Caroline on shortwave

This from Peter Moore, Caroline station manager, following the station's recent 9290 shortwave broadcast:

The Radio Caroline shortwave transmissions on 9290 with 20kW brought 16 replies from the UK, Italy, Norway, Japan, Greece, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Spain, Sweden and South Africa. I also received a report from Germany for 945 and from the United States for 6925. They were all from QSL seekers not listeners in the true sense, the music and presentation was noted for verification not for enjoyment.

I spent three hours writing replies and forwarded the reports to Raimonds in Latvia. Some people sent recordings on cassette or mini CD disc. I have 10 dollar bills and 8 IRCs. Raimonds gifted us the airtime so we will probably break even and of course the geographical spread of the signal was interesting but aside from state broadcasters shortwave really is just a novelty.

Radio Caroline may have a further dabble to see if listeners would come to a permanent shortwave music channel but mostly this is a project we are trying to complete out of respect for our departed colleague Rob Leighton. It has to be considered of course that only among a small anorak clique did anyone know about this broadcast; the reports were from people who discovered the signal and only had a three hour window to do so.

One could assume a better response if the signal was on full time. Rob Leighton loved shortwave and had built, at the time of his death, an almost complete and very efficient transmitter with a final output of 1 kW.

We had a loose arrangement that Raimonds in Latvia would link it in to the big aerial for 9290 and run a regular Caroline service. In his memory we will do our best to finalise that. Of course it will not be a mighty 100 kW but it will be an affordable project.

(Peter Moore, Caroline station manager, Pirate/Free Radio message board, via May World DX Club Contact via DX Listening Digest)