Radio Rainbow International

Radio Rainbow International started as a shortwave station that broadcast on Sundays in the 1980s.

Test transmissions began in early 1985 from the village of Bettystown in County Meath, on the east Coast of Ireland.

The first low-powered test transmitter was built by Eddie Caffrey – who was the engineer for Boyneside Radio in Drogheda – and it used a crystal for 6240KHz (this had been sent over to Eddie by radio enthusiast Ken Baird in the UK).

That very first Sunday morning transmission lasted for one hour and consisted of oldies, with invitations to listeners to send in reception reports. Eddie read out his actual home address on-air and invited listeners to write in.

The response to the first broadcast was fantastic so it became a regular Sunday morning broadcast. The reports came in from all over Europe, and beyond, from listeners who were enjoying the music mix of oldies and requests. The on-air announcements had an international flavour with announcements also broadcast in French and German.

Towards the end of 1985, Eddie moved to Togher, County Louth and set about building a new high powered 500 watt short wave transmitter which would make Radio Rainbow International the highest-powered shortwave pirate station in Europe. The broadcast time was extended and additional programmes and relays were added to the weekly Sunday morning transmission schedule.

Jim Agnew and Kieran Murray joined the line-up and recorded regular programmes for the station. The recorded each 60-minute show in the production studio of Boyneside Radio, which was located in Drogheda. For convenience, the shows were recorded on a C120 cassette, which meant that each 60-minute show could be broadcast from beginning to end, without a break.

To increase the local coverage of Radio Rainbow International, Eddie added a 1Kw AM transmitter to the service on 1521 kHz. This brought the station to a new audience on the east coast of Ireland and also the west coast of Britain, up as far as Scotland. An FM transmitter was also added and this enabled listeners (in the local area) to hear Radio Rainbow International in stereo for the first time.

Radio Rainbow International continued until the middle of 1988, although relays of other stations continued up until the end of December 1988.

Kieran Murray remembers:-

My show was called The Free Radio Show – I was never 100% certain that my recording would make it to broadcast on a specific Sunday, so just to be on the safe side, I numbered each show. The first was #1 and the last was #53. The ‘5 minutes of jingles’, ‘Listeners Letters’, ‘Free Radio News’ and ‘Featured Radio Station Aircheck’ was like audio from heaven to the thousands of radio enthusiasts across Europe each Sunday morning!

I call Radio Rainbow International the ‘Radio Nova’ of the shortwave band – it had the biggest, loudest and strongest signal – and I have my happiest radio memories of broadcasting on that station.