Angel Radio Isle of Wight will celebrate its 13th Birthday on FM on 24th March 2020.
Angel Radio Isle of Wight began life on the Island in 1999, 21 years ago, broadcasting from rooms above Age Concern’s offices in Pyle Street. At that time they were broadcasting on Restricted Service Licences (RSLs) which allowed for two 28 day slots per year.
Isle of Wight’s first community station on FM
In 2001 they began broadcasting on the WightCable (now WightFibre) network and moved into their premises in Love Lane in Cowes. After a very lengthy negotiation period with OFCOM lasting eight years Angel Radio became the Isle of Wight’s first community station on FM 91.50 MHz, as well as continuing on the Internet and on WightFibre.
Bev Webster, the programme controller, said,
“Although we are restricted to only 25 watts output we were granted permission to improve our coverage range recently which should allow us to reach further afield.
“However, while we were carrying out these improvements we suffered a major equipment failure so we have been on the Internet only since a week before Christmas.”
Equipment under repair
After several fruitless attempts to trace and cure the problem including Chris Gutteridge, the Managing Director, risking life and limb crawling along the apex of a very precarious roof to replace part of the link aerial system the fault was still there.
Now, at great expense, all the FM equipment has been taken to Windsor and is being repaired. So far the engineer has found faults in two of the units and is testing a third part for another fault.
Looking forward to returning to FM
All the presenters are looking forward to getting back on FM and reaching more listeners than they have ever had before and are sure that the listeners will be happy to have a clearer signal and to have their beloved Angel Radio back on FM with its selection of nostalgic music not heard on any other radio station.
Watch out here for news of the re-launch when the equipment is up and running again better than before.
Tune in
Angel Radio is the Island’s first FM Community radio station and you can find us on 91.50 FM, on WightFibre and on the Internet.
Angel Radio, your station of Nostalgia stars playing music from 1900 – 1969, keeping legends alive.
News shared by Beverly on behalf of Angel Radio. Ed
Image: Robert Anderson under CC BY 2.0
