 1983 and broadcast until around late April 1984. A new address
of P.O. Box 18, Southport was used when the station returned on 738kHz.
Although the RF output from the transmitter was excellent and was heard
as far away as Yorkshire, the station had issues with modulation.
A suitable high rated modulation transformer was never found, and as a
result some transmissions sounded rather harsh, as the transformers used
would either not give a full audio frequency range or
handle the power. Broadcasts in January 1984 saw the best quality audio.
During this period in early 1984, Dave Simpson had
also started with some roadshows
to promote local artists in conjunction with KGW, and initially with
Buzz Carter's band 'Holiday For Strings' supporting. Henry did a
promo for one of these gigs which can be heard below, as well as
playing one of the bands demos in the above programme on 7th April.
Unfortunately KGW never returned to the air, which was a shame, as the
programmes were very different to any that were being broadcast on other 'pirates'
at the time. The transmitter was removed from the Kirkby
flats during the Summer of 1984 and eventually donated to Weekend Music Radio in
Scotland, where at the end of the 1980's with an improved
modulator it was re-designed for use on shortwave to broadcast with 100 watts across Europe. Two more views
of the 738kHz rig. Below shows
the rear of the RF unit.
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