Twin town link up

Couldn't believe it today when my Dad rang me to tell me that there was a photo of of me in newspaper from 1974. A photo of me with long hair!
I remember when this photo was taken, I went with Neil G3ZPL to Bills's house to set up a link between the Mayor of Paderborne in Germany, the Mayor of Le Mans in France and the Mayor of Bolton. The Bolton Evening News also came to take photos. It was a glorious Spring morning nad Neill picked me me up in his Hilman Imp car. We drove down St Peter's Way to Farnworth with all the widows open singing 'MaMa were all crazy now!' When we arrived at Bills house the photographer was there, but no Mayor!
In the end we went on 20 metres with Bills KW2000 and Linear and talked with Paderborne and Le Mans (our twin towns) on the radio. I remember that the link was quite poor and a lot of QRM and QSB.

Bolton was well populated with radio hams in 1974.
They were amateur broadcasters with 100ftpieces of wire strung over the rooftops as an aerial.
The previous Christmas about 20 of them - members of the Bolton and District Amateur Radio Society - had set up their own twin chatting arrangements with the french town of Le Mans.
It was all done from the home of Bill Moran (G3XUM) Each Sunday at about 9am the first call sign G8WY/A went out to make contact with the Le Mans signal - F8GE
Bill Moran, left, is pictured operating his transmitter with fellow members Neil Richardson and secretary Stephen Macdonald.