Other Gold mediumwave stations closed already in June this year. Gold 1548, servicing London from the Saffon Green transmitter, will follow end-September (source: Ydun’s Medium Wave Info).

Before the merger of many independent local radio stations in the United Kingdom this was the transmitter of Capital Radio. With 97.5 kW this station was significantly more powerful than other ILR stations and easy to receive here in The Netherlands. The higher power probably has to do with the size of the London area and the urban environment.

In the 1980s I had a lot of fun chasing the different ILR (and BBC) local radio stations. The stations all had their own local identity and studios and hadn’t merged into larger conglomerates yet. Below you can see the Capital QSL I received in 1980. Had it been a post stamp it would have been a collector’s item given the apparent misprint of the frequency. Truth be told, I regularly get confused with the 1458, 1485, 1548 and 1584 frequencies myself.

My QSL from Capital Radio 1548 in 1980