This vintage Media Network from March 1986 includes a visit to Maastricht, which was then home to a regional station called ROZ, (Regional Broadcaster South). The station's head was Armand Sliepen, who years later joined Radio Netherlands, mainly to run the expansion of the BVN project. The programme also includes news of a bombing at Radio Veritas in the Philippines.

More time travel, this time 32 years!. Welshman Tony Jones, who lived in South America at the time of this recording, later went on to help with editing Passport to World Band Radio. He made a series of talks about broadcasting in several countries in Latin America. We didn't have much in the way of recordings to illustrate the piece. You can see the restrictions 12 years before the we had access to the Internets. This programme also includes the voice of John Campbell explaining the Radio Beauvais hoax. He also talks about the tradition of Sunday morning pirates and the Radio Freedom broadcasts towards apartheid South Africa.

The programme was recorded in 1982 after the first stone laying ceremony on the site of the new transmitter site for Radio Netherlands on the Flevo polder. I remember it well because the fog came down that day and it was almost impossible for the coach to find its way back to the road. The Flevo polder wasn't as developed as it is today. The late Joop Acda, then DG of Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, explains the thinking behind the new station. Jim Vastenhoud, Director of Technical Services, talks about energy saving technology to reduce the collosal power bill. Four 500 kW transmitters used 3.2 Megawatts of energy from the mains.

A new time signal station has appeared on 6450 kHz operated by the Australian Navy, replacing the service that has been provided until now by VNG. Paul Ballster reports power cuts to both BBC domestic and commercial networks. BBC has trouble restoring power to its 648 kHz service in Oxfordness. Shortwave radio stations used to get a huge postbag before email made correspondence so much easier. The bulk of the mail was often a request for a QSL card or a programme schedule. Can correspondence with Eastern European stations in 1987 get you in trouble with Western authorities? Austrian Radio (ORF) has discovered that they have to send letters to listeners in the GDR with a handwritten envelope. Remember Earl Hunter of Radio Morania? (a parody creation from Kim Andrew Eliott) Tony Hackley at the real VOA reports an upward surge in mail response. Graham Mytton of the BBC IBAR says listeners get the best chance of an answer by writing in English. Least likely is Hindi! At Radio Australia they make sure the letters get to the producer concerned. There is also news from the bands from Andy Sennitt and Ginger da Silva.

Media Network didn't only cover broadcast technology. Occasionally we ventured into other areas where radio played a role, like radio astronomy. It was an opportunity to visit the only radio telescope facility in the Netherlands at Westerbork. It is still there. This programme from 1986 also includes the voice of Arthur Cushen and Fred Osterman of Universal Electronics in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

This programme revisited a recurring topic; what is the future of radio? In 1999 it was clearly going to be DAB as well as the web. In other words we thought it was going to hybrid back then. This edition of the programme looked at major changes rumoured at the BBC World Service as well as Radio France Internationale. Radio Netherlands Bonaire relay station has been having delay problems. Jim Cutler also has the dig-deeper jingle which always brings a smile. I believe this is yet another example of how Radio Netherlands made maximum use of the resources sent in by its community of listeners. They were not letter writers, they were collaborators. The photo below shows the digital editors (Dalet) that we used to produce the programme on.

At the end of 1999 I made a trip to Australia and New Zealand. This programme includes an interview with Adrian Sainsbury, the technical frequency engineer at Radio New Zealand International. Feels like yesterday. The photo shows Adrian when I met him on that trip to Auckland.

Despite the fact that ham radio is over 100 years old, this hobby was still very much alive in 1999. About 15,000 people in The Netherlands had a radio ham licence. The many aspects of this fascinating hobby are highlighted in this museum, which now even has a DIY corner for the youngest soon-to-be amateur radio operators. Diana Janssen and I were at the opening of this museum in Budel in February of 1999. As of February 2014 I'm pleased to report the museum is still there, open twice a month.

This news edition of the programme discussed your letters. We caught up on peace keeping radio, and the sale of Harry Helms shortwave website. In his farewell message, Harry predicted the demise of shortwave radio because they didn't understand the communications business. Of course, he was right. Fast and cheap web access is going each shortwave's lunch. We also had receiver news about Grundig. Grundig used to be a daughter organisation of Philips.

This edition ot the programme recalled the old and new versions of the Radio Ham sketch made famous by British comedian Tony Hancock. Later re-recorded by Paul Merton and released in 1997. We also reviewed a new program called EuroDx from Jan Nieuwenhuis. There's also the annual Media Quiz context with Jim Cutler. Don't try those numbers or email addresses today though. Lou Josephs has been looking at push content technology. Philips was putting a lot of money into Web TV. Love those descriptions of high-speed technology.