A CORNISH mining landmark will be celebrating St Piran’s Day on Saturday, March 5 with a special broadcast by the Cornish Radio Amateur Club, or CRAC for short.

The club has obtained a special events station licence making a one-time-only broadcast at Mount Wellington Mine to activate it as an amateur radio station.

CRAC will use a special "K2" locator in the call sign, which has been licensed to Cornish stations by OFFCOM for only one year. The station will use a HF (high frequency) set-up, which will broadcast to UK and foreign amateur radio (ham) users and a VHF set-up, to cover local users as far as north Devon.

The call sign for the club is GX4CRC and can be Googled for more information.

“It seems a rather fitting tribute to transmit from a Cornish Mine on the day that celebrates the landing of St Piran on the shores of Cornwall, and his claimed subsequent discovery of tin the same day” said Mount Wellington Mine’s owner, Richard Freeborn. “As far as we can ascertain, this will be the first time a special event radio station will ever have operated from a Cornish mine. The idea was suggested last year by the late president of CRAC, Norman Pascoe, who passed away in February this year, who would no doubt be thrilled to have known that his idea has come to fruition”.

The station has been licensed to operate from 9am to 4pm and will consist of up to eight radio operators.