Eyes Above The Waves

The New Zealand Herald has story about my father, Denis O'Callahan. It's nearly the fortieth anniversary of the first transmission of Radio Hauraki, New Zealand's first and only pirate radio station, created by my father and a few other like-minded guys in their twenties. At the time the New Zealand Government didn't allow private radio stations, so the idea was to set up a transmitter on a ship in international waters to work around the law. It was a crazy, risky undertaking, full of nautical, engineering, legal and financial challenges, and it succeeded. (After a few years the government caved to popular demand and granted them a land license.) My dad was both the original radio engineer and boat skipper, and of course I'm immensely proud of him.