Pirate Radio

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Do you think the autorities would turn a 'blind eye' if