Highfield Park
comment: Could you please advertise these events here are the details:

1.
Highfield Park Fete
Saturday 25th July
2pm till 12noon


Join the Trust and Charters Health Club for a day of family fun in the Park. Activities will include 5 aside football tournament, pony rides, archery display, tester sessions in the Charters Health Club, live bands, dancing displays, open air theatre from Trestle, plant stall, book stall, tombola, coconut shy, amateur radio club, fire engine, beer tent, food and craft stalls. We want the fete to be a day which involves the whole community. There are a number of ways that you can be part of this fantastic day.

2.
Produce Show
Saturday 25th July
10:30 am til 12 noon.

Wide range of categories appeal to seasoned growers & novices.
Categories include fruit & veg, photography, flower arranging, cooking, craft. Plus lots of competitions for children.
Entry form available from www.highfieldparktrust.uk.com
Deadline for entry forms 24th July.

Location:
Highfield Park
Hill End Lane,
St Albans,
Herts
AL4 0RA

For further information please contact:
admin@highfieldparktrust.co.uk
www.highfieldparktrust.co.uk
01727 847242

SHR mentioned on World of radio
Thanks to Glenn Hauser for giving us a shout - listen to World of radio 1443 to find out Click here  

SHR Info

This blog is still a work in progress and we will update it as often as possible.

Answers to some of the questions from our listeners.

Q. Do we have a studio?

A. Yes we now have a main studio and we use computer automated software to broadcast most of what we do. Other presenters can now link in to our server by remote control. Several programmes are recorded in advance but we can interrupt this to do live shows at anytime.

Click here to listen now.    

Q. Do we have a mailing address or contact number?

A. No, we only use e-mail.  

Q. Do you broadcast from, or have knowledge of the areas you serve?

A. Yes.

Q. How do I find you on my radio?

A. You will need a worldband radio with shortwave - see the frequencies page for full details.  

Q. What about copyrite?

A. We pay a blanket fee every year, it covers everything we do. 

Q. Can you help charities or promote events?  

A. We will only advertise them on the blog and the only contact we make with these organisations is by e-mail. SHR is a hobby not a business. 

Gary Drew a history in radio

Some of the stations I have worked on over the years and one or two of my own!

October 19th 1984 - February 11th 1985. WFR - Waltham Forest Radio (East London pirate) No studio just tape decks in fields rigged to a transmitter. 102.9 FM.

April 1985 - September 1985. Spectrum Radio 88.6 FM. East London pirate.

October 1985 -  February 1986. S.O.S. Radio The Sound Of Soul. London pirate. Again from October 1986 - March 1987. Various frequencies.

May 1986 - October 1986. City Sound Radio 94.5 FM. London pirate.

May 1987 - September 1987. Melody FM 102.4. East London pirate.

Septmber 1987 - July 1988. Soul FM 91 MHz and later 96.9 The Sound Of Underground London. East London pirate. Night club stints most weekends from 1987 - 1990.

July 1988 - August 1988. Jive FM. London pirate.

August 1988 - December 1988. Throwdown FM. London pirate.

April 1989 - August 1992. GFM. Great Funky Music also nicknamed Gary's frequency modulation by the listeners . My own East London pirate from Chingford, Highams Park and Walthamstow. Well received in Leytonstone, Leyton and Stratford and at its prime in 1990 - 1991 with a big following.

April 1990 Base FM. North London pirate - spring period only.

Mobile disco work from 1990 - 1996.

July 1993 - November 1994. Helped to install and set up studio equipment for many RSL stations. 

Easter 1995 - August Bank Holiday 1995. QBC (Quality Broadcasting Company) Low power east London pirate broadcast the old fashioned way from tapes in remote woods instead of a studio. The idea came from QVC the shopping channel. 

1996 - 1999. Consultant for various AM long term (LPAM) & FM short term (RSL) stations like Town FM north London 1997 (with cable radio) and the London experimental Greater London community radio project throughout its peak in 1997. 

2000 - 2001. Various one off shows for experimental internet radio stations - too many to mention learning how to stream and broadcast online. Helped to launch a short term community RSL to North London from Nov 2000 - May 2002. Helped launch an RSL FM station for Norwich in 2001. 

2002 Radio North Mid hospital radio - January to September. From the North Middelsex University Hospital in Edmonton north london.

2003 Gaz Links Radio - G.L.R. My 1st full time internet station using jingles from the former Greater London radio where I pinched the idea. 

September 2003 - March 2004. Various programmes for the testing of Band 'L' DAB in London later dropped in favour of an analogue community radio project in Southgate named Chase FM and an AM partner in east Herts called Chase Extra both went bust.  

2004 Archive Radio. My other internet radio project for one year.

2005 G.L.R. Gold. Another short lived version of my GLR station online (now closed).

April 2005 Some one off shows for Radio 390 (Internet).

