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Radio Tranquility |
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Radio Tranquility |
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After Happy Music Radio closed down, Colin Weston who
had been running Radio Tranquility for the past year contacted me. We agreed that I would
take over the running of the station as unfortunately Colin had personal problems that
meant he was unable to devote enough time to run the radio station properly.
Ironically during the past when I was running North London radio and a certain Christopher
England was running Radio Amy, Chris and I decided to do a spoof of Radio Tranquility and
to send them up as something sounding very silly. At the time NLR and AMY shared a public
house in Edmonton called "The Cambridge" for our weekly station meetings. Here
we would sort out the programming line up and decide which transmission site to use for
the coming weekend broadcasts.
Colin Weston with the rest of the Radio Tranquility team then decided, without invitation, to use our pub and bar to hold their meetings simultaneously. As fellow pirates we didn’t really mind too much although we did think it was a bit of a cheek.
It just so happened that the next Sunday fell on April 1st so the following week both Radio Amy and NLR recorded programmes with immense amounts of silliness using the name of Radio Tranquility. At this time the real Radio Tranquility only had a very low power transmitter and so could only be heard in a very small area of North London. In fact their transmitter power was just 5 watts. April 1st came and a 150 watt transmitter was unleashed with an aerial strung between the roofs of two tower blocks. We used exactly the same frequency as Radio Tranquility and put out a very strong signal across the whole of London and the Home Counties. The audio file below says it all.
Who would believe I then found myself running the very same station with the assistance of Peter Sharpe (Brian Smith) and also now having the responsibility to do something about its credibility. For the next eight months Radio Tranquility on 1368kHz was run using the same transmission sites and much the same equipment as the ex-NLR. Also many ex-NLR staff presented shows on the station.
Radio Tranquility then proved to be quite popular and was a fun station to run. However my interest in FM was beginning to get the better of me as I already had two FM transmitters just waiting to go ! Hence an announcement was made that we were going to be closing down Radio Tranquility in preparation for a new venture. So finally one Sunday in October 1979 the last transmission from Radio Tranquility was heard and with it, apart from the odd broadcast, my active involvement with MW pirating stopped. I guess this did not occur to me at the time but, on reflection, it was a shame as MW was where it all started for me back in 1975 and I had now said goodbye to it.
To listen to the audio files you will need Real Media Player you can download it here 
Listen to Brian Smith, test transmission recorded 10miles from transmission site
