Radio North Sea International

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Radio Nordsee International (RNI; also Radio Northsea International and Radio Noordzee Internationaal ) was a well-known pirate station in the early 1970s that broadcast from a ship on the North Sea .

history

The station, initially financed by the Swiss inventors of perimeter advertising in sports stadiums, Norbert A. Gschwend and Cesar W. Lüthy, was founded by the two Swiss Erwin Meister and Edwin Bollier and started on January 23, 1970 with test broadcasts on VHF by a former cargo ship, the "Silvretta" (570 BRT ) which (after the holders to the name "Mebo 2" Me -ister and Bo -llier) was renamed. The originally planned "Mebo 1", a converted Norwegian coast guard ship (formerly Bjarkoy ), turned out to be too small for the stormy North Sea and served as a tender in the future .

Operation in Dutch waters

On January 22, 1970, the "Mebo 2" left the port of Rotterdam and anchored outside the three-mile zone off the coast of Noordwijk . On February 28, 1970, the signature tune: "Man of Action" by Les Reed started the official broadcast in German and English on MW , 1610 kHz and FM, 102 MHz. RNI broadcast topical pop and rock music 18 hours a day. Thanks to the powerful MW transmitter (105 kW), you could not only reach the whole of the Netherlands and Belgium , but also large parts of northwest Germany and southern England . Within a week, the Zurich headquarters received around 50,000 letters from enthusiastic listeners. At the end of March 1970, the Mebo 2 left the Dutch coast and anchored off the English coast in international waters at Clacton-on-Sea .

Change to English waters

In April 1970, the Labor government, which had also signed the "Anti-Pirate Law", began massively jamming the RNI frequencies. RNI then supported the Conservatives in the election campaign. The Tories won the election, but jamming remained and only stopped when the Mebo 2 anchored off the Dutch coast off Scheveningen in July 1970. There followed arson attacks by a Dutch nightclub owner and several frequency changes due to alleged malfunction reports from state broadcasters.

Intermittent broadcast pause and final end

In October 1970, RNI fell silent in exchange for a “hush money” of one million guilders from its competitor “ Radio Veronica ”.

After repayment of the amount to "Radio Veronica", the broadcasts were resumed in February 1971 with a Dutch-English program. Another bomb attack on Mebo 2 on May 15, 1971 - the transmitter and Mebo 2 could barely be saved - prompted the Dutch government to ratify the Anti-Pirate Law (Marine Offence Act), too made supplying the ship a punishable offense. Broken anchorages and severe damage to the 52-meter-high transmission masts caused by North Sea storms led to frequent transmission failures from 1973 onwards. RNI was also charged with allegations of sending encrypted messages on behalf of the East German MfS after the broadcast had closed . In view of the threatened closure by the Dutch government, RNI started a legalization campaign in July 1973 - but in vain: On the night of September 1, 1974, broadcasting (as with Radio Veronica) had to be finally stopped.

Whereabouts of the sending ships

After a thorough restoration in 1976, the transmitter was supposed to be sold to Italy in 1977 and to go back on the air as Radio Nova off the Italian coast near Genoa . These plans failed and both ships, the Mebo 1 and Mebo 2, now renamed Almasira and El Fatah , were sold to Libya and broadcast religious programs for the People's Revolutionary Army of Muammar al-Gaddafi from 1978 to 1983 . In 1984 they were sunk by the Libyan Navy in the Gulf of Sidra.

Technical specifications

Technical data of the Mebo 2

  • Length: 60 m
  • Width: 9 m
  • Displacement: 570 GRT
  • Speed ​​11 knots

Transmitter data

Frequencies

  • MW / AM: 220 m (1367 kHz)
  • SW 1: 49 m band (6205 kHz)
  • SW 2: 31 m band (9935 kHz)
  • VHF / FM: 100 MHz (channel 44)

Web links

literature

  • Karl Lüond: No license , in: NZZ Folio , March 2007, p. 40 ff.
  • Johannes Ruhr: Music from the Sea . Radio series. Radio Ostfriesland , 2003

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Radio Pirates in Switzerland , SRF Archive