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LOGS / NEWS - MARCH 2013 A site mainly dedicated to Mediumwave Dxing |
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Today I have noted a few stations for the log book.... 930 ss
0530. numbers 0534
offshore_caroline_raid_august_1989.html offshore_caroline_returns_august_1983.html offshore_caroline_mi_amigo_sinks_1980.html
MI-AMIGO - 33rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE SINKING: Well here we are again commemorating the sinking of the Radio Caroline ship, the MV Mi Amigo in March 1980. I was listening to the radio that night, but fell asleep just before midnight, around 2345 I believe. So I missed the final closedown. Listening to the recordings again brings it all back to me, to a distant time two generations ago when I was a young listener of about 16!! Wah!! I wasn't even pub age!! On the recording you can hear the top of the hour ann at 11pm. I remember hearing this, and also recall hearing "The Show Must Go On", and "Dancing Queen". I used to listen until closedown at 12 and then retune to RTE2 and Dave Fanning's rock show. By March though they were back on 24 hour service I believe. I would have the receiver on till the wee sma' hours normally falling asleep with Caroline 319. But that night I remember I had a wee head cold, and must have fallen asleep earier than normal, around quarter to twelve. In the morning, I never thought any more about it. The station was gone, but that was normal daytime at that distance from the ship. My old pal Ian rang from his work place in Edinburgh, where he was working away on a contract or something for his electrical company. He asked if I had heard the last broadcast, which I had, but he had heard the last announcement. Around this time I had a shout from the living room that it was on the the lunchtime news, where full reports were given!!!! The unbelievable had happened. The Mi Amigo was gone. After the Mi Amigo sank, it was a great loss. Night time radio was non existant. The bulk of the Irish pirates were only listenable in the daytime in those days. There was no Sunshine or Nova by this stage, and listening apart from general MW/ SW dxing, would have been to stations like Radio Dublin, Big D, Radio Carousel, Southside Radio, Boyneside, Radio City etc. A sad miss. Nick Richards was one of the three English DJs on board that were rescued, and a Dutch member of staff was also taken off. Nick recollected these memories the other day in an email to my old pal Ian. Nick is OK with the use of the text on line, so I thought I would take the opportunity to remember..... Happy days.... Nick starts by talking about the recording of the last broadcast from the Mi Amigo, see link below. I think it is a nice touch to leave in the part when he is talking about his son, Harry, which brings home the kind of a personal touch. Nick is still in the radio business, and works in Cork in Ireland. There are some other memories from Nick which I shall endeavour to piece together as one in due course. =============================================== ........... I've heard the recording a few times alright but it does bring the whole thing home. I'm doing prep for tomorrow in the kitchen and ironing Harry's school uniform, but the memories from that night in 1980 are still very strong. I have visions of Tom Anderson and I drinking coffee in the kitchen (Galley) at around 6pm, the ship had a cold dark atmosphere to it, whether we thought that it might be the final few hours or not I'm entirely sure, but I think we felt that it was more serious that previous drama's. To be afloat and the fact that the office must be aware of what was happening from the code numbers, made us feel that help would be on its way by dawn. I've heard from other people who dealt with the on-shore part of the organisation that Ronan often "Got a kick out of the danger the ships experiences". If this was or is true his pulse must have been racing on that night. Had the lifeboat not have been standing by, there was no way the ending would have been as happy as it was. Although we had an inflatable that would have helped for a time, we were very close to a shipping channel and you can only imagine what the chances of survival in the dark, on a now rough North Sea would have been. All I kept doing was checking the engine room for water entering the weakest part of the hull. Then drink coffee and check with whoever was on the bridge, talking to the coastguard. I've just got to the part on the recording where I read the weather and numbers at 11pm and put on Van Gellis "Spiral". I played it because it gave me time to rewind the big tape of continuous music but also because it summed up the feeling on board at the time. Melancholic, sadness, approaching a final conclusion. I can't actually remember eating at all that day. From being woken at lunchtime, through the afternoon into the evening. It was probably only when we sat in the police station on land that hunger got the better of me and I was ready to eat anything but all there was on offer was tea and coffee. After questioning by the Home Office, we were released and Tom Hardy Johnny Lewis etc collected us and took us to a motorway services in Kent. Thank's for sending on this recording Ian. You know I have regret at not taking pictures of the rescue but at the hight of the sinking, it seemed inappropriate. At the top of the stairs here, I have two pictures of the ship, side by side, one of them afloat the other, the day after the sinking. I see them every day of my life and it does fill me with pride that I was able to fullfill a dream to have worked on the station and that ship, but also that it nearly cost my life. Harry often asks little questions about the pictures, I would hope that one day when he can fully understand the entire thing, that he is proud of what I did and how I come to live in Ireland and why he was born where he was is because of the ship in the pictures. Ah, nearly at the end now, and the moment when I left the transmitter on for a few moments before flicking the switch to power down the 10k at the bottom of the stairs in the transmitter room. Happy Days ..... Sad End Nick Richards March 2013 =================================================
Mi-Amigo
at sea, Image sent by Brian Ruth of Caroline Movement
The
Caroline 319 studio, and Steven Bishop / aka Johnny Lewis on the Mi
Amigo - 1979
====================================================== A few links below are worth a listen if anyone is genuinely interested in memories of the Mi Amigo. You can download the final broadcast here; Caroline-19800319-2240-0010-LaatsteUitzending http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?cqe6tfc0f0j063x
DJs Remember The Mi Amigo at Radio Day 2008: (I was at that radio day, and what a superb weekend of fun and nostalgia.) http://www.radioday.nl/2008/2008.htm http://www.radioday.nl/2008/pages/DSC_6381.htm (Nick Richards)
Part 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?oc0dgdxn4yr Part 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?kpom0ixxysq
A couple of other web sites which include great images of the Mi Amigo. http://www.keezer.tv/radio/index.html http://alexcity.xs4all.nl/zeezenders_pirate%20radio.htm
Below is a great link to a historical page dating back to the early days of experimenal wireless. http://www.broadcasting-fleet.com/chrono1.htm I was once asked about the signals in my part of the world, on the wrong side of the country and the wrong end of the country, many miles from the ship, and way out of the target area. Well the recording below was taped by myself one Sunday night when they had the 50kW txer on air. I have no idea the power it was running, but it was more than normal. There are more of these recordings in the downloads area of this site. 791125_caroline_319_2323_stevie_gordon_nick_richards.mp3
Well so much for the DX tests this past weekend. The promised 50kw test never happened, and the band was almost completely dead on Sunday night into Monday GMT, due to aurora. I never had the chance to see what the band was like on Saturday into Sunday, as for some reason the recordings stopped at 2300, and I had an unseen before DOS screen up on the PC when I checked. Typical. The timer records day in and day out, but when there is a dx test, some gremlins get to work!!! Aggghhh. It would however have been fully worse if the dx test had went ahead and was heard in Europe!!
