Welcome to the 1980's and era when giant world expositions were in fashion. By finding the cheapest flight I could, I managed to persuade the RN programme director to let me go and report on what was one of the last great expos. Radio Netherlands was, at that time, thinking of building a relay station in Asia. NHK Radio Japan was part of what I called the gang-of-five international broadcasters, although NHK was much larger than Radio Netherlands. There is an excellent FEN report on Youtube which gives you some idea of the scale of the event. The Tokyo expo was actually in Tsububa, so I recall my first ride on the bullet train. One hundred eleven countries set up exhibits using the theme, "Dwellings and Surroundings - Science and Technology for Man at Home". More than 20.3 million people attended the three-month event. I was one of them. Wish I had had a camera. But I did have a microphone and help from NHK. Remember being amazed at how cramped everything was at Radio Japan.

Roger Broadbent recently retired from Radio Australia. Many shortwave listeners know him from the many programmes he produced and presented for Australia's international broadcast network based in Melbourne. Some remember his voice on Radio Netherlands. He was with the English department for 15 years, leaving in 1986 to return with his family to the Pacific. He set up most of the feature programmes during the reorganisation of the output in the early 1980's, as Radio Nederland concentrated more on information than music. Roger has always been a people person, a great colleague and someone who just got things done. He was a regular presenter on Media Network in the early years, along with Pete Myers. Just rediscovered the last Media Network he did with me before literally stepping on the plane for Melbourne. Remember this is 1986 - 27 years ago.

I often feel that many exhibitions in 2014 will go the way of Comdex. Many people don't even remember the name. They were a whole series of computer exhibitions in the US which suddenly collapsed into a black hole. Those were the days when phones were phones and the only way to make a video on it was to fiddle around with Powerpoint and fake it. Far more impressed with events like Techcrunch Disrupt these days.

Very early edition of Media Network when Dennis Powell reported on monitoring the US invasion of Grenada in November 1983. We did everything on very ropey old phone lines which must have sounded horrendeous on shortwave. But we got the news out.

This is a news orientated programme making use of a full postbag. We did a lot of reporting about shortwave receivers on Media Network, broadcasting rather lengthy reviews over the air. Nowadays, the web would be a much better medium. But it wasn't fast enough in the 1990's and only a small proportion of the audience has access.PC computing in a slump - looks like what's happening in 2013 is exactly the same as when we made this programme in April 1997. Shortwave radio dealers were closing. Remember Gilder Shortwave? We discover what is new about the Drake SW-2 receiver. We report that Radio Netherlands use of 1440 kHz (the great 208 from Radio Luxembourg) is being extended over the summer period. Andy Sennitt is trying to solve a Tanzanian mystery. Lou Josephs reports on improvements to broadcasters websites. Victor Goonetilleke has been hearing both Angola and Costa Rica. We also talked about Radio Fax, 6220 kHz from Trevor Brook of Surrey Electronics. Trevor was trying to get an official licence to broadcast programmes.

We did a special 2 hr webcast to celebrate the 1000th edition of Media Network in February 2000. We were rather ahead of our time because although we were streaming live into the web using a Real Audio server, we only knew that around 575 people were able to listen at any one time. We had none of the webstats that are available now. Glad I found the audio on a CD so we can share it again with the Media Network Vintage Radio audience. It is a marathon session....2 hours of greetings and links with listeners. Were you part of the celebrations? Many were.

Not so many programmes from 1989 have survived because Radio Netherlands switched to a cheaper and rather inferior brand of recording tape. It was fine in everyday use, but it didn't store well. As a result, many of my tapes in this period have become sticky and unplayable. However, this transcription show is fine. It deals with recent violent solar activity and its effects on shortwave radio reception. And we also hear from Wolf Harranth (pictured) who reports on one of the few cases of pirate radio in Austria. I was always amazed at the Austrian monopoly maintained by the ORF.

This edition of Media Network includes news that the Dutch broadcasting museum in Hilversum has reopened to the public and TV Marti has been off the air because the blimp balloon keeps blowing away. We look at Radio Aura, an FM radio station in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria

Antennas often got a lot feedback from listeners, especially when we went outside to talk about how to set up an effective aerial like a T2FD. Actually that antenna I am describing is still hanging in the garden, though I am doing much less listening on it than I was then. The programme also examines changes coming to Radio Norway International. Do you remember their weekly programme in Spanish?

This is an edited edition of Media Network which was released on transcription to other radio stations on 11 Jan 1995. In the light of the recent revelations by Edward Snowden about espionage currently conducted by the NSA and UK GCHQ, this programme from 18 years ago is rather tame. Spies were expected to sit infront of shortwave radios to take down a message on a one time pad. We talk to spy numbers specialist Simon Mason who made a lot of recordings in the last part of the 20th century and also knew where to find these strange voices.