Radio Telstar South was the FIRST Golden Oldies station to ever hit the airwaves in the United Kingdom. The first transmissions were made in 1976 by Roy Wass (Radio Grid) and Nigel Davies from Wrotham Hill in Kent. A new breakthrough design for a transistorised transmitter had recently been completed by Michael Martin and this was the catalyst for the first test transmission.
Roy built a valve Power Amplifier stage to increase the power to a reasonable level and everything was ready to go for the first test. The equipment was loaded into Nigel's car and they set off to the highest hill they knew. For this transmission the equipment was run from the back seat of Nigel's car, (an Austin 1300 in police blue) and the aerial lead taken out of the vehicle and up an extremely large pole which was attached the rear bumper of the car. No programme was made for this transmission and a tape was quickly selected out of Roy's collection which just happened to feature the Beatles (Roy loved the Beatles) this was put into the cassette machine for the test. The response later proved to be very good, even though early transmissions were unannounced tests.
The first broadcast, however, didn't quite go to plan. Indeed it only lasted about ten minutes. Michael Martin's exciter (the name given to the low powered part of the transmitter) was set up and that all proved to work fine. After this initial test , Roy was eager to add his 100 watt valve power amplifier stage which was to be operated by a massive rotary transformer used to provide the high voltage needed by the valve. At the point he connected it, there was a blinding flash and everything fell silent. Once the smoke had cleared Nigel realised that most of the back seat of his car was missing!! It had melted it from the heat of the giant spark caused by the rotary. Oh, happy days!!!
Despite all this, the two were encouraged that they had had exceptionally good signal reports prior to the accident - even without the power stage. The following week the same exercise was carried out and, on this occasion all went to plan and Nigel's car was spared any further loss of its interior! More importantly, the power stage made a phenomenal difference to the signal and colleagues of Roy and Nigel were convinced the tests were coming from just a few miles away from their homes. In fact Wrotham was more than 30 miles away which gives you some idea of how well the transmissions propagated!
Telstar started transmissions on a regular basis shortly after this and became the most popular pirate radio station on the air during the late seventies. You must realise that a Golden Oldies station had never been tried before in the United Kingdom and it created masses of interest. It seems strange looking back, that no Golden Oldies stations existed then, especially with the plethora of Gold stations that clutter up medium wave today, but at the time there was nothing to touch Radio Telstar. Kid Johnson became the most well known presenter on Telstar along with Horace Cracksman. (who on Earth thought of that name; must have been KJ eh!).
Dave Reading also regularly appeared on the station and did a lot of post production jingle work. Dave Reading was responsible for the Kenny Everett jingles used on Radio Free London today. Apparently he visited Kenny Everett at his home and Kenny did the jingles for RFL. Nigel Davies also became a regular presenter for the first two years of the station's life eventually being replaced by Spark Flashman (Tom Lamming) when Nigel left to pursue a professional career in radio.
Later, Dawn Peters joined and did many programmes including several Shadows spectaculars, and also recorded many of the Telstar jingles for the other DJ's. Dawn went on to join Radio Free London in 1988 where she also did voice overs and jingles with Mike Burnett.
Dawn Peters has always been much in demand for her voice overs and jingle making ability and has made personality idents for Mark Ashton, Kid johnson, Dave reading and Mike Burnett to name but a few. The giggling often heard at the end of a Dawn Peters jingle is usually an outake that sounded so good it was included in the final master. Part of the process of making jingles with Dawn is the giggling that occurs and has often had the whole studio in complete hysterics and unable to carry on.
Dawn Peters also helped with site work and was the person who replied to the letters and took phone calls on the station. She was once taking calls in a phone box with Dave Reading in Beckenham, Kent and suddenly they found themselves surrounded by Police!!! In a recent interview She said..."We were all questioned and told the police it was a meeting place and when asked why we were all carrying radio's we said we were listening to the top twenty chart show! We were all questioned one by one and I refused to give my age to the policeman! I remember Mark Ashton driving past in his car watching it all going on; I think he was in a Capri"
There were many regular listeners to Telstar and it's only right that a few of them should be mentioned here. Memories of the most avid listeners would be... The Potty Family, Carol, Dibs and Paul, who still send Dawn Peters a Christmas card to this day. Jim in Sidcup (now past away), Noel Pritchard, Erica Edwards, Gavin Lawrence and Steven Cruikshank from West Wickham.
There were many other behind the scenes helpers including Alan Ford who offered the use of his address and sometimes telephone number too for the Telstar mail. He was also responsible for helping to put the aerials at the top of some very high trees, which ensured Telstar could be heard loud and clear most weeks. The station broadcast on that favourite frequency of 92.8MHz VHF and usually broadcast for just one hour from 7 till 8pm on a Sunday night. This later increased to two hours during the early eighties.
