Ireland once had its own shortwave transmitter in Athlone, long before RTE rented airtime on shortwave to broadcast programmes from its broadcast centre just outside Dublin. In 1987, we visited Dublin and met up with colleagues at RTE who had unearthed the (short) history of Ireland on shortwave. (Prof John Campbell later took up the stories of the Irish pirates, but that's for another edition). One of the first uses of shortwave was to relay programmes from the Vatican on the 100 kW transmitter in Athlone. The history of the station goes back in 1939. Note that the transmission date of this programme was corrected in March 2020.

It is 1991 and the Russian radio monopoly is being broken by all kinds of stations, including Radio Roks. Jeff White investigates the return of Radio Impacto, or at least the old transmitters of the station which had targeted Nicaragua in the 1980's as part of a US-backed clandestine media operation. And we hear from the late Dave Rosenthal on what Dxers have been up to in Eastern Canada as part of the Ontario DX Association Summer Camp.

This programme dates back exactly ten years ago to June 23rd 2000. What fascinates me in that how little has changed. England was exiting a football tournament, DAB was still trying to get adopted (to be fair its doing better in the UK and Denmark these days) and Worldspace still pumping out claims that they were going to be the platform of choice for the developing world. Ten years on Worldspace is no more, although I keep hearing of rescue attempts, cause the satellites are still up there. Does anyone believe the idea is not broken beyond repair?

This is the second of three programmes Jonathan Marks made in the Pacific. It follows on from the previous week's edition made in Auckland New Zealand. Jonathan was sent to represent Radio Netherlands at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union at a very expensive hotel in Sydney. But he escaped some of the rather dry "working groups" to explore some of the stations, including the SBS and ABC. It didn't seem sensible to travel so far from Europe just to sit in a hotel room. Mike Bird, (pictured) our propagation man in Melbourne took the one hour flight to Sydney and we walked around the harbour recalling how media was changing at the start of a new century. I see the SBS broadcasts in Dutch - I would have thought the audience had really dwindled away to nothing by now.

More mysteries solved. In May of 2000 Diana Janssen and I rounded off our memories of the Millennium by recalling some of the magic that has gone into Media Network from its start in 1981 until the 1000 edition. That included the incident with George Wood and why people arrived outside my house at the start of the first Gulf War. We ended the show with a review of the (currently) defunct Worldspace system, concluding then that this was a very expensive way to listen to international broadcasting. Although I hear stories of all kinds of rescue plans in 2010, I think the window of opportunity has closed on the Worldspace system. To illustrate this podcast, a photo of us both taken around the same period. It was a case of the bald and the beautiful, although on that photo it is the other way round.

I don't deny I had a lot of fun making this programme. It is March 1989 and I realise there is nothing in the RNW archive about the great work that goes on at the relay stations and the story of how the satellite changed an entire industry. I combined it with reportages on the other ABC islands. Curacao was nice, but the beauty on Bonaire, especially under the water, was spectacular. I remember meeting a great Aruban engineer working at the station who actually swam to work. This programme was made before the admin building in Kralendijk was closed and the building expanded for the DRM capable transmitters. In November 2012, the transmitter towers were blown up as part of the closedown of the facilities on the island. An era has closed.

The date is August 13th 1981. Time to launch an expedition to the Radio Netherlands transmitter site at Lopik. It has been there since 1957 when it took over from the low power site in Huizen. But the 100 kW and 10 kW units are wearing out and plans are afoot for a new transmission centre somewhere on the Flevo polder. A visit to the Bonaire transmitter site in 1989 is the next programme in this mini series.

In this programme we tell the fascinating story of the Kootwijk transmitter built in the centre of the Netherlands on the heathland. In the early 1920's the main goal of the station was to maintain contact with Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies. It was pretty amazing bearing in mind they were using the wrong frequency band because the existence of short-wave radio was as yet unknown. The listening site in Eemnes mentioned in the programme is still there, although I believe the station is part of the monitoring network used by the military. The original airing of this programme was on March 3rd 1988. We went back at the end of the Millennium for the close of the station - those shows have yet to be re-released. It was a great story to make, even though its about a "utility" station not a broadcaster. In fact, the same place was used for a short period after the Second World War for longwave broadcasts.

Now this is something that won't ever be repeated. If you had a shortwave radio around August 1991 then it was probably tuned to Radio Moscow, but also other international broadcasters, because of an attempted coup. http://tiny.cc/tyfri Again this is an example of listener participation well before the web and mass use of email, as well as great inside stories from Vasily Strelnikov, a former presenter at Radio Moscow World Service. I love his story about how his "filling in the time" almost caused a diplomatic incident. He also explained how the news reading translation system worked, which solves another mystery from the Cold War era.

BBC Monitoring has been the owner of Caversham Park House since the end of World War 2. This imposing mansion - the large building you see on the hill as you pass through Reading on the train - has long been a major employer in Caversham. But it has also always been very low-key. And, because historically it has also attracted so many foreign nationals from many parts of the world to work there, overall BBC Monitoring's presence has contributed immeasurably to the quality and richness of life in Caversham. This visit to Caversham was designed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of operations - a period where radio was still the mainstay of the work and satellite TV monitoring was only just starting. 500 people worked there at the time from 50 countries. The second part of the programme has some rather dramatic developments surrounding Radio Caroline which prompted a lot of calls to the Radio Netherlands answerline.