Ship details: An unknown sailing boat
Offshore radio station: The landbased pirate radio station Northlight Radio International (NRI) was founded in 1989. The first broadcast took place at the beginning of April 1990 from the North Sea island Norderney where also the first transmitter was designed: A 25 watts AM transmitter in the so called "Heising modulation" system for short wave - the name of this transmitter: "dune transmitter one". Its frequency is controlled by a variety of crystals - for each frequency an own crystal. The power output (PEP) was raised later on up to 50 watts by increase of the anodes voltage of the power amplifyer valves. As an antenna we used a long wire of 22.8 meters. The resonance on our transmission on the part of the listeners was first small despite advance notice. However - the more frequently we went on air, the more letters we received. In 1991 a further transmitter was added - its name: "Bake". It has a power output (PEP) of 25 watts, transmits in AM and is likewise for shortwave conceived. "Bake" served later on for oversea transmissions in the 22 meter-band.
In the summer of 1992 Northlight-Radio International made a broadcast from international waters off the German coast. At that time three transmitters were in operation: A test transmitter with 200 Watts on medium wave, the "dune transmitter one" on short wave in the 48 metre-band and "Bake" on 11.422 kHz for the oversea service. [Source: Northlight Radio's website]
The transmission had originally been planned as another landbased one. Unexpectedly someone invited the station's operator to take part in a sailing jouney to Helgoland - and he agreed as the equipment had in any case been prepared for mobile use. But because of the unsufficient preparation of the not totally extended inverted V-antenna on the vessel and a badly tuned long wire the transmission had not the hoped for success: There were only five reception reports from North Germany and one from the Netherlands. The offshore broadcast included medium wave, short wave and FM transmissions (the latter with an antenna that should be used for FM-DXing). [Source: Felix de Vries]
Location: Sailing in international waters from the German North Sea coast to the island of Helgoland