From Cowshed to Caravan
The story of a North Essex Pirate
Radio Rainbow was first set up in 1983 and operated from a disused cowshed in the small N. Essex village of Great Bardfield. Rainbow was started by John Dene , after a bad experience with hospital radio , Oh yes the dreaded "you will play Johnny Mathis and Max Bygraves " speech by Hospital Radio Chelmsfords then Program controller Ken Oliver , finished off with the "the patients do not appreciate Jimi Hendrix" bawl was enough to start the grey matter working. What finally did the trick was appendicitis.......and a week on the recieving end of ........yup....Hospital Radio Chelmsford. John ordered a transmitter , whilst still in hospital , from a South London constructor and took delivery of a 100W rig tuned to 104Mhz two weeks later.
Studio in the shed
The station had a crew of 6 for the first month of broadcasting , Rainbow went to air on Sundays from 12 noon and closed down between midnight and 3 am , as interest grew in the station so did the crew , several presenters came from HRC swapping loyalties. By the sixth month on air the headcount had reached 19. With the station now on air Sunday from 10 am til 2 am and Monday , Wednesday and Friday evenings from 6pm til 1 am. Rainbow's music format was pretty much biased towards rock although a couple of presenters from HRC were more interested in chart music......this inevitably found its way into their programs.
Stampf and Skinner hic!! in the Shed 1992
The studio at this time was pretty ropey.....consisting of a 1970's disco console , loaned to the station by Elvic Electronics of Braintree in exchange for advertising , an open reel tape machine and a couple of cassette decks. However , one of the new recruits , Bob Stevens , a director of a local computer firm put up some cash and commisioned a custom built mixer from an ex Beeb engineer , although Rainbows output was mono the new mixer was constructed for stereo operation , to get around the need to fit a compressor limiter , the desk had the facility for metering and adjusting output levels during prefade , this idea came from the old ITN mixer used at HRC. A new twin deck was ordered from London Acoustic Developments , this proved to be a mistake as the electronic speed control went haywire when the transmitter was turned on and instead of the required 33 rpm the decks were hitting 120 rpm , the transmitter and antenna had to be moved.
Jon Dene
Rainbow had a few distinguished visitors during this one and a half year stint , Chris Cortez dropped in one day , displaying better tracking skills than the DTI , just to say hello , Chris was and maybe even still is involved with the Radio Caroline Group and Radio Caroline Shortwave. Andy Johnson alias Cosmic joined Rainbow during his shore leave from Caroline and presented a series of excellent programs , another shining star on Rainbows airwaves was David Andrews , head always buried in an NME , who followed Andy out to the Ross and did several stints during the Dyoptric seige , he followed this up with several years at Chiltern leaving their drive time program to present weekend Breakfast on Capital Gold.
The Studio in the caravan 1992
Rainbow closed down of its own volition early in 85 , with just a small nudge in the ribs from the BBC . One Sunday afternoon a BBC van with a pump up mast on the roof was seen entering the village , fortunately the messenger reached us before them , an announcement was made and the transmitter turned off , unfortunately the mast for the antenna was about 60 foot high and we were found , photographs were taken and the men from the BBC disappeared.No more was heard and Rainbow stayed off the air for 10 yrs. Part two tells of how the Pheonix rose from the ashes........only to crash and burn.
LBG
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