BC-DX 841 04 Jan 2008 Private Verwendung der Meldun

Paul David in London was 15 at the time of the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia in 1968. He remembers hearing Radio Prague on 1286
kilohertz on August 21st, the day of the invasion, and the anxious tone of
the English-language announcers.
Don Moore had an article published in Monitoring Times in August 1993
about the 1968 events in Prague. He said that Soviet troops surrounded the
Prague Radio station building Vinohrodska Street at 8 a.m. Local residents
set up barricades but the troops smashed through the barricades at 11 a.m
and the station went off the air.
A few of the station staff, including Director Karel Hrabal, stayed at the
microphone until they were arrested; however most of the technicians,
announcers and reporters slipped away and within half an hour of Radio
Prague's closedown a clandestine anti-Soviet broadcaster came on the air.
Gradually many more followed in other parts of the country. They provided
moral support for the resistance and as they became more organised, began
to orchestrate it.
Surprisingly the Soviets concentrated on closing down Czechoslovak radio
studios and did not occupy key long and medium wave transmitter sites.
Radio technicians set up make-shift studios and connected them to the
usual high powered transmitters on normal frequencies thus allowing BBC
Caversham to record almost all of the key output of the first few days of
the invasion.
The transmitter sites were occupied a few days later. The clandestine
stations began using amateur transmitters and ones from the Czech
military. A clandestine network was formed with up to 19 stations
broadcasting for fifteen minutes at a time on the same frequency with
messages for the resistance. Numbered codes were given at the end of each
broadcast so that the next station could be ready to come on the air. The
transmitters were moved to new sites between each broadcast. The network
operated 24 hours a day; in some cases they made live broadcasts from
streets or parks with watchful citizens looking out for Soviet troops.
The clandestine stations also aimed broadcasts at listeners abroad with
broadcasts in Russian, Polish, Ruthenian, Hungarian, Romany, German,
French, and English. When appeals in Russian for the soldiers to go home
were broadcast, listeners took their transistor radios out into the
streets and held them up so that the soldiers could hear.
Most of the broadcasts were on medium wave but some including Radio
Bratislava were on shortwave. Radio Prague 7345 and 11990 frequencies were
taken over by Radio Free Prague with lower power clandestine equipment.
Don confirms that just hours after the invasion, Radio Vltava came on 210
meters[1430 kHz], claiming to be a Czechoslovak station and justifying the
invasion as the will of the Czechoslovak people. The broadcasts, however,
were in Russian-accented Czech and broken Slovak. The free radios
announced Radio Vltava's frequency to their listeners and invited them to
listen to it for amusement.
Radio Vltava was actually located in East Germany, and eventually its
frequency was taken over by Radio Berlin International. Roger Tidy
reported to Clandestine Radio Watch that it took over the frequency of OPS
Berlin. I found an article by Lea Sevcik in the Concord Review stating
that the Russians tried to broadcast Radio Vlatava over loudspeakers in
Wenceslas Square, each time it was drowned out by whistling, a very public
failure.
Don Moore says that at least three other Soviet operated clandestines