Radio Telstar certainly cheered up my dull Sunday evenings before it was time to make for the pub. Sundays were staggeringly dull in those days and Radio Telstar gave us a short but very enjoyable lift from this darkness. It was not unknown for Telstar to get over 100 phone calls during the hour they were on air and at it's peak, hundreds of letters were arriving each week. This was a record response in its day and considerably more popular than Radio Jackie which had been established for many more years.
During those early days, Telstar always broadcast from field sites out in the wilds of Kent and therefore had to cover a lot of unpopulated land before reaching most of their audience. It would have been a better idea to broadcast from a high point closer to London but this wasn't easy with the way Telstar was run.
During 1982 Mike Burnett had been working on a powerful FM transmitter and UHF link system in preparation for launching his own station called London Rock. Kid Johnson and Mike are good friends and Mike suggested to KJ that he may like to use the transmission system for a few weeks as there was no other use for it at the time. Suspiciously KJ agreed and we gave him instructions to join us at a house in Gipsy Hill, South London for his next Sunday transmission.
Mike Burnett and Bob Dunn had been working together to get all the equipment installed at a derellict building in Westow Street Crystal Palace and Bob had erected the aerial high up on the disused communications mast on top of the old Barkers Piano building in Westow Street. This site is now occupied by Safeway.
Mike wasn't working at the time and spent much of the day testing out the TX system and making regular trips to the site to alter things. Bob had the 470MHz PLL link transmitter (470.250MHz) sitting on the floor in his front room, connected to his ordinary TV aerial which was pointing at Crystal Palace. The system was designed this way so that any ordinary TV aerial could be used as a link aerial and of course it would always be pointing at our main site which was in the same place as the legal TV transmitters.
We had a few problems with the main transmitter Power Amplifier when we installed the system and we had blown the output transistor. Just so we could test the link out properly Mike had connected the 100mW (1/10th watt) driver stage to the aerial and took the main amplifier box away for repairs. We tested the system like this and Bob would play some music through it now and then so we could see how well the link was working. I heard it in Catford (about 4 miles away) in my car and at the time Bob was getting about 1 LED showing on his hifi.
After a couple of days I replaced the main power amplifier while Bob was at work, and he had quite a shock when he came home that evening and fired up the link! Now he was getting all LEDs alight on his Hifi and little beknown to us the transmitter was now being heard throughout south east England. After repairs, the transmitter was conservatively producing 120 watts and as we were in mono it was favourably competing with the legal stations who were of course using stereo. (Using stereo degrades the received audio by about 10 times).
This is where Telstar comes in...
KJ came round to Bob's house on a Sunday evening as planned and we plugged his Philips EL3302 cassette machine into the link transmitters audio input and waited for 7pm. Just before 7pm we pressed a button on the front of the link transmitter which sent a coded signal to the main FM rig to turn it on. At 7pm we started the cassette machine and Telstar was instantly on the air. KJ was stunned and kept tuning around on his radio convinced we were playing a practical joke on him. He kept searching for a bug transmitter in the house as it was so strong. I remember that every time he went to sit down, he shot up again just before he touched the seat with yet another inquisitive question to Bob or myself. He made a few calls to check that the transmission was 'for real', and when the transmission was over, we all went down the pub and celebrated Telstar's new found success.This continued for a week or two but it attracted the attention of Eric Gotts and co. They were convinced the transmission was coming from woodland behind the site in Westow Street as it was unheard of for Telstar to run from a building. If any of the people who tried to raid us on that night are reading this, then they will now know the truth. They didn't find it that week and in fact the transmitter continued service from that site until Barker Piano's was demolished some months later. The transmitter and link system was eventually moved to another site at number one Sydenham Hill and gave 6 months of service to London Rock before inevitably being sacrificed to the authorities. C'est la vie !
Written by Mike Burnett with additions from Nigel Davis December 1998
Radio
Telstar South
Kid Johnson in the RFL studio, preparing for a Translondon radio programme in 1978. Translondon radio was put on air as a fun station during bank holidays in 1977 and 1978. Kid Johnson usually broadcast every Sunday on Radio Telstar along with Horace Cracksman.
KJ Checking the levels before starting his programme..
Listen to
Radio Telstar (Real audio)
Kid And Horace at there best in Golden Square (19th Feb 1984)
More from kid And Horace the following week (26th February 1984)
The above clips are Real audio streams so there is no download waiting time.
Last updated 05 May 2000