Where it all started
Recently the Medium Wave Circle celebrated its 50th anniversary; and for over 50 years it has published its journal Medium Wave News.
Medium Wave Circle
The Medium Wave Circle was founded in 1954 as a spin off from the International Short Wave League which still continues to this day, with Carl Shapiro and Arthur Levi as editors.
In November 1955 Ken Brownless took over the editorial chair and ran the Circle almost single handledly from his home in York. In April 1958 the club acquired the title of medium Wave News. Since 1984 the Circle has been run by an organising committee consisting of an Honorary President, Secretary, Treasurer and the General Editor of the club journal, Medium Wave News.
Despite the lack of the Internet, global cooperation between radio clubs was well established early on. In fact the Circle had close contact with the National Radio Club in the USA. A recent web search brought an interesting historical connection back to light (see Historical Anecdotes below).
Medium Wave News
For the first 30 years or so the Circle was only really involved in publication of Medium Wave News which started life as a one page supplement to the ISWL publication. Even today, the prime activity of the Circle is the publication of Medium Wave News.
Unfortunately the Circle’s archive only really gets started in the 1960s but by a stroke of luck we do have an original copy of the First Edition of MWN, and it’s now available on-line for the first time.
Medium Wave News was produced for its first 13 years by Ken Brownless and Bernard Brown, and other key figures in its launch were Carl S Shapiro and Arthur M Levi.
Ken Brownless edited MWN until his death in 1984 and was succeeded by Charles Molloy until he passed away in 1985. MWN was subsequently edited by Ed Baker, Mick Hudson, Mark Hattam and Steve Whitt.
Medium Wave News started life as a single stencilled page appearing in December 1954 and grew to eight mimeographed pages by the 1970s. In 1987 we changed from the traditional loose leaf broadsheet style to a 16 page A5 size booklet. This doubled the amount of information we could carry in each issue. In the following years we increased the number of issues from 8 per year, through 9 to the present level of 10 copies each year. Since 1993 the contents of Medium Wave News has increased every year. Now we average over 50 pages per issue and frequently we produce 68 page issues..
The Circle history has not been fully written up yet but we are always interested in early documents, recordings and anecdotes. If you have anything of historical relevance we’d like to hear from you.
In Memoriam
In Memory of past Circle members.
The First Sheigra MW DX-pedition
The first medium wave DX-pedition at Sheigra was undertaken in 1985 by John Faulkner, Mark Hattam, Ian Kelly and David Hyams. Read the full report of this venture which is fully illustrated.
Historical Anecdotes
NRC'ers
John Callarman, left, and Bernard J.C. Brown visited in Derby, England,
in October, 1957, while John was stationed with the U.S. Army in Aschaffenburg,
Germany. Brown was publisher of the Medium Wave Circle bulletin at the
time, edited by another NRC’er, Ken Brownless. We also visited NRC'er
Roy Patrick, who was in charge of lighting and other electronic details
backstage at a Derby theatre that featured live performances. We were
not allowed backstage and had to talk at the stage door because there
was a nudie show that night and, while it was OK for the audience to see
the girls in stationary pose with the curtain open, it was against the
rules for outsiders to see them moving around backstage. Callarman published
one issue of MWC's Medium Wave News in 1957 from the Public Information
Office in Germany when Brown had another commitment at deadline time.
Photo by John Callarman.