On 27 May Radio Sutch began broadcasting on 194 meter - 1542 kHz from the south tower of Shivering Sands. It was a low-powered, low-budget operation. The transmitter, originally taken from a Handley Page Halifax bomber, was powered with a cascade of car batteries, a scaffold pole with a skull-and-crossbones flag served as an antenna.[1] Sutch soon became tired of it, selling the station to his man
ager Reginald Calvert for a reported £5,000.[2] Calvert bought new equipment and expanded the station into the other towers. One of the original seven towers had been destroyed when a ship collided with it, leaving the northernmost tower isolated. The remaining five were connected by catwalks in an irregular star shape. Calvert's team set about repairing the catwalks and refurbishing the fort's facilities and living quarters. New studios were built, a more powerful transmitter installed, and the station experimented with new antenna configurations and frequencies (1034 and eventually 1003 kHz). Initially antenna wires were strung around the periphery of the towers. Later a vertical mast was erected on the central tower, supported by guy wires on the surrounding towers, and the station adopted the nickname "your tower of power". Although the station's output never exceeded 2 kW, the efficiency of the antenna combined with the fact that it was located over water (an efficient reflector of radio waves) gave it the equivalent coverage of a much more powerful land-based station.
