Gordon McCallum was a transmitter engineer on board Radio Scotland when it started broadcasting from off the coast of Dunbar at the end of December 1965. He still has the original crystal from the RCA transmitter, discarded when the frequency had to be changed because of interference problems. He has very kindly shared some photographs with The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. The captions in inverted commas are Gordon's own comments: |
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Gordon McCallum. The above photo shows him “increasing the power output slowly. The signal generator was used as a frequency source (after discarding the original crystal) until
a clean frequency was found and a new crystal manufactured.”
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| The tender coming alongside the Comet at dusk. | |
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| Engineer at work. | |
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| The driver and PA (power amplifier) stages of a Radio Scotland transmitter. | |
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| “This sub surfaced alongside us. They sent a boarding party over in a rubber boat. We thought the game was up but they gave us a bottle of whisky and wanted requests.” Radio 390 had a vist from a sub too - see here. | |