A COUPLE OF AUDIO FILES: 130315_0400_1580_ckdo_booming.mp3 130316_0603_1290_wrni_and_unid_wk.mp3 (Good ee id inc LPR, LATINO PUBLIC RADIO I believe that stands for)
Remember there are two dx tests this weekend, and two others in the coming weeks. 1480 is a possibility in Europe due to the power, unless the array is directional??
KBXD 1480 Dallas, TX - Sunday, March 17 from 0100 to 0300 Eastern DST - 0500-0700 GMT. KBXD will be operating at 50,000 watts using their new six-tower daytime pattern. WVBG 1490 Vicksburg, MS - Monday, March 18 from 2132 to just shy of 2200 Eastern DST - Tues 0132–0200 GMT. KSEY 1230 Seymour, TX - Sunday, March 24 from 0100-0300 Eastern DST - 0500-0700 GMT. WKBI 1400 St. Marys, PA - Sunday, March 31 from 0000-0300 Eastern DST - 0400-0700 GMT Note that the test will run at the top of the hour only. ========================================================
700 WLW ANNIVERSARY IN WARTIME PRACTICAL WIRELESS - 1941: I found a couple of interesting items in old 1940's PW mags, including an article about 700 WLW, a common station this side of the Atlantic. Notice also the price between 1940 and 1941 doubled!!!
WARTIME BRITAIN - THE BANNING OF CAR RADIO AND PORTABLE RADIOs: The other article is about the banning of car and portable radios during the war!!! It shows you the level of hysteria, suspicion and paranoia in those dark wartime days. Imagine trying to ban the media these days during a war time situation. Different days..... and different types of wars. ========================================================
It never fails to amaze me the frequency of the following anomily. Anyone that records top of the hours overnight on MW will obviously have come across an annoying phenomena. How many times have you switched the recording on that starts at ..56 or 57, and tune into frequency xx and find a booming signal, only to have complete mush at the top of the hour when 99% of stations ID. This happens so much it is really annoying sometimes, especially on a rarer channel. It is I guess a progression from the old single channel dxing days when you sat with the cassette recorder running waiting for the elusive ID, only to have that fairly good peak fade into the mush at ID time. Made worse if the fade occured during the ID. This is K.....ssshhhhh..... lol. This of course will obviously work the other way round. But we never take any notice of that!! LOL. ======================================================== WKCW 1420: This station has popped up again this spring. It has been reported by a few dxers of late, and was pretty reasonable in the silence before the splatter yesterday morning. I heard this one last season, and always meant to add the rec to my own personal firsts, but never got around to looking for the log!! So it never appeared last year!! ========================================================
MUSIC AGAIN ON 1710: I was hearing some music, but no speech again on 1710, early hours, during the 0600 recording the other day, forgotten day, and files deleted. This was no doubt the pirates that operate in various locations, but which one?? AB also reported two stns on 1710 last month. The time would have suggested tadx, and not Euro.
It is officially bloody freezing.... In mid March. Yes Freezing. The river at the back was almost frozen over yesterday morning with a light covering of ice. To freeze moving water takes a cold night at the best of times, but yesterday morning it was unreal. Not that it is unknown to be chilly in March or April. We were just becoming syked up for spring time I think. The images below show the snow on Monday, and the bottom right shows the ice by Tuesday!!
MW DXING - WHAT DX?? I have nothing to report on the MW dx scene, and have become a little over dxed perhaps. When the same stations are there day after day, and nothing interesting pops out, I rapidly lose interest. ========================================================
TYRONE COMMUNITY RADIO - TCR 1512 CLOSED: It seems that 1512 TCR has closed down it's MW operations due to receiving a legal licence for a local FM station. Such is my knowledge of these types of operations (legal local FM services), I am unsure if the service is licenced from London or from Dublin. So the last of the pirates in Ireland on MW are 846 and 981kHz. ========================================================
A FEW NEW PDF FILES ON THE DX ARCHIVE: I have uploaded a few pdf files to the dx archive section. These include the Radio Caroline Annual from the 60's, and a World Radio magazine from 1927. The World Radio mag was a BBC publication, See updates page.
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