Post by stratocaster on Apr 19, 2014 19:42:46 GMT -6
Listening to the radio while working in my garage is something I enjoy, but living in a small town where there's nothing but Mom&Pop radio stations, crappy programming and on-air talent, sent me far enough over the edge one day that I decided to start my own. I have thousands of MP3's ranging from classic country to ambient sounds. I'm fine going from Alan Jackson one minute to Buckethead the next so I did some research and bought a transmitter. I built my own antenna and launched one Saturday and have since brought a few neighbors and family on as my first listeners.
I'm still just a beginner but I have enjoyed searching and setting up the software, digging my old mic and EQ out of the closet and also scheduling my own commercials. When I say commercials I don't mean commercials for pay. They are funny but clean parodies that I found on the net that break up the playlist just enough to get my attention from time to time and remind me that it's my music and I can do what I want.
Call it silly but it's my thing and for now it's just for people I know. Of course as I increase power and build more antennas I'll pick up other listeners, but my objective will always be to program what no one else will.
Post by HighMountainRadio on Dec 15, 2017 15:14:13 GMT -6
For me I always LOVED, EAT and BREATH radio so it was just a natural progression I suppose.. Got first started on 27 MHZ, circa 1963, SW listening immediately followed when I heard my first Es propagation on 27 MHz ! Other, better licenses followed in later years. 50 MHz is my favorite band to DX on, have 89 countries confirmed contact on 'The Magic Band' thus far after 46 years on the band.. Still enjoy DX'ing pirates on SW..
My first foray into pirate radio was in 1970 with a buddy. We lived on one side of the river, our girlfriends lived on the other and commercial radio pretty much was mundane at best, albeit, a LOT better than today ! Today, commercial radio is a vast wasteland of clones and clones of clones, etc.. Playing the same crap until your ears bleed.. We scrounged up an old AN/TRC-1 FM Narrowband Transmitter at a local surplus electronics shop (now many years defunct, and SADLY missed !) We chopped out some capacitors and improved the audio greatly (this era, 1970, we were both 14 BTW). We fabricated a 1/4 Wave Ground Plane antenna out of welding rods and planted it firmly atop his house, hooked up his Sony Open Reel Deck to a homebrew control board as well as homebrew mixer. Managed to get around 40 Watts maximum output from the 829B final amplifier vacuum tube.
The AN/TRC-1 was originally used during the Vietnam war to relay telephone traffic from jungle hilltop to hilltop and utilized a portion of what is the official USA FM BCB..
So, we enjoyed our own beloved 60's and 1970 Rock & Roll music, commercial free and a pounding signal across the 3 mile stone's throw to the female side of the river..
Recent foray onto the FM BCB is 'High Mountain Radio' "Broadcasting From Somewhere HIGH In The Remote Appalachian Mountains..... With All Of The Stunning Power... Of A Nightlight !" FM Stereo 'Beacon Of Hope' @ 99.9 MHz. Format Is Blues, Motown, Reggae, Soul and Old School Rock & Roll.
In the next few days I am having a sexxy seductress do some station ID spots, much more pleasing to the ear !!
As a closing note, I'd like to offer up a sacrificial piece of toasted heliax to my young age mentor at night where I have had the privledge of acquiring my taste for some of the greatest music ever produced, "The BIG 8", CKLW, Windsor, Ontario, Canada !!! I doubt there was anywhere on the eastern seaboard you could NOT hear their rockcrushing signal on 800 KHZ, 50,000 Watt Clear Channel, Amplitude Modulation, at it's zenith !! :-) There were other 50 KW stations that indeed deserve kudos as well, WABC, 77.0 KHZ, NYC with 'Cousin Brucie Morrow', WKBW, 1520 KHZ, Buffalo, New York, you will all be forever affectionately remembered and very sadly missed ! What an era to have grown up in !!
I smiled as I read all of the previous stories here !
Rock On ! Warmest Regards, 'Spooky' :-)
"Knowledge Is Always Made More Valuable By Sharing It With Others !" Always Remember To Be Kind ! True Greatness Often Has Very Humble Beginnings ! Help A Kid Out Today ! *** High Mountain Radio *** "Broadcasting From Somewhere High In The Remote Appalachian Mountains"
Hi all, I was actually a DJ at 2 different radio stations back in the early to mid 90s and they were both country music formats, and it was okay but I didn't really like it, the second station I was at was about 100 miles from where I was originally from and had a lot more different radio stations so I tried to get a job at one of those and it didn't work out, but I have had a love for it ever since. The reason I got interested in Pirate Radio was because I don't have hardly any extra money to pay for licensing fees to actually play music legally, so I am trying to figure out if there is a way that I can do it on the internet without the risk of being caught and getting in trouble for it. I do have a free radio software installed on my laptop and have been playing around with setting up all my music rotations and events and sweepers and so. So if anyone can tell me a way to do that I would really appreciate it, thanks so much
I also like the radio like you. At the age of 13, I first start working on this topic. I also like a walkie talkie and two-way radio. Now I build a walkie talkie company and sell walkie talkie all over the world. You can enjoy. olefins.com.bd/motorola-walkie-talkie-price-bangladesh/
I have been a radio tech most of my life, working on CB and amateur radio. I also listen to shortwave radio, and decided that some of the broadcast on WWCR and WBCQ should be heard by people. I started by using a Heathkit DX 60 on 6.9 MHz an then decided to go to 11 meters where I broadcast everyday during the 2000 solar peak from late 1998 to spring 2004. I used a Sterba Curtain antenna that I build and broadcast mostly on channel 28. I used shortwave radio broadcast as my source, merely rebroadcasting from the receiver into the transmitter, I also used an SDR radio back then which I liked using allot for my broadcasting source towards the last two years of my broadcast on 11 meters. I now have a Ramsey FM transmitter that I use on occasion locally.
Post by ogrevorbis on Sept 10, 2019 20:55:25 GMT -6
I just realized even though I've been here forever, I never answered this question and I'm bored so why not.
I used to think that my first exposure to the idea of pirate broadcasting was when I got one of those FM car mp3 things that broadcasts your phone or mp3 player into the car stereo. This revitalized my interest and caused me to get back into the idea.
The original realization happened when my family was driving through this fancy Christmas light show. They had a sign that said to tune your radio to X frequency and I believe it was AM actually. I was probably only 8-12 years old. I knew about radio, but I thought there would be some type of control system or something. I didn't understand that the only thing keeping you from having a station was the transmitter and antenna. When I found this out, I became immediately interested and I was then able to connect the idea of broadcast transmitters working just like my walkie-talkie, rather than some mysterious hidden system. I looked up on the internet right after I found out about this. The internet was pretty small back then, but I came across a site called sci-toys (which still exists) where they showed a simple AM transmitter with a crystal oscillator and an audio transformer. I built this project and it worked decently, but I remember the modulation being very low and the range was only like 50ft. I obviously wanted an amplifier, but back then the internet was so sparse and I wasn't able to find any pirate community online. Maybe one existed and I just couldn't find it. So I tried asking ham guys about amplifiers and they would either shut me down and give me a lesson on why I shouldn't do it or they would give vague info like (use an OP-AMP). This term is so ubiquitous, it wasn't clear which one I should buy. I gave up.
Then several years later I found that old crystal oscillator transmitter in a box and I looked online, and there was much more information available. There were even built transmitters available on ebay. Back then I remember the only transmitter I could find was the "Veronica 30W PLL" (which I think is still made by a company called AAREFF - yep www.aareff.com/en/30w-fm-transmitter/ ) and it was a bit too expensive for a kid. I begged my mom for it, but obviously, she didn't buy it.