Radio free FM: radio in diretta da Ulm

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Ulm, Germany

Radio free FM

Three decades in, still no boss.

Ulm's free radio: alt-rock days, Americana nights.

A crowd of music obsessives started meeting in a shared flat in Ulm in 1992, half-convinced that a round-the-clock non-commercial station was impossible; a visit to Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg was what persuaded them otherwise. They bought transmission gear off RTL Reutlingen before they had rooms, an association, money or a licence, and on 17 June 1995 the red light came on in a junk room and Sabine Fratzke told the city it was listening to 100.8 MHz. A hundred watts barely cleared Ulm and Neu-Ulm.

It has since moved up to a kilowatt from the Ermingen tower on 102.6. The music desk restocks freeShift by hand rather than leave it to a playlist computer; Americana works out from honky tonk and bluegrass to Cajun, Tex-Mex and zydeco; Antistatik pairs minimal music with new electronics from Eastern Europe and the odd reggae record; Caravelas runs in Portuguese and German.

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Ulm, Germany

Radio free FM

Three decades in, still no boss.

Ulm's free radio: alt-rock days, Americana nights.

A crowd of music obsessives started meeting in a shared flat in Ulm in 1992, half-convinced that a round-the-clock non-commercial station was impossible; a visit to Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg was what persuaded them otherwise. They bought transmission gear off RTL Reutlingen before they had rooms, an association, money or a licence, and on 17 June 1995 the red light came on in a junk room and Sabine Fratzke told the city it was listening to 100.8 MHz. A hundred watts barely cleared Ulm and Neu-Ulm.

It has since moved up to a kilowatt from the Ermingen tower on 102.6. The music desk restocks freeShift by hand rather than leave it to a playlist computer; Americana works out from honky tonk and bluegrass to Cajun, Tex-Mex and zydeco; Antistatik pairs minimal music with new electronics from Eastern Europe and the odd reggae record; Caravelas runs in Portuguese and German.