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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader Mike, who shares a link to this story from the blog République No.6:
Growing up in Piennes Lorraine, Radio Caroline the making of a rebel
[A]t night with my younger brother we would listen to a “pirate radio station” on a boat that would put real good music on, crusing the international waters between England and France. He burst in laughter and told me: That’s Radio Caroline“. That was it. My brother and I would listen to that station nearly every night on an old “galena radio receiver” with a huge antenna hidden in the attic built with copper wire we stole at the mine. I mean we didn’t really steal it, it was everywhere. It was the wires used by miners to connect detonators to batteries when blowing new tunnels and locals were using it for all sorts of things, like holding parts in chicken coop to tie tomato or green bean plants to stakes and could be found everywhere.
Actually at first we set the antenna in our bedroom but somehow it wasn’t long enough not to mention mom who saw it and tore it down giving her an other excuse to punish us. So we decide it to place it in the attic where no one ever went.
The most difficult part was going to the attic, there wasn’t any stairs. We had to bring a ladder to the trap leading to it. Mom was watching us like a hawk, looking for any excuses to punish us.[…]
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, “Mutezone,” who writes:
“I want to share a link to a video of Radio Serbia International’s English service recorded on the 4th of July 2015…
[…]I have been monitoring for RSI during the last week of July but got nothing. I have also been monitoring 6100 kHz after the July final date of transmission as according to RSI’s website, there are “Pirates stalking Serbian short wave” due to the termination of the station. However I have not received any odd transmissions on this frequency at the moment.”
Thanks for sharing this recording/video and, especially, for capturing RSI’s interval signal.
I was unable to hear RSI’s final broadcast on July 31, 2015.
Regarding the end of Radio Serbia International (or International Radio Serbia), the following final post was published on their website. I’ve included the full note, for archival purposes, in case the RSI website goes offline in the future:
The End of Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia
Thanks for sharing the recording and for including a few minutes of the RSI interval signal. RSI was always a difficult broadcaster for me to catch here in North America, though I heard them a number of times via the University Twente Web SDR.
Dear friends, Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia, ceases to exist on 31 July 2015. For you, our faithful listeners from all over the world, and also for us who have worked on this radio, the only consolation would be the fact that this only state short-wave station in Serbia, which has existed for 79 years, will be remembered as an efficient and reliable promoter of Serbia worldwide. No one has ever presented valid reasons why this media, of rich tradition, range and staff potentials, and with big plans until yesterday, should cease to exist. Unfortunately, the assessments not based on arguments were louder than serious analyses and recommendations of experts, professionals and numerous listeners that the world radio service is necessary for Serbia, that it presents the country worldwide in the best manner possible and that no serious state will renounce such an effective diplomacy.
Our significance has been confirmed by the letters of thousands of listeners from all over the world. Some listened to us because of our information programmes, some because of economic topics, while many got to love our country, Serbia, because of its tradition, beautiful and interesting landmarks and the rich heritage they were acquainted with by listening to International Radio Serbia. Regardless of your affinities, you have all told us that you were listening to us because of our objectivity and the possibility of hearing us at any time and everywhere, for such is the power of short waves.
The Serbian government, however, believes that the closing down of Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia – is a justified move. Regardless of the fact that the state of Serbia is in an economic crisis, that each saved penny is precious, that many citizens have been rendered jobless, that new work positions should be opened, it has become unclear to the very end why the only state short-wave station has suddenly become too expensive after 80 years. We are, however, certain, that Serbian citizens, taxpayers, who have financed us for all these years, would have decided differently had they been asked to.
What remains, after all, is the pride we feel because of the history of our radio as well as the hope that the voice of Serbia will reach our listeners wherever they are.
Thank you, dear listeners from all over the world, for having trusted us all these years! Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia now greets you and signs off.
