During the period 1969-1976 a monthly news bulletin, called Pirate Radio News (PRN), was published from the Netherlands in the English language and the editorial staff brought not only news about offshore and other radio projects but gave the readers the possibility to send in their letters. You could see it as a pre-publication of the International Radio Report, although we were far away from the internet and so it took many days before the newsletter had arrived by some of the readers outside the Netherlands.
I became final editor for the Pirate Radio News in 1972, a position I had up till late 1976. Due to the fact some of the offshore radio stations also promoted the PRN we got readers in several West European Countries but also due to the fact RNI Shortwave transmissions had a wider reception it brought us readers in Canada, USA and even in Japan.
It must have been around late 1972 that I received the very first letter from Herbert Stephen Desind from Maryland in which he wrote about the power of the RNI DX program from Albert J Beirens. We started an exchange in recordings and many letters and packages went to both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. However radio was very interesting, Herbert Desind had also other interests like space sciences and engineering.
He was a Washington, DC area native born on January 15, 1945 and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland and and began working in the local public schools as a science teacher. Information found on the internet learned me recently more about Desind: ‘At the time of his death, in October 1992, he was a high school teacher and a freelance writer/lecturer on spaceflight. Desind also was an avid model rocketeer, specializing in using the Estes Cineroc, a model rocket with an 8mm movie camera mounted in the nose. To many members of the National Association of Rocketreers he was known as ‘Mr. Cineroc’. His extensive requests worldwide for information and photographs of rocketry programs even led to a visit from FBI agents who asked him about the nature of his activities.
Herbert Desind used the collection to support his writings in NAR publications, and his building scale model rockets for NAR competitions. Desind also used the material in the classroom, and in promoting model rocket clubs to foster an interest in spaceflight among his students.
Desind entered the NASA Teacher in Space program in 1985, but it is not clear how far along his submission rose in the selection process. He was not a semi-finalist, although he had a strong application. In 1991, Desind was named Science Teacher of the Year by Prince George’s County and the Potomac Electric Power Company.
Herbert Desind died October 16, 1992, having succumbed to colon cancer. On November 17, 1994, the Herbert Desind Memorial Space Awareness Center, a state-of-the-art facility, was created and dedicated at Laurel High School. Today that Center houses the Cooperative Satellite Learning Project (CSLP) class as well as other science classes.’
Already in the seventies he was building these rockets, although it was without the video cameras as these were not a common product yet. Very enthusiastic he wrote me one day that due to the influence from RNI Goes DX he was planning to build another rocket and name it MEBO III. At first my opinion was that he was joking but a few months later he was sending me photographs of the rocket and so here’s another memory to Radio Northsea International.
Hans Knot, October 2024
