DSWCI Member of Honour: Jens M. Frost
21st December 1919 - 18th October 1999.
Edited and photo collected by Anker Petersen, Chairman of DSWCI
During
the Second World War when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, Jens
Frost, being a journalist in his early twenties, realized, that the
censorship by the occupying power on all information to the Danish
population made it impossible for the Danes to get the full information
on what was going on in Denmark and elsewhere in the world. Thus,
listening secretly on MW and SW to Western broadcasting stations,
particularly the BBC, became an activity for him and a large part of the
Danish population who never before in their long history of thousands
of years had been occupied by a foreign nation.
Right after the
“Liberation” in May 1945, Jens purchased a shortwave
receiver and began listening to the world. One of his favourites became
Radio Australia which was heard well. Fascinated by this media, he took
contact in 1961 with Editor at the Danish Newspaper Berlingske
Tidende, Mr. O. Lund-Johansen, who just had published the second
edition of the new and unique World Radio Handbook. (TV was not yet
invented!) Shortly after, Jens was employed as “Assistant
Editor” of the Handbook being responsible for doing a lot of the
hard work of compiling broadcast information of the next year’s
edition. I met Jens for the first time at his office in Hellerup in
1963 and found him being a modest man, but a very interesting person
with so much knowledge on the shortwave listening hobby. This became
the start of a close friendship which lasted until the 18th of October
1999.
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| Jens Frost presenting the new WRTH 1981 in Hvidovre. |
Jens
Frost took over after O. Lund-Johansen as Editor-in-Chief of the World
Radio TV Handbook in 1964. Shortly after, he moved the WRTH Office to a
new private bulgalow in Hvidovre where he lived with his family until
his death. He spent all his life in making the WRTH the best of its kind
in the world and established an extensive global network of contacts to
all major broadcasting stations and DX collaborators. This network
carried the WRTH, because he was able - by hard work of himself and
free lance staff of DX-ers - to evaluate the correctness of the vast
amount of information, he received from the broadcasting scene. I often
heard this comment from Jens about certain broadcastingstations:
“The
producers of the broadcasts have no idea on which frequencies, they can
be heard on, - and the frequency managers keep it as their own
secret!” The frequency information received from the PTT’s
in
many nations was not much better! They often claimed operational
frequencies which had been allocated to certain stations upon
request, but never came on the air for various reasons, mainly
financial. But the PTT’s did not care about that! Other
PTT’s, by intent, gave misinformation to the UN International
Frequency Registration Board and to the WRTH about their broadcasting
activities during the Cold War.
Therefore Jens highly
appreciated the support from experienced DX-ers who better than anybody
else were able to tell which stations really were broadcasting on the
bands. Because of this, he seeked contact with a lot of DX-ers and
DX-Clubs worldwide, and he often attended DX-Meetings and Conferences
in many countries.
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| Jens Frost at DSWCI meeting in Morakulien June 1989. |
The
WRTH became very popular amongst DX-ers and broadcasters and other
users of the radio frequency bands around the world, mainly because of
its unique exactness in every detail. Therefore Jens Frost did receive
many unusual appreciations, such as:
- The Rose Medal from Kol Israel
- The Peace Medal jointly awarded by Kol Israel and Radio Cairo
- The IRF Medal from the Association for Broadcasting and DX-ing, Federal Republic of Germany
- The Golden Bell Awards 1985, Republic of China
- Award from the Association DX Barcelona, 1986
- International DX-er of the Year 1986, by ANARC
- A Watch from ANARCON86, Montreal 1986
- A Collection of First Day of Issue of Canadian Stamps
With
the 40 years jubilee edition in 1986, Jens decided to retire from the
WRTH as Editor-in-Chief and hand over job to his assistant for several
years, Andy Sennitt.
On his 70th years birthday on the 21st
of December 1989, I had the pleasure to honour Jens Frost with the so
far only Membership of Honour of the DSWCI. During his long editorship
he had insisted to stay neutral in all ways and not become a member of
any DX-Club.
But as retired, he enjoyed his membership in the DSWCI and we often saw him to our meetings.
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| Jens Frost at my home three months before he passed away, looking at my photos from Sri Lanka. |
As
late as a few hours before his sudden and unexpected heart attack
occuring while watching TV, he dispatched a letter to me for DX-Mirror
in SWN. It contained some interesting DX-observations which he had made
during the past month e.g. one of his favourite stations Radio
Australia on 9500 kHz.
He phoned me three days earlier about
this and confirmed that he looked very much forward to participate in
the EDXC Conference here in Copenhagen on the 6th of November 1999.
So it should not be. He was buried in Hvidovre on the 25th
of October and some members from the two Danish DX-Clubs did attend the
funeral which became a honourful departure from this world by one of
the greatest supporters ever to the DX-hobby, surrounded by a lot of
beautiful flowers from his beloved.