Tuning in: Making a small world bigger and the big one smaller
So much of happiness, I’ve realized, depends on getting tuned in. When he was a young married, my father used to tune in the console radio in the living room of the Krohe family mansion on Manor Avenue to the live broadcasts of big-band music “from the beautiful Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel” in downtown New Orleans. He was able to be in two places at once thanks to WWL-AM, whose 50,000-watt clear channel signal was beamed north. For all I know, while he tapped his toe on the sofa in Springfield, Inuit couples were jitterbugging on the tundra.
For Springfield teens in the 1950s and ’60s, getting a chance to listen to what kids in bigger cities had already decided they liked was important. WCVS-AM was just crawling out of its cocoon, having crawled into it as a country station and emerging as a rock station – although in the late ’50s there wasn’t that much difference. “Rock ’n’ roll” was, in stations like WVCS that catered to mostly white markets, rockabilly and pop-ish country ballads. (Geezers will recall when Brenda Lee was, briefly and laughably, marketed as a rock artist.)
For Top 40 music, as for so many other things, if you wanted to get the really good stuff you had to go to the big city. Around here that meant WLS-AM, WCFL-AM out of Chicago (whose Ron Britain made Soupy Sales look, or rather sound, like Noel Coward), and KXOK-AM out of St. Louis. George Lucas’s American Graffiti brilliantly captured the ways that car radios, transistors, radio stations blaring over PAs in drive-ins, permeated the bubble in which teenagers then lived.
Later I learned I could hear WBZ out of Boston if I acted as the antenna on my transistor. (“Turn on, tune in, drop out” to me meant losing the signal when I lighted a smoke.) WBZ was one of the first stations with the newest 45s from Britain, which allowed us yokels to hear The Yardbirds while the records were still on their way to Midwest stations by stagecoach from Boston harbor.
The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home
By DOUG RAMSEY
During the Cold War, listeners in captive nations behind the Iron Curtain huddled around radios in basements and attics listening to the imposing bass-baritone voice of the man who sent them American music. His greeting—“Good evening, Willis Conover in Washington, D.C., with Music U.S.A.”—was familiar to millions around the world. At home, relatively few people knew him or his work. A proposal for a postage stamp honoring Conover may give hope to those who want the late Voice of America broadcaster to be awarded a larger mark of distinction.
For 40 years, until shortly before his death in 1996, Conover’s shortwave broadcasts on the Voice of America constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy. Never a government employee, to maintain his independence he worked as a freelance contractor. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no tinge of politics, he introduced his listeners to jazz and American popular music. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the 20th century. His use of the VOA’s “special English”—simple vocabulary and structures spoken at a slow tempo—made him, in effect, a teacher of the language to his listeners.
Countless musicians from former Iron Curtain countries have credited Conover with attracting them to jazz, among them the Czech bassists George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous, the Cuban saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. On the Conover Facebook page established in 2010, Ponomarev wrote that Conover had done as much for jazz “as Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.” Conover’s New York Times obituary said, “In the long struggle between the forces of Communism and democracy, Mr. Conover, who went on the air in 1955 . . . proved more effective than a fleet of B-29’s.” In his publication Gene Lees Jazzletter, the influential critic wrote, “Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin Wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.”[…]
Regular SWLing Post readers know that I’m a huge fan of Willis Conover. Much like VOA’s Leo Sarkisian, Conover represented some of the best diplomacy this country has had to offer. [I’ve actually had the honor of meeting and interviewing Leo Sarkisian at his home in Maryland, a few years ago–one of the highlights of my career.]
Are there any SWLing Post readers out there who listened to Willis Conover from behind the “Iron Curtain?” Please comment!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Guy Atkins, for the following guest post:
Radio Cook Islands
by Guy Atkins
A view from the driveway entrance to the Radio Cook Islands studio in 1993. Insulators on an antenna (T2FD or multiband dipole) can be seen as dark spots against the cloudy sky. A feedline is also seen rising above the left side of the building. (Photo: Guy Atkins)
(Photo: Universal Radio)
In 1993 I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit Rarotonga with my wife, courtesy of a nice award through my company which afforded me an all-expenses-paid trip anywhere we’d like to go.
