RADIO TIMES 7: Radio Centurion Closing Down ...

Another cold snap in March 2014 with flurries of snow early this morning, and a chance to conclude this series of rambling radio memories.  Or should I say “sign off?”  There will be further chapters but they will be found on the “55555” blog and only occasionally linked here.  Besides, that highly irregular and illegal radio station in north Worcester was about to come to an abrupt end.

It was Easter Eve 1972.  April Fools’ Day also, and a special Easter weekend programme had been prepared for the following day, recorded on a new seven inch reel of tape that was waiting in its box on the table ready to be threaded into the recorder.  But later that afternoon when I went up to listen to and preview the tape I was concerned to find it already on the spools ready to play.  Who could have done that?  I shrugged it off.  Perhaps my brother.  Or one of my parents out of curiosity.  I powered up the machine, put on a set of headphones, and rotated the “play” switch.  What I heard next chilled me to the bone.

Instead of the introductory music that I had been using for months there was a man’s voice, deep and with a definite air of authority, which repeated this message.  Three times.

“Close this station down.  This station is operating illegally.  We have found you out.  Close this station down!”

The back-story to all of this was very unfortunate. The VHF signal emitted by the transmitter was not only more powerful than I had measured (and I had not measured its east-west range,) it was also, unbeknown to me, producing a harmonic signal which was radiating in the 68-88 MHz band – right in the middle of frequencies used by the West Mercia Constabulary.  Yep!  I was busted!

Yet it was a very gentle “bust.”  This was due to the fact that when the police (who had used the General Post Office detector vans) located the source of the signal(s) and realized that they were emanating from the home of a much respected and highly popular clergyman, it was decided to send the matter upstairs to a certain Chief Inspector.  And Chief Inspector Hunt was not only a friend of the family but a regular worshipper at the parish church.  So a quiet conversation took place; the officer visited the house, a message was left, and that was that.   No fine.  Not even a caution. No confiscation of equipment.  All very fair and sporting. 

I’m not sure if my parents were annoyed or not, for little was said.  I’m sure that my father had an amusing time of it all for there was a twinkle in his eye that weekend.  And my mother’s mood never changed.  But it was the end of clandestine broadcasting from St Stephen’s Vicarage.

Is there an Epilogue to this tale?  If there is then it’s certainly not a cautionary one for it was fun while it lasted and I have no regrets.  The transmitter was dismantled.  The recording equipment remained wired up as from time to time I would record a show and send it to be broadcast on the equally illegal Super Radio station in the next town of Malvern.  I would even record a fifteen minute demonstration tape and send it to Radio Atlantis, an offshore station operating from a ship off the Dutch coast from 1973-74, and I later learned that they had played five minutes of it on air.  What a claim to fame!

But time was moving on, and I was moving on.  It was the end of the care-free and often cavalier free radio days (Radio North Sea closed in 1974,) academic study beckoned with a vengeance, and getting into university was the sole interest and purpose.  Was it the end of radio for me?  No.  But that tale has not yet been written.

Radio Times 6: On Air.

The name of the station came as a result of Classics homework one evening - an essay on the structure of the Roman Army.  The transmitter was tuned to 100 Mhz so the title Radio Centurion came to mind.  And a banner was painted with this name to staple to the wall of the new "studio." The need to put together bits of equipment required more space so I moved upstairs to the second floor of the house. (In U.S. parlance that would be the third floor!) What had been a playroom was now to be a broadcast studio.  And the vary fact that the antenna was repositioned some twenty feet higher would surely have some benefit.

Equipment?  It was all rather basic with the exception of the record deck.  I had saved enough money to buy a quality deck and one day my father drove me to a big discount store in Birmingham to pick up a Garrard SP25 Mark IV, not a bad piece of kit for its day.  (See above.) The family reel-to-reel had been commandeered with its microphone, and a birthday present of a PYE cassette recorder completed the list.

For the next few months Radio Centurion would attempt to broadcast twice a week - each recorded show being half an hour in length. The first would go out on a Saturday late afternoon (times did vary!) and the second mid-evening on Sunday.  Now with such simple equipment half an hour of programming took at least an hour and a half to create. Sometimes more. This was done during the week and I have a strong suspicion that my school work suffered a little!

What did we play?  It was a mainly progressive rock music interspersed with jazz, on account that I had found a tall pile of jazz albums in a church sale one weekend.

Who listened?  Apart from the school friends who lived in north Worcester I have absolutely no idea. A few members of the church youth club said that they did from time to time.  And a few parents would nod their approval.  But there was one group of listeners in particular who would really make a difference.

RADIO TIMES 5: Hoisting the Jolly Roger

Finding electronic components to build an FM transmitter, slightly more powerful and more stable than the one borrowed, was easy.  This was the early 1970s. A time when it was still possible to find television and radio repair shops in most towns.  (Yes, people repaired televisions and radios!)  It was simply a matter of drawing up a shopping list of needed components and handing it to the man behind the counter who always wore glasses and a brown cotton work coat.  (Why did they always wear brown work coats?) He would say something like, "Be ready for you in about an hour." And an hour later a satisfied customer would leave clutching a paper bag filled with resistors, capacitors, transistors and many more goodies.

My local electronic supplier was Jack Porter.  His corner shop stood on the corner of College Street facing the magnificent Worcester Cathedral.  I would pass this way at least twice a day to and fro-ing from school. A dark and dingy shop.  So dark that on some cloudy days it was often impossible to see if Jack was in there at all.  His shelves and back rooms of cardboard boxes were an electronic cornucopia, and he boasted that not only were his prices the lowest in the city but also that he could match and supply any valve (U.S. tube) for any radio dating back to the Second World War.  I wonder what happened to old Jack Porter?  His shop closed many years ago and has been many things since.  Its latest incarnation is an estate agency.  (U.S.  Real estate office.)

Building the transmitter took but a few hours one weekend, but it had to sit on a shelf for another week before I found time to run some initial tests.  I enlisted the help of a school friend called John Buchanan who lived just around the corner.  (I wonder what happened to him also.)  We connected the transmitter to a reel-to-reel tape recorder onto which was loaded a tape of Dvorak's New World Symphony.  A ten foot length of coaxial cable connected the unit to a four foot telescopic antenna - which in turn was mounted atop an old fishing rod and fastened to the corner of the balcony outside my bedroom window.  The battery was connected, the tape was running, and we got on our bikes.

Each with a transistor radio the plan was to test the radius of the transmitter which was tuned to broadcast on 100 Mhz.  John would ride south and I would ride north, noting the signal strength every few hundred yards.  The reception to the north petered out after less than half a mile, but southwards the music was still audible a mile and a half down the road.

Back at the house I realized that I was now in control of a real, working radio station.  We celebrated with a bottle of orange pop and a packet of Jaffa Cakes!  But there were so many questions running through my mind.  What would the station be called?  When would it broadcast?  And what would it broadcast?

Where Jack Porter's once stood.