FRS History 1980-1989
1988
Article Index
On January 17th 1988 FRSH started a fresh, new year with a 4 hour transmission on 6324 kHz .
Poor start, new relay Unable to embed Rapid1Pixelout audio player. Please double check that: 1)You have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. 2)This web page does not have any fatal Javascript errors. 3)The audio-player.js file of Rapid1Pixelout has been included.
The signal was totally nulled out by utulity on the upper side band and the very poor conditions made things even worse. The FRS people were not able to contact the person who was operating the transmitter. It was Peter Verbruggen's habit to have the telephone number of the relay-station just to make sure that whenever it was needed, the OP could be informed about interference or other incidents. All in all it perhaps was the worst broadcast, (an all time low) as far as FRS-Holland's history is concerned. As a result it was decided to wait with further broadcasts until better relay facilities would turn up. Early 1988 FRS received the results of the 1987 PIN Magazine pop poll. Similar to 1986 FRS-Holland scored three number 1 positions. Good news making up a bit for the disappointing Januray broadcast. 
February and March were 'FRS less' but in April things were looking up. It was by coincident that Peter Verbruggen got into touch with a powerful Dutch station and to his own surprise the OP said 'yes' when Peter asked him about the possibility of relays. Friday April 15th, two days before the 3rd Sunday, three hours of tapes were sent by special messenger to a place somewhere in The Netherlands. It was intended to use 6205 but thursday April 14th Caroline engineers got the idea to move frequency from 6215 to 6205 and thus FRS was forced to look for another suitable frequency. 6260 was one of the few possibilities as there weren't that many x-tals available. In the UK much of FRS's signal suffered heavy interference from E.M.R., nót being the same station as the legendary E.M.R. led by Barry Stephens....Hear two comprehensive audio files from April 1988 (almost 15 minutes) giving a good indication how FRS sounded at that time...
Some 40 letters were received in the month of April for a transmission which was signal-wise far superior to and in no way comparable with the January and December transmissions. Part of the agreement with the Dutch station was that regular relays should take place and so the next broadcast was planned for May 15th 1988. Programmes had to be recorded just before the actual transmission turning the FRS studios in an old-fashioned madhouse rather than a normal recording studio. In one or another way some of the madness got a grip on the broadcast itself. Wednesday May 11th, four days before the transmission a 6205 x-tal was sent by post from Amsterdam. The little parcel with FRS programme tapes contained a further two x-tals: 6258 & 6260 kHz. One of these frequencies would only be used in case of emergency, 6205 would be the main frequency. But all too often the dice were loaded against FRS-Holland! The 6205 x-tal didn't arrive until Monday May 16th, too late to be used during the transmission. It appeared the relay station did have a 6201 x-tal which was in the eyes of Peter better than 6258 & 6260. Peter was in a cold sweat when at 09.45 CET, some 9 minutes before sign-on, Radio Tonair was on 6205 with a massive signal.
“I already had the phone in my hands to call our relay to tell him to move to 6258. But at 09.50 CET, 4 tiny minutes before our commencement Tonair's signal disappeared. I still don't know whether it was a matter of luck or because of the fact Tonair knew FRS was taking to the air. I guess the first reason comes closes to the truth.”