I chose the South Pacific island of Rarotonga, partly because I wanted to visit Radio Cook Islands after listening to their “island music” on 11760 and 15170 kHz through my teenage years.
During our visit to the island I recorded 90+ minutes of RCI on 630 kHz with a local quality signal using a Grundig Satellit 500 and a Marantz PMD-221 recorder.
Recordings
The programming of Radio Cook Islands is bilingual, and announcers are fluent in both English and Cook Islands Maori. Music selections on RCI encompass all styles, to appeal to many age groups. These recordings was scheduled to include as much local music as possible.
RCI programming includes all the hallmarks of a small, non-professional station: stuck records & tape carts, dead air, poor modulation, and other miscues.
However, that’s part of the flavor of local radio, and these errors are heard throughout this recording. Particularly noticeable is the bassy, over-modulation of the studio announcer during sign-on announcements.
Notes: “Party Time” music request show; weather; local ads; more music.
Two engineers from Radio Cook Islands, photographed during my visit in April, 1993. (Photo: Guy Atkins)
Sadly, RCI will likely never be on shortwave again; a fire in the local tele-comm building a few months before my 1993 visit destroyed RCI’s transmitter. I had an amusing exchange with the secretary when I visited; she insisted that their station was still on shortwave. Of COURSE we’re on the air she said, because “the frequencies are published right here in the newspaper!” The engineer and announcer confirmed, though, that the silence on their former frequencies was for real. They indicated they were covering the outer islands just fine with FM translators and had no intention of restarting shortwave.
Radio Cook Islands 630 kHz antenna on the school ground of Takitumu Primary School.
RCI’s headquarters is in downtown Avarua, and their 5 kw transmitter (reported at half power, 2.5 kw in Dec. 2012) and modern quarter-wavelength vertical antenna is located in the town of Matavera (northeast side of Rarotonga).
Bing.com maps view of Radio Cook Islands antenna, 630 kHz at Takitumu Primary School, Matavera.
The antenna is in the yard of Takitumu primary school; see photos from Bing Maps and Panaromio [above].
It sure brings back a flood of good memories when I listen to these MP3s! I’d love to visit the Cooks again sometime.
Many thanks for this wonderful stroll down memory lane, Guy–radio nostalgia at its best!
I, too, would love to visit the Cook Islands someday–it is on my bucket list. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy your recordings. Again, many thanks for your guest post!
WWV’s transmitter building in Fort Collins, Colorado (2014)
Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Brian D. Smith, recently contacted me; I was enthused when he described the recording he was sharing:
This recording captures the last 5 minutes of WWV’s old format (giving the time every 5 minutes) and the first 5 minutes of the new format (giving the time every 1 minute), which took place on July 1, 1971 UTC.
Apologies for the less-than-stellar audio quality, but I recorded this as a 15-year-old fledgling SWL with limited knowledge of audio recording techniques. So I simply placed the microphone from my cassette tape recorder next to the speaker on the receiver and hit the record button. The signal quality wasn’t the greatest, either — lots of QSB and QRM — but I still managed to get what I was going for.
The resulting recording has accompanied me everywhere since then, preserved only on its original cassette, until 2008, when I finally decided it was time to learn how to transfer it onto my hard drive, burn it onto a CD and stop having to rely on the integrity of 37-year-old audio tape.
Even as a teenager, I regarded the WWV changeover as historic, and felt I should attempt to record it for posterity. Consider yourself posterity!
Brian received this broadcast on 10 MHz care of a Hallicrafters S-108, with random length of wire attached to the back of the receiver serving as an antenna. Location was Franklin, Indiana.
As Brian mentions, the audio quality is a little rough, but this is still quite a treasure of a recording!
Again, thanks so much for bringing us this recording, Brian! We look forward to any other archived recordings you–or any other readers–may have to share with us here at the Post.
Many thanks to my buddy, Skip Arey (N2EI), who informed me that the American Radio History website has added 18 issues of the late Passport To World Band Radio to their free downloads archive. These issues span 1986-2009 and are free to download. What a treasure trove!
