2008

2008 would become yet another year with very low activity. But listeners wouldn’t forget us!

waiting till november!

In 2008 listeners had to wait over 300 days until hearing FRS on the airwaves. Four hours of programmes were broadcasted on Sunday November 2nd between 10.00– 14.00 CET, one hour too late because of a minor misunderstanding. It was originally intended to have a broadcast a week earlier on the 26^th of October but German colleague station Radio Marabu  were ahead of us and had already hired the 6220 facility. Luckily propagation was better than the previous November broadcast in 2007. In the afternoon the complete broadcast was repeated as streaming audio via the Internet. With just over 40 reports, response was satisfactory.

December

December 25^th and 26^th Peter Verbruggen– together with BRI’s Roger Davis- was invited to participate in the Christmas programming of Dutch KBC Radio Peter produced two 60 minute shows which were aired between 13- 14 UTC via the mighty 100 kW tx in Lithuania.
2008 would have one more broadcast in store. FRS very much liked to continue the success of the end of the year broadcast- remember December 30^th  2007 – and Sunday December 28th 2008 was set as date. Many preparations preceded the broadcast. For example, new jingles were recorded, and the completion of the new ‘FRS Transmitter’ QSL series was finalized. And: a listeners’ competition was produced.
Apart from the 6220 outlet, a 2^nd new relay was to be used. Programmes went out on  6220 & 6400 between 09.00– 14.00 CET. On 6400 the complete schedule was repeated during afternoon & part of the evening. In addition: during the morning hours 6400 was running in parallel with 3945.  In the afternoon between 13.30-14.30 UTC, the DX Show was aired with no less than 100 kW on 9770 kHz/ 31 mb (with thanks to KBC’s Tom de Wit!). Programmes that day included FRS’ full line up including Jan van Dijk, Peter Verbruggen, Mike Anderson and Paul Graham. Ingredients: besides the best in pop music, a 2008 Free Radio review, listener’s competition, flashbacks to December 1988 & 1998, 60 minutes of DX News, and a Joop ter Zee tribute. Propagation was fair to good that day and we received a total of almost 90 letters/ mails. Unfortunately the 9770 part was aired one hour too early due to a misunderstanding. As a result several DXers missed that hour as they tuned in one hour too late…  Reports were received from as far away as Japan and Israel (6400!!).  Response really was overwhelming and encouraging!

Finally: the November-December edition 33 of ‘FRS News’ was a 7 page bumper one being  the first to be published in colour.