2006

2006 wouldn’t particularly become a good year… On the contrary: a memorable year in the FRS History but certainly not in a positive way.

An all time low

The first and only broadcast that year took place in December implying FRS had been off air for almost one year…an all time low! Apart from a brief 40W test on 6210 on Sunday August 28^th, it was Sunday December 17^th when FRS returned  to the airwaves via a new relay: Mystery Radio on 6220 kHz. Thanks to Chris, who acted as an intermediary to ensure that we could obtain this relay.
Sunday December 17th marked the return of FRS-Holland, following a (too long) period of inactivity. The previous full broadcast was the one on Boxing day December 26th 2005.
On Sunday December 10th 09.00– 10.00 UTC a 60 minute programme was aired on 6220 promoting the upcoming December 17th broadcast. In addition a great number of listeners were informed by e-mail. Programmes were aired between 10.00– 14.00 CET. Reception was fair/good in wide areas although  propagation certainly was not what we hoped for. After 11.00 CET things got worse and there was a high amount of noise, a very unstable 48 mb. Particularly in the UK reception was poor. But that’s shortwave… In case FRS would have been on air over the X-Mas period, things would have been even worse: conditions on the 24th, 25th & 26th of December were appalling!

FRS welcomes Jan van dijk

Encouraging was that December saw the 60 minute debut show of new German presenter Jan van Dijk– not a stranger in shortwave free radio land- being the eighth German FRS jock in 26+  years! ! He was a more than welcome addition to the now decimated FRS team. It was Jan’s predecessor- Mark Jones– who approached Jan joining the FRS ranks. Speaking of involvement! Since his entrance at FRS, Jan would be very involved in brainstorming and proposing various ideas. A valuable sounding board for Peter!
Jan van Dijk’s show featured two brand new items: ‘Vergessene Piraten’ (Forgotten Pirates) and Uplink (covering an interesting radio-related website). Certainly a well-produced programme with a nice choice of alternative music. And finally this: newcomer Jan van Dijk was involved in the preparations for this broadcast. Unfortunately, it was uncertain whether Paul Graham could record his show on time and send it by mail. So we skipped that show ands thus only two presenters were to be heard December 17th.

The final 2006 activity was a test to North America on Boxing Day. Oddly enough, we couldn’t find any details about this broadcast in the carefully maintained FRS archive. It is and remains a blind spot…