1983 Raids - State Papers

Infoanon

The 30 year wait is over , the 1983 state papers are now public - article in todays Irish Times - warning of chaos on Irish airwaves from pirate stations.

Losty Dublin

Infoanon wrote: »

The 30 year wait is over , the 1983 state papers are now public - article in todays Irish Times - warning of chaos on Irish airwaves from pirate stations.

Here is a link to said piece.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/warning-of-chaos-on-airwaves-from-pirate-stations-in-1983-1.1637920

To the informed anorak there is nothing of any note in the report. A trowel through the papers in Bishop Street may uncover some more information but it's old news as such.

Infoanon

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Here is a link to said piece.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/warning-of-chaos-on-airwaves-from-pirate-stations-in-1983-1.1637920

To the informed anorak there is nothing of any note in the report. A trowel through the papers in Bishop Street may uncover some more information but it's old news as such.

Agree - no mention of who authorised the raids, Jim Mitchell wanted to phase out illegals as legals came on air which may point the finger to others within the government or in the P&T, and very little about the overseas complaints (probably the importing of the 50kw).

Whild old news the event was of huge significance to the future of Irish Radio.

Losty Dublin

Infoanon wrote: »

Agree - no mention of who authorised the raids, Jim Mitchell wanted to phase out illegals as legals came on air which may point the finger to others within the government or in the P&T, and very little about the overseas complaints (probably the importing of the 50kw).

Whild old news the event was of huge significance to the future of Irish Radio.

Nova AM was known to interfere with stations in the UK (One in Scotland was referred to in Radio Radio.) and I am sure that Sunshine has it's fair share of splatter as well. The FM signal from both was a lot tighter and refined as was the audio so interference was not an issue, certainly not intentionally. Let's be fair to these guys and the ERI's and ABC Waterford's of the world as they used pro grade equipment and engineers from top to bottom; it was the many semi pro/amateur/hobby/chancer/gouger operators who were causing most of the problems.

The main rationale of why the raids took place will always go back to RTE and P+T of the day being in the ****s and pressurising for something to be done, pending the introduction of legalised competition. In the main these would have been the chief decision; the rumours of the 50KW Exidy rig was most likely the straw on the camels back. Doubtless, Cary's big talking self convinced the world of alternative reasons as to why it happened instead of the most obvious one

jmcc

The one thing about Pirate Radio was that it upset the those in power because it was far more difficult to control than RTE. While there were some technical problems, Ireland had a very vibrant pirate radio scene for the size of the country. It appeared that more people were listening to the Pirate Radio stations than RTE and that naturally upset the government and the politicians.

Regards...jmcc

Infoanon

The

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Nova AM was known to interfere with stations in the UK (One in Scotland was referred to in Radio Radio.) and I am sure that Sunshine has it's fair share of splatter as well. The FM signal from both was a lot tighter and refined as was the audio so interference was not an issue, certainly not intentionally. Let's be fair to these guys and the ERI's and ABC Waterford's of the world as they used pro grade equipment and engineers from top to bottom; it was the many semi pro/amateur/hobby/chancer/gouger operators who were causing most of the problems.

The main rationale of why the raids took place will always go back to RTE and P+T of the day being in the ****s and pressurising for something to be done, pending the introduction of legalised competition. In the main these would have been the chief decision; the rumours of the 50KW Exidy rig was most likely the straw on the camels back. Doubtless, Cary's big talking self convinced the world of alternative reasons as to why it happened instead of the most obvious one

The rumour has always been that Nova was raided without ministerial approval and that Sunshine was an unfortunate casualty.

Any alleged interferance would have been to FM services - one allegation was that the Nova and Kiss signal was mixing - however the signals came from different sites - though it is true that there was interferance in the very early days when Nova put on 1kw from Herbert Street.

As already mentioned, Nova had professonal transmitters and audio processing - more advanced than RTEs equipment, RTE of course had an AM that would splatter the whole band every now and then...

For the record:

Novas 10kw on 819 may have caused minor issues to BBC Scotland on 810, Sunshine 531 was only circa700watts on a very clear channel, the Big issue was the 50kw and the soon to be installed new mast in Nova Park that had the ILRs up in arms, especially those along the west coast like Red Rose.