THE early days of NCB Radio saw us at our most adventurous, with our hardy gaggle of music lovers attending as many events as we could, even with the limitations of technology as it was then.

Where now, you can pretty much fire up an internet connection from anywhere with a signal, and that signal is often 4G, the early years of NCB were a time where 3G was a revolutionary technology, fibre broadband of any form was nowhere near what it is today, but rather an expensive folly for a few, and mass wifi at events were often a rarity and when it was present, it was unreliable.

Nonetheless, we persisted and between 2011 and 2013, we would come to various events across Cornwall, broadcast from them and try and bring a flavour of the event to those back home. It’s not something we do so much of these days, mostly from a resources and time point of view, although there is often burbling within our ‘National Coalboard Radio’ grouping about doing some events of our own – as we did in the past. Watch this space, burblings often become reality in one form or another.

One of the most notorious within our team was the Royal Cornwall Show 2012. For reasons we can’t quite remember, the press office at the show wouldn’t or couldn’t allow us space in the media centre for the three days of the show, leading us to go a bit more ‘portable’.

Andy Coppin, best known for becoming the mayor of Bodmin a couple of years later and then the sales manager for West End Motors Vauxhall, offered us the opportunity to base ourselves within their stand at the show, something we gratefully received. It turns out the initial gratitude would later become extremely so, for the weather had plans for the show we hadn’t quite realised.

When the sun shines on the Royal Cornwall Show, it’s a terrific place to be. When we did our trial broadcast at the 2010 show from the media centre, it was glorious weather and we remember ending the three days having a pint with the Pirate FM team, bought as a thank you for us letting them use our equipment to send files back to their studio when their 3G signal went caput. 2012, not so.

As our team went about interviewing traders and getting content to send back to the studio, the weather turned. It didn’t just rain. It blew a hoolie and absolutely threw it down with rain – and to make things worse, the internet signal within the show slowed to a crawl, meaning our team found themselves in the show tent with little to do. We waited for the rain to calm, but did it? Did it heck.

One of our favourite events as music lovers to do, was the now-extinct Looe Music Festival, which we covered during its first years. We’ll expand more on that tale in next week’s tale from the shed, no doubt, but reflect on this – it saw us broadcasting live from a bench under a marquee we’d bought. There was alcohol nearby. It was glorious mayhem.