2006 Radio Gary International. For fun I changed the name of my internet station for a few months. In July 2006 I made a one off show for North London Radio (NLR) which was an internet copy of the seventies inland pirate.

May 19th 2007. Here we are with SHR (South Herts Radio) - ongoing via the internet and analogue worldband radio!

The present day: Consultant for getting hospital radio stations on the internet with a web stream and presenter on Laser Hot Hits 4025 KHz shortwave and online at http://www.laserhothits.co.uk stream them anytime here.

Favourite all time radio stations: Solar, Horizon, LWR, TKO, JFM, Laser Hot Hits.

Webmaster background
My name is Gary Drew and I have been a part time radio presenter and broadcaster since October 19th 1984. I have worked on many radio stations over several years both legitimate and pirate. Some of the stations I have aired on include inland London pirate stations Melody FM, Soul FM and Base FM. In 2002 I did lots of shows for Radio North Mid North Middlesex University Hospital radio in Edmonton North London.

Since I was a young I was always fascinated by the way radio works. I had a kit bought for me one Christmas which taught me how to build an FM and AM radio. This was very basic but as I grew older I began to take radios apart to see how they worked. Most people I knew were not happy to tune their receivers to another channel in case they lost the place of their favourite station on the dial. Even with presets available, I noticed an older generation were happy to leave the radio tuned to just one station all the time. I later began to find out about offshore radio stations which got me interested in pirate and clandestine radio and I became a bit of an anorak in this field.

By the time the 80's had come I was tuning into to various pirates mostly on the FM band and I was DXing the shortwave bands. In 1984 I began experimenting with cassette tapes editing pieces of music together and recording inserts to make jingles. Later that year I was listening to my favourite pirate station Solar Radio. It was by the Autumn that the Brother of a friend asked me to make some programmes for a station he was starting in the Walthamstow area of East London, This was the short lived W.F.R. - Waltham Forest Radio. Most of the time it was broadcast from a portable tape recorder rigged to a transmitter behind the Walthamstow Town Hall in the bushes by the Chestnut playing fields.

By early February 1985 WFR had ceased broadcasting due to lack of interest but at least my shows had been put out on the air which made me feel good. By August 1985 I got my second turntable and a mixer, this is when my DJ career began properly. I was making commercials and jingles onto cassettes for many pirate stations across London and mix tapes for friends. By late summer 1985, I became involved in testing low power FM transmitters and microwave links for local pirates from low level roof tops of housing estates in East London with friends. A popular test channel used by many pirates at the time was 88.6 FM.

I found myself more regularly broadcasting live on London pirates instead of just doing pre-recorded shows playing soul & dance music which I had a large collection of. By September 1987, I found fame on Soul FM which started on 91 megahertz but ended up on 96.9. The reason I remember the frequencies so well is because I used to be the lookout when the rigs and antennas were installed on many tower blocks. On Bank Holidays we used rigs of up to 100 watts power which had a range of some 50 miles. As 1987 drew to a close, I had established myself with my DJ name Mixmaster-G after mixing records into each other continuously and keeping it going for hours on end and in 1988, I began to get work in nightclubs. I enjoyed the hip house explosion in 1989 after the silly acid house scene had died out. I never got into the rave scene but admit to buying a few dodgy records.

By 1990 I had bought my own mobile disco rig and began doing private parties and disco's around East London, Essex and Hertfordshire. This lasted until about 1992 when it all got too much for me and I decided to take a little break from it for a year. By mid 1993 I got back into the game but the music scene was changing fast and I had to change format slightly to please my audience even though the kind of music I was playing wasn’t my own personal choice. In 1995 a friend started a station called QBC this stood for the Quality Broadcasting Company and came from the woods at Hollow Ponds near Whipps Cross hospital from pre-recorded cassettes which we reverted back to as it was becoming harder to maintian stations from tower block studios. Sometimes a site in the forest near the waterworks roundabout in Forest Road Walthamstow was used.

QBC was just a bit of fun and no-one really took it seriously which is why it only lasted the summer of 95 but it was fun to do something different by using some old fashioned methods again. I gave up mobile disco's shortly after that and sold all my gear by mid 96 due to work and personal commitments. By 2000 I started learning how to do everything on a computer making life easier. I started radio presenting on a more professional level again by 2002 using my real name this time on hospital radio and I did some voice over work for some small legal RSL stations. Which brings me to today where the legend continues as I continue to broadcast on the internet both live and from recorded programmes as well as finding time to DX the radio bands to find new stations of interest.

I am involved with various other radio projects, websites, and forums as well as providing many rare and restored radio materials to various organisations across the UK. To see an example Click Here You can purchase many recordings from the offshore pirate era by paying a visit to Pirate Radio Sales or Radio Fab. To hear music and jingles from the offshore radio ships tune into Offshore Music Radio

There is more to this story and other things happened in between but that is the basic jist of how I decided to create and launch this radio station 'South Herts Radio' since 19th May 2007. It is intended to be a slow project which is developing over time. I hope you enjoy it.