Holiday radio put off air

Press, 28 December 1977, Page 4

Holiday radio put off air

PA Wellington; Rex Widerstrom wants to I string four youths to his Wainuiomata radio aerial and! turn the power on. He believes that this would be fair retaliation for the youths who crippled his holiday radio station by wrecking its transmitter aerial at 10 p.m. on Christmas Day. “It wasn’t Christmas spirit or anything like that — it was a planned attack to put us off the air,” Rex said when talking of the vandals’ attack. The big wooden transmitter aerial was sent tumbling to the ground. This put the students’ holiday period project, Radio N, off

ijthe air till Monday after- ; noon. ij Rex, aged 15, and a friend ; were thinking of spending lithe night at the station after; {they had seen a group of ; youths loitering round the • shops across the road. However, the youths ■ struck before Rex had had time to arrange for some ; sleeping bags to be brought to the radio station’s mobile broadcasting caravan. The vandals toppled the aerial pole ■ — which had I been borrowed from a local ' scout group — by jumping I on the guy ropes. “I was on the phone arranging for some bedding when I heard the sound of breaking glass and the aerial falling,” said Rex. “I just

hung up in the middle of a I sentence and dialled 111 for the police. “The vandals had run off. Iby the time the police got here.” The station, which broadcasts on I3OOKw, missed its morning broadcasts on Monday as repairs were made to the aerial, but was back on the air with its music, community news and competitions at 1 p.m. “The fire brigade helped us with ladders to put the remains of the aerial back up again,” Rex said. The Wainuiomata broadcasters have been struck by problem after problem since they decided to run a radio station over the Christmas period.

When they lodged an application with the Broadcasting Tribunal for a licence there were objections from Radio New Zealand and Radio Windy. They got their licence only to have a promised transmitter not materialise.

They then managed to borrow one from the gospel group Radia Rhema, in Christchurch, and got their station on the air a few days late on December 23. In spite of the problems, Rex hopes all will now be well for the station until it closes on January 2. “They won’t be able to get us again. We will be taking everything — except the aerial — home with us at night.”