Radio Sutch

Radio City was a British pirate radio station broadcasting from Shivering Sands Army Fort, one of the abandoned Second World War Maunsell Sea Forts in the Thames Estuary.

In 1964, following the launch of Radio Caroline, Screaming Lord Sutch said he would start his own station. On 27 May Radio Sutch began broadcasting on 194 metres (announced as 197), 1542 kHz, from the south tower of Shivering Sands. It was a low-powered, low-budget operation. The transmitter, from a Handley Page Halifax bomber, was powered with a cascade of car batteries, a scaffold pole with a skull-and-crossbones flag as an antenna. By September 1964 Sutch had become tired of it and sold it to his manager Reginald Calvert for a reported £5,000. Calvert bought new equipment and expanded the station into other towers. One of the original seven towers had been destroyed when a ship collided with it, leaving the northernmost tower isolated. The remaining five were connected by catwalks in an irregular star shape. Calvert's team repaired the catwalks and refurbished the facilities and living quarters. New studios were built, a more powerful transmitter installed, and the station experimented with new antenna configurations and frequencies (1034 and eventually 1003 kHz). Initially antenna wires were strung around the periphery of the towers. This was unsuccessful due to poor insulation. Later a vertical mast was erected on the central tower, supported by guy wires on three of the surrounding towers, and the station adopted the nickname "your tower of power". Although output never exceeded 2 kW, the efficiency of the antenna combined with its location over water (a reflector of radio waves) gave it the coverage of a more powerful land-based station, and Radio City claimed a power of 10kW for the purpose of attracting advertisers.

The studio equipment was standard albeit low-budget, comprising a pair (later three) of Garrard turntables, an AKG D12 microphone (the same model used by both Radio Caroline ships, Radio London and Radio 270), domestic tape decks and a basic custom mixer. A US navy transmitter General Electric TCJ-7 (nicknamed "Big Bertha") replaced the bomber transmitter, instead of the makeshift scaffolding pole antenna, a real antenna mast was used. Most stations played jingles and commercials from cartridges but City used reel-to-reel. In addition to the usual music programmes, subsidised by Dutch and American evangelical shows, City had the only comedy show on pirate radio - The Auntie Mabel Hour, recordings of DJs acting comic sketches and parodying contemporary songs. Some material seems to have been stolen from The Goon Show and Round the Horne. At Christmas 1966 the show featured a parody of Alice in Wonderland and included the DJs singing new comic lyrics to instrumental versions of popular songs.

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