nightvision

Badger

I think I am from the last of my generation that made crystal sets with their dad. I can still remember the magic of hearing The Beatles played on Wonderful Radio London through ex-BBC high impedance headphones. The rest of the set being just a coil wound on a toilet roll, a germanium crystal diode, a variable tuning capacitor, and a 1000pf decoupling capacitor, of course, there was the aerial, a 50ft length of wire out of the bedroom window to a tree and the earth connection to the cold water pipe. No batteries, no power….FREE radio!!!!. Just fantastic.

1967 came and Harold Wilson closed down the offshore pirate stations. I remember being in the sixth form centre at Heath Clark Grammar School in Waddon, and seeing a girl crying at the lost of Big L. Then the talk around all the Croydon schools was about Radio Helen on 197 metres. Land based pirate radio station. I had to be a part of this.

Having played around with crystal sets, people thought I could build a transmitter. Luckily for us budding radio enthusiasts, Croydon had several radio junk shops where we could get cheap parts. Sadly, all have now gone, the largest of which was an emporium called Huggett’s, which was run by Tom Huggett and his wife. She was always amused that I kept my money in my sock because my jeans or bright red loons were so tight, I could not use my pockets.

My first attempt to build a medium wave transmitter resulted in a burnt hole in my bedroom carpet. I had copied a design of a marine transmitter but had failed to appreciate that it was designed to run off a DC supply on a boat and not the AC mains…..no thought of rectification and smoothing, result; big bang.

Before I had success with my own build, I met up with Andy Mac the technical brains behind Radio Helen. Through contacts, girls at my school who had been on dates with boys from other schools, I eventually met up with guys from Selhurst Grammar School and the Norbury area who were involved with the Radio Helen network. By this time, the Helen network was starting to fall apart. The principle was fine, in that each station transmitted for half an hour and then pasted on to the next. The reality was that it often ended up in chaos for many reasons; technical breakdowns, one station not hearing another, etc, etc.

I teamed up with two Daves from Norbury, one of whom knew Andy well and he gave us what was the largest of the Radio Helen transmitters and we hit 197 metres as Radio Active. Andy subsequently went to study engineering at Hatfield and I believe became a television transmitter engineer. Does anybody know of his whereabouts these days? If you do, pleae email us.

Chris Day

I’ll start in the sixties.  I was spoilt as a child, having chemistry sets, Mecano by the truckload, dinky toys and anything else I wanted, that being my crystal radio to listen to Luxemburg and AFN. Being a gadget boy, I rigged up a sound system (I should say bodged!) using two odd Garrard decks wired together through one amp; ex-army speakers wired together with sound coming through nil ohms and 5 watts…Great!!

Did you ever have a system like it?  All this took place in my cosy chalet at the bottom of the garden (we had a guest house and there was never a spare room for me!)  It also entailed having 30ft of wire along the fence for an aerial.  Then I hit the Big Time when my Dad bought me a radio with a camera built in. I’ve never seen one since.  It could pick up anything – Radio England, Caroline, London – you name it, I heard it.

So with my love of music and a deep desire to be a disc jockey firmly embedded,  I began entertaining the school on rainy lunch breaks, playing pop music and snippets of reel to reel recordings from Caroline and London (jingles).  This was all done on two black box record players!! 

It was an all boys school, so we smuggled the girls in from the school opposite – and got caught every time!!!

I progressed to playing at my local youth club three times a week.  I thought I was so smooth turning up in my rusty Zephyr 4 with my records and double-deck system which had no start button and only rotary controls…Wow!!  I didn’t ‘t utter a word on the mike for eighteen months until one evening we had visitors from another club – even then all I could mutter was “here’s a record” and “that was a record”!!!

My life changed when I saw a DJ from Radio Caroline south ship in action.  I was in awe and something inside me clicked and I knew this was going to be my vocation. 

I bought my first proper decks (F.A.L. 100s and lights) and thought I was the dog’s bollocks!  I got more and more cocky (as you do when you’re a Superstar!!) and bought numerous lights and Citronic decks.  Needless to say the Zephyr had to be replaced by a van (ex GPO van in yellow!)  I got some very interesting gigs apart from weddings and parties. 

One in particular was as warm up for The Troggs at Clacton Town Hall.  It was a good night and a laugh interviewing them.  I do believe that’s where I go my first whiff of a spliff!!

I took over at Butlins from Larry Marshall who left quite suddenly and felt as though I have been pushed to stardom!!

I have met many famous DJs including Robbie Vincent (I played at his 40th), Dave Lee Travis (whom I had to ask to remove his cigar from my deck!), Pat Sharp (did an opening night with him) plus many others from The Pirates.

Nowadays I’ve gone from ‘Big Chris Superstar DJ’ to ‘Big Chris pipe and slippers’!!