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PIRATE RADIO
 

 Pirate Radio

What to and How to Tuning !!

 

What is Pirate Radio ?

Basically radio stations are supposed to register with the government and pay broadcasting licenses and all that legal stuff, they get proper square radio engineers who set up shit hot rigs in all the best sites to broadcast to large towns or via a network to the majority of the country (ie Radio 1)

 
 
 
 
 
 

Pirate Radio is provided by people who feel that they have something to contribute to the country in the form of music, unrecognised by the 'state' it is up to them to take it into their own hands to reprezent the sounds that they feel that should be shared with a wide like minded public. Pirate stations pay no fees to the government, they provide the service free of charge to an audience that they often dont know the size of, and they carry the risk of being busted by the Department of Trade and Industry.

However undeterred Pirate radio wont go away and has become part of the ravescene and clubbing culture giving the underground music scene a chance to breathe......

Where and How ?

If you want to run a pirate radio station you can just bung an aerial out of ya window and chuck your transmitter under a table under the decks, but dont expect to get any listeners, (except maybe yer next door neighbour when your harmonics cut over there TV !! also be prepared for some serious feedback and enuff damage to equipment, !

 
 
 
 
 

No if you want to be taken seriously you have to get heard, and get heard cleanly, get a decent Transmitter (phased locked loop preferably) and an aerial that is specific to the transmitters frequency you are operating from, stick the aerial high on a tower block or some high building running to the transmitter which is linked to a microwave link which beams a signal to your studio which can be a few miles away. That way when the old bill or DTI come looking for ya they will track the signal which you are well away from, giving you time to sort yourself out when they come after you....

Schedules are important, as well as on air times, make sure u dont come on at exactly the same time everynight otherwise you are blatently giving the authorities a lead to when they can catch you out.!

Responsibilities

Scheduling is up to you, what music you want to play, for how long, how much you are willing to invest in equipment and how many studios you can manage to use (the more the better)

Every station should have some kind of techinical genius who can fix up the equipment and the transmitter when it screws up, and dont expect to get too attached to your transmitter...... make sure you have got some backups cause the DTI tend to like borrowing them.. Permantly.

How To Pick Up Pirates

If setting up your own station all sounds a bit hectic, and you just want to listen to them, well its not always as simple as finding Kiss or Radio 1, you have to search for pirates, if you got a digital tuner they often wont come up on seek, so if you scan through and dont get any it doesnt mean there arent any on, it just means you arent close enough to the antenna to lock into it, check out
 
 
 
 
 

Steve's Pirate Site for the best and most comprehensive list of station frequency's on the web.Once you have found something that you think isnt Radio 4 or Captial Fm then dont assume cause they say it is on 90.0fm that it is exactly on that frequency, try down a couple and up a couple cause lots of pirates tend to drift slightly. Also get a decent aerial or bung a long bit of wire into the back of your stereo and wander around with it until you get a decent reception.

Activities

Links