Hello from New Zealand!, Hi, and a little suggestion Options

[30'sNut]

Congrats on a very good radio station! I live in Palmerston North, NZ, and listen almost every day. My house, car and life are all based in the thirties, and it is very refreshing to hear real music that isn't comming out of one of my home gramophones. Down here we have a AM station called 'coast' which plays music from 50's- 60's which my vintage sets pick up nicley, but it plays no music from 1920-1940. So your station brings some nice relief into the home. I am origanaly from Napier, the art deco capital of the south pacific, and I have several friends there who have now started to tune in. The one very small thing we have all commented on is the lack of a period jingle introducing the station. This would just round off the music and period advertising nicley. I assume there is no vintage station broadcasting on short wave, that could be picked up here in nz on the old radio sets? I have found that if I connect a wire to my sets, and attach it to the apex of the roof- and down to the ground, I can pick up some stations all over the world. Wonderful contraption, the wireless! Keep up the good work Dismuke! we'll keep tuning in to a wonderful station!

[Terry]

Greetings from Upper Hutt

The internet is far more rewarding than shortwave for our kind of music. During the 70s ,80s and early 90s a great saturday night 4 hour program could be picked up in NZ from ABC Australia called 'Sentimental Journey' all 20s and 30s music, hosted by John West, with hour long contributions fom Graham Evans in Melbourne and sometimes great contributions from Tony Baldwin, a collector and sound engineer who seemed to spend all his time travelling around the world.

It could be easily received on medium wave during the winter months using a radiogram type valve receiver with an HF stage, until the Lange government sold off all the spare NZ wavelengths to local 'ethnic' radio. ABC also transmitted on shortwave around 5 MHz until ABC stopped it to save cash. There were so many Aussie ABC transmitters that if one faded out, another could be tuned in.

I went to great lengths building optimised directional antennae, front end circuitry, and a synchronous demodulator for an FRG700 in order to get ABC radio on medium wave through all the pops, crackles and whistles , then alas, the station pulled the plug on the program around 1994 as a cost saving measure.

The heyday of shortwave/medium wave jazz seemed to be during the 50s, when the jazz revival was still underway. There were many European stations putting out great programs, and there was VOA transmitting jazz and big band on the American Forces Network. I was in the UK at that time.