Quickfire Round!

What's your name? Davey Carter i reckon!

How old are ya? How dare you ask a man his age! 22 though

Got any hobbies? Yes.

Err, okay, what are they? Are you asking me a followup question?

You got a closing statement? Yesh!

I started getting interested in radio when I was about 10. I remember we had a party at my house, and I was dying to do the dj’ing. So, for the next party I remember making my dad drag the stereo equipment into the conservatory so that I could dj out there and have the speakers in the living room.

Ahh, it was fun as I remember. Annoying the adults by telling them to make a request etc, it was really good fun! (For me at least). Then a day or so later, my dad made the mistake of telling me about Radio Caroline!

After this, I really wanted to do stuff like that again, but on the radio. I remember looking in a Tandy magazine (Tandy don’t exist no more. It was an electronics shop, like radio shack), and seeing this electronics kit. I’d always been interested in electronics, but this one had the capability of building an AM radio transmitter.

Okay, now you can imagine, an 11 year old kid, wanting to start a radio station, HAH. But I didn’t think of it that way, I thought of it as a real radio station, and bugged my parents to buy me a mixer and some cd decks for my birthday.

They got me the mixer, and the mic, but as CD decks were only just really coming out then, they were still well expensive! So, I just overcame this by using two personal CD Players.

The first transmitter I build using that electronics kit, didn’t go very far at all (What do you expect for a £50 piece of kit that runs on batteries). But I wasn’t content with this 10ft broadcast range. I wanted at least 10-20 houses to be able to pick it up.

I remember this one day, when I found a big roll of coax cable of my dad’s CB radio, attached it to the transmitter, and looped it round 4 poles that I stuck into the ground. It was p*ssing down, windy and everything. When it was done, I ran around to all of my friends houses and told them to tune their radio in (745 on the AM band I remember) and listen. They did, but heard nothing! Still only a 10ft range. I was gutted.

I left the radio for a little bit, as I wanted to save all my pocket money and buy a better transmitter. By the time I did this, I was 14, and I hadn’t actually saved up! Lol Come on.. What kid between the ages of 11-13 can actually save money up??

So, I remember looking through a maplin catalogue one day, and I came across an FM transmitter kit. Me being me thought that this would solve my problems for good. So I went and bought it, set it up, and............. Nothing.. 10ft range again! (But at least this time I was on the FM).

I joined a load of pirate radio newsgroups on the web to look at schematics to build my own transmitter.. Well, for my dad to build it and me help, lol! I was posting questions left right and centre, and Steve from NRG Kitz said, why don’t you enter the competition on our website? We give away an FM transmitter every month!

What did I have to lose?? I went for it, and sure enough, I won! (GO ME!) – I think Steve must of felt sorry for me, trying so hard and not getting anywhere, or I may of just gotten lucky! – Either way, Steve is a nice guy, and it’s thanks to him that I’m doing this today!

The transmitter arrived in the post 2 weeks after, with an antenna. The two weeks felt like a decade, because I just couldn’t wait. By this time I was around 15 and in my last year of school.

The second I seen it there waiting for me, I ripped open the packaging and got to work. It needed a steel box to sit in, so I sorted that right away, mounted the antenna on the back of my house, tuned the transmitter and fired it up!

BOSS, you could hear it for about 2-3 miles. The furthest yet!

I heard a station called Sound FM 105.9 on the air (Another pirate) and got talking to the guys there. Now these guys were also awesome, they couldn’t do enough to help! I remember talking to the main guy there “Steve” (2 steve’s in this story so far), and I was saying I wanted to boost my range, but didn’t have the money to do it.

He said, “Well Dave, just so happens that I need a website doing for my business, so if you can do that, I’ll get our techie Mike to build you a linear amplifier” – I was stunned, and got onto sorting the website out right away!

About 2 days went by when I next got in touch and said the website was ready. He came round the same day to collect the disk and said he’d be back in touch when Mike has built the amp.

Another 2 days went by, and he gave me a call. “Mike has got this amplifier, do you want us to come round and install it for you?” “Yeah sure! See u soon!!!!” – I couldn’t wait at this point... So I turned the station off, and waited for them to come round.

Mike fitted the amp, and made sure it was properly tuned etc.. “Turn it on dave..”.

“CHHHHHHHHHHHH” all the telly’s in the house go off! (This is how you know you’ve got a lot of power!)

“woahhhhh” my dad shouted up from downstairs, “The telly’s gone!”

Mike explained to me that all I need to do is get the aerial above the level of the TV aerials and I should be okay.

Got onto that the same day.. Now, armed with 100 watts of power, I turned the station on and started picking up listeners from all over the way.. Wales, Manchester, Warrington, Runcorn.. Everywhere!

The station became a big hit in my school, and people would call up every night to request songs, and to rip into each other on the air! It was boss!!

Whenever I was off the air, I’d listen out for other pirate stations on the band, and came across one called “LPR” (Liverpool Pirate Radio). This guy was a complete and utter T*SSER. His name escapes me now, but he was an absolute ass!

Instead of running a mixer for his audio, he was running a guitar amplifier with a couple of tape decks and turntables plugged into it! I know, stupid!

Anyways, he got p*ssed off with me because my sound was clearer than his, and I was pulling in more listeners, so he decided to track my station down to my house.

I was out at this time, he knocked on my door and said something to the effect of “Tell your son to get off the air, all the other pirates are getting p*ssed off with his station and if he doesn’t I’ll be reporting him to the DTI” (DTI used to do what ofcom now do)

So, with that, when I got home, my station had been turned off! I asked why to receive the explanation!

I couldn’t broadcast on the FM anymore for this reason, so I moved to Internet Radio. It wasn’t the same, but I thought I’d give it a shot.

At this time, broadcasting on the web was offered free by places such as Live365.com which is where I was hosted.

I ran a couple of internet radio stations which all seemed to fizzle out slowly. That was of course, until FraggleRADIO.

FraggleRADIO was a station that I had set up to help promote a local band. I designed them a website and put the player right on the page so that people had a reason to keep coming back.

The station popularity grew and grew, and before long, it was getting to the point where it was on the front page of shoutcast.com!

The station was running exceptionally well, but it was costing an absolute fortune to pay for the servers, as they were constantly being maxed out! So we decided to put on a live music event at the Barfly in Liverpool. The event was amazing, hundreds of people turned up, and a LOT of money was made.. This paid for the server to keep fraggle on the air until February. (Thanks to everyone who made it btw!)

This is where I first met Lex!

But, with FraggleRADIO, there was one inherent problem. It was broadcast from my conservatory, but that carried one problem, getting the parents to allow random people into my house to do a show. Not gunna happen!

So, I got in touch with Peter Quiggins (Owner of Quiggins) to discuss getting our internet radio station studio based in there. He was extremely excited by this prospect as he seen it as a way of not only promoting Quiggins, but also as a way to help out the “Save Quiggins” campaign.
We started moving the equipment in, when who did I bump into.. But Lex! We said a quick hello and how’s things, and that was that.. I got back upstairs to the studio and got to work.

The next day I start loading the final bits into the studio when I see Lex. I was p*ssed off at this point with Terry (The Ex Business Partner), and I think Lex just caught me at a bad time.

“Hey Dave, how are ya?”

I continued walking and just said “ahhhh Terry’s a c*nt!”

Later on, Lex decided to come up to the studio and see what it was all about. He stayed there all night with the rest of the crew as we were performing a séance live on the air!

Next day, when we all woke up, Lex was still there. I started talking to Lex about getting him on the air at the station, and at first he didn’t really want to do it. But, he kept staying over at the studio whenever people were on the air. The guy was like old wallpaper, very hard to get rid of! Lol He eventually accepted, and quickly became station manager (only coz he’d done radio before ya see. lol! Sorry lex)

The FraggleRADIO studio ended up being my home, I couldn’t leave the station as I had to keep a constant check on things, and lived too far away to efficiently fix anything in time if it went wrong. FraggleRADIO became home to all our presenters actually. You could bank on the fact that anytime during the night at FraggleRADIO, there would be at least 4 people sleeping on the floor! Haha

Lex and I decided to start a radio show together, and this is still what you hear today. It hasn’t really changed much, apart from the fact that we unfortunately lost our studio due to a compulsory purchase order being served on the Quiggins building.

There are thousands of memories in that building, and whenever I think of them, it hurts to think that the place where all the new friendships were made, things went wrong, and all the fun we had, is gone!

If it weren’t for Quiggins, I wouldn’t of met Becky (My Girlfriend), Chris (Mr Flynn), Lex, Lu, Ash, Sarah and everyone else. It’s really painful, but I spose ya gotta be thankful for the time we did spend at that studio, not just the up’s, but the down’s aswell.

Well, now, Lex&Davey are back and we’re kickin it... Ollllldddd skooooool! Testicle!