2002

2002 started with the knowledge that many activities had taken place in the last months of 2001. In this case, that wouldn’t be the scenario for this year.

Test north america

The first activity in 2002 was noted February 17^th when a successful early morning test to North America was conducted on 6285 kHz. FRS considered to go on air in the May/ June period but propagation has been very poor and to be honest: it would have been a waste of time to put out a lengthy broadcast knowing that reception conditions would have been far from good. So, it was decided to save energy using it after the Summer period.
March 23^rd a brand new e-mail address came into force replacing all other ones: frs.holland@hccnet.nl.

long silence

Following a 6 months silence (!) FRS returned to the airwaves in the weekend of September 21^st/22^nd. Similar to the 2001 September broadcast, FRS decided to avoid 48 metres in favour of 41. Programmes commenced in the Saturday afternoon on 7450 kHz putting out a 4 hour schedule which was repeated several times over a 24+ hours period until the Sunday evening. Response was not as good as the previous year, most likely because of less favourable band conditions. But al in all we are satisfied. During the September broadcast Paul Graham made his debut show on FRS-Holland, hosting the FRS Golden Show with a great mix of familiar and rare oldie tracks from 60s & 70s.

Another anniversary: 22 years

The FRS 22nd birthday programmes went out on Sun October 27th. Minutes before the actual transmission would commence, we decided to change frequency from 7475 to 7480 kHz. There was “something” audible on 7475, not strong which we could not directly identify, thus we decided to play safe and shifted frequency to the clearer 7480 channel. Early in the morning propagation was good but that changed in the course of the morning. By then fading & noise badly affected the strong signal. Sad but true. On 48 metres a loop tape was informing the listeners that FRS was on 41 metres. The message was aired on 6210 and later that morning on 6275 kHz. Programme wise (and that’s what it’s all about)! the listening audience was offered a wide variety of music, DX information and programme items. And: the FRS Story: part of it was derived from our documentary ’10 Years in the Life of FRS-Holland’, released in 1990. It seemed every year, the number of different persons taking the trouble to write in, was decreasing. Very discouraging & disappointing but it seemed to be reality in shortwave free radio land. Special October 2002 QSL cards were printed. Despite less mail, FRS-Holland was determined to carry on trying to entertain listeners with professional programmes, various interesting radio-related programme items, a wide range of quality pop music, listeners’ letters and a serious DX Programme.

adventure & troubles in december

2002 had not finished yet and December 21st/22nd FRS should go out with  a 5+ hour X-Mas broadcast via a relay facility to be aired on 7475 kHz/41 metres. Plan was to repeat the shows over a period of 24 hours over the weekend. However, things would  take an unfavourable turn. In the late afternoon of Saturday December 21st it came as a very annoying and disappointing message that the package enclosing the programmes, had not arrived in time. The package was sent early Monday morning as a special delivery usually taking two days. Yes, we were aware of the fact that  postal services are very busy during the X-Mas Holiday Season with the millions of X-Mas cards being sent. But even though we felt it was hard & unbelievable that during the only period in the year, the postal services are really very busy, they are not able to deliver a package sent as a special delivery within 5 days! Late Saturday afternoon December 21st we had a big problem. The idea all efforts would have been for nothing made us decide to clutch at a straw. Mid evening we had arranged a site for Sunday morning, under normal circumstances this would have been impossible but not this time. Sunday morning December22nd at 08.20 CET we arrived at the transmitting site with a car full of equipment. At 09.00 all was ready for the broadcast including erecting the antenna system. After checking several freqs, we decided to tune the tx to 6210 kHz. Empty and clear. And then the problems started. For the first time we had recorded all programmes in MP3 format on one CD-R. First we didn’t get any audio into the modulator and when that problem was solved it appeared that the MP3 player was not putting out a constant audio stream. The audio was frequently interrupted, little pieces were skipped etc. This was caused by the MP3 player’s memory. Anyway, we prepared all well and for that reason a cassette deck and the original programme cassettes were also taken with us. But this was not the end of the technical troubles that Sunday morning. The very bad (and wet!) circumstances caused RF feedback on the cassette machine. It took some time before we managed to have a more or less loud and clean audio output into the modulator. We were forced to decrease the output power by some 35%, in addition we had to lower the modulation as well. At 09.45 CET, some 40 minutes after the tx was switched on, we had a satisfactory signal with good audio. Judging the e-mail reports we received plus the telephone reports during the transmission, there was only one conclusion: all worked very well and the 90W blank carrier provided a strong signal in our target area. Between 09.00- 09.50 CET FRS was received in the USA. Programmes ran until just before 14.00 CET and the schedule was slightly adjusted.  Part 3 & 4 of the FRS Story were not aired. The 2002 FRS X-Mas Party included Paul Graham’s FRS Golden Show, Off Beat by Mark Jones, Santa Peter is coming to town hosted by Peter Verbruggenand FRS Goes DXMas # 1 & 2. It was the 20th annual X-Mas broadcast so far and for that reason a special QSL card was issued !!

USA test

The X-Mas Season saw a short successful USA test on 6280 on the 29^th of December. Furthermore 2 hours of the December 22^nd programming were repeated on 6200 on Sunday December 29^th. That concluded the 2002 FRS activities. There was good news and the end of 2002: a fourth presenter would soon join the FRS ranks. Frank Carson- known from Dutch Radio Nova- would be presenting his debut show sometime in 2003.