Radio Milinda - History

History

Radio Milinda was originally the brain-child of Jimmy McCabe who built the guts of the transmitter. The Name “Milinda” which should have been “Melinda”, was taken from the 1967 song “Come Away Melinda” as sung by Tim Rose.

The station first began test transmissions early on in 1972 from the upstairs of a youth club in Dublin 1. with a very small transmitter. Ger Wallace designed the Big Transmitter. Jimmy McCabe constructed it in a biscuit tin and the chassis of a broken E.C.G. machine. The aerial was strung from the roof of the tenements in Summerhill to the roof of the tenements in Sean Mc Dermott Street “No Mean Feat” (5 Stories High). It was ⅓ of a kilometer (300 metres) long with a tap at 100 metres. It came into the station via the roof of 5 North Gloucester Place.

The station was set up in two rooms in the basement. These rooms had been unused since the Second World War and were used without alteration other than the cable run for power. There were no windows and the studio per se was built of bits of orange boxes and whatever else came to hand. The first DJs were Jimmy Lynch, Jimmy McCabe (McCabe’s Country) and Richie Kearns. They were later joined by Michael Lynch, Declan Meehan and Mark Storey and on one or two occasions by Fran Gleeson. Although it has been stated that the power output was of 50 Watts, Radio Milinda had QSLs from Wales, Brighton and other locations in the United Kingdom. Radio Milinda became a member of B.I.R.M. Brighton Independent Radio Movement, an organisation who tried to legalise the then pirate radio scene.