Bob Tomalski (7 February 1953 – 13 January 2001), was a

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

, "gadget guru", broadcaster and longtime proponent of radio broadcasting freedom. He founded ''Home Cinema Choice'' magazine and contributed to many other magazines on the subjects of TV, video, satellite TV, mobile phones and

camcorders A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swap ...

. He also appeared regularly on Sky News' weekly ''Technofile'' programme, reviewing gadgets alongside presenter Martin Stanford and was a regular contributor to ''

Media Network Media Network is the name of a weekly radio programme broadcast on Radio Netherlands Worldwide from 7 May 1981 until 26 October 2000. When the programme began the station was known as Radio Nederland, but was renamed Radio Netherlands shortly th ...

'', a communications magazine on the English service of

Radio Netherlands Radio Netherlands (RNW; nl, Radio Nederland Wereldomroep) was a public radio and television network based in Hilversum, producing and transmitting programmes for international audiences outside the Netherlands from 1947 to 2012. Its services i ...

Career

Tomalski started his broadcasting career on the south west London pirate scene of the 1970s, when he was the host of ''Roger Tate's Mailbox Show'' on European Music Radio, and later became a licensed

amateur radio operator An amateur radio operator is someone who uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other amateur operators on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators ...

with the

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assign ...

G6CQF. His maisonette in Mitcham, Surrey was equipped with a broadcast-quality mixing desk and two

Nakamichi is a Japanese consumer electronics brand that originated in Japan and gained a name from the 1970s onwards for innovative and high quality audio cassette decks. Nakamichi is a subsidiary of Chinese holding company Nimble Holdings. Nakamich ...

cassette decks, alongside the high-quality

turntables A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

. These were complemented by a collection of several thousand albums, mainly of his favourite genre; soul and funk, but topped up with many chart albums and a few hundred 60s and 70s rock records. He was also a collector of state of the art video equipment. Tomalski was a co-founder of Wandle Valley Radio (WVR) in 1984, still under the pseudonym "Roger Tate", broadcasting a soul/funk/hi-energy programme - he was a friend of the hi-energy artist

Hazell Dean Hazell Dean ( Poole; born 27 October 1952) is an English dance-pop singer, who achieved her biggest success in the 1980s as a leading Hi-NRG artist. She is best known for the top-ten hits in the United Kingdom "Searchin' (I Gotta Find a Man)", ...

- alongside Alan Rogers and Paul James (both pseudonyms). He provided the studio facilities for the station, which was amongst the pioneers of

microwave link Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300MHz to 300GHz(1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signals are normally lim ...

s from the studio to the FM Band II transmitter, a technology later very widely used in pirate radio. Another technology which Tomalski pioneered was that of computer

data transmission Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point o ...

via Band II FM radio - raw data transmitted onto the audio signal with no subcarrier: WVR featured the "Roger Tate Computer Program Programme" with Tomalski introducing (after the music had ended for the night) half an hour of 8-bit data sounds played from a Nakamichi cassette deck, representing programs for the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

and the Tandy

TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...

microcomputers, among others. Feedback on the programme and Tomalski was positive. His home studio was raided in the late 80s after alleged transmission offences, and the Home Office even went as far as confiscating his electric kettle (as well as the studio gear), on the grounds that it was connected to the same ring main as his transmitting equipment. In his subsequent radio career, Tomalski was a regular contributor to ''

You and Yours ''You and Yours'' is a British radio consumer affairs programme, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and produced by BBC News. History ''You and Yours'' began broadcasting in October 1970, when its first presenter was Joan York. In the 1980s it briefly ra ...

'' and ''The Big Byte'' on

BBC Radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering ...

. He also broadcast for Radio Mercury and Radio Invicta (which also sparked the career of Steve Walsh), and was the resident 'Inspector Gadget' on the

LBC LBC (originally the London Broadcasting Company) is a British phone-in and talk radio station owned and operated by Global and based in its headquarters in London. It was the UK's first licensed commercial radio station, and began to broadca ...

''Weekend Wireless Show'', talking about the week's technology news, reviewing gadgets and answering listener queries.

References

External links

Compilation of tributes and funeral eulogies for Bob Tomalski

Home Cinema Choice
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tomalski, Bob 1953 births 2001 deaths British television presenters British radio people British reporters and correspondents European amateur radio operators