Radio Rag 88.6 MHz transmitter

Radio Rag 88.6 MHz mono (lower) and 103.0 MHz (stereo) upper on UMIST roof in 1984

View looking east from the UMIST roof in 1984. Manchester Piccadilly station is in the foreground.

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View looking south from the UMIST roof in 1984. BT  office building (curved, left). UMIST Chandos Hall (front left) and UMIST Wright Robinson Hall (rear left) can be seen.

View looking north from the UMIST roof in 1984. Manchester Town Hall clock tower (centre) and Scottish Widows Fund tower building (right)

Radio Rag antennas in 1984. UHF communications colinears (top and mid right) and crossed VHF broadcast yagis (lower).

The Bogle Stroll is a 55 mile sponsored walk around Manchester. Radio Rag always rose to the occasion and set up dedicated transmitters and outside broadcasts.

The Bogle Stroll route used to go via Wigan and Chorley, where the "Bogle Monsters" live. Thousands of students left Manchester Rag headquarters at UMIST campus just before midnight and walked all night through Salford and back. You wouldn't get that past a risk assessment these days.

This all happened in the days before mobile phones, except for a single BT System 4 radiophone installed the Bogle Warlord's (the Chief Steward) Range Rover car, both hired especially for the occasion. So, Radio Rag broadcast all night and the event organisers instructed walkers to carry portable radios and tune in. Radio Rag was the unofficial link between the organisers, walkers and checkpoints en route.

The key thing for Radio Rag was to establish broadcast coverage all around the course. In various years Radio Rag installed a relay transmitter at Haigh, near Wigan, and a second transmitter on the roof of UMIST connected to a directional antenna pointing north west around the course.

The Radio Rag Redifon transmitter for Bogle operated on 88.6 MHz and produced about 50 watts. Radio Rag acquired two of these, one for the roof of UMIST and the other stored in a loft in Droylsden if my memory is correct. These were amazingly similar to some BBC local radio transmitters decommissioned a couple of years previously. Of course, ours couldn't be the same ones, because ours had the nameplates removed and the serial numbers scratched off.

We had a problem getting the transmitter onto the UMIST roof. It wouldn't fit through the access hatch. We eventually tackled this on a Saturday afternoon, when the university estates staff were off duty. We removed a glass roof above the stairwell and were busy winching the transmitter through the ceiling when the police arrived. I can still remember our horror as the police clattered up the stairs towards us, all truncheons and handcuffs! It turned out they were stewarding a nearby street demonstration, saw the mysterious roof activity and thought we were snipers. We burbled vaguely about amateur radio and they went away happy.

Bogle Stroll outside broadcasts were a spectacular Radio Rag achievement over the years. Radio Rag broadcast live from several locations, including the Bogle Stroll Headquarters at UMIST and checkpoint locations up to 30 miles outside Manchester. I remember sitting on sofa in the back of a transit van, somewhere outside Wigan about 25 years ago, interviewing an official from the St John Ambulance live on Radio Rag.

Further details and  audio clips will be available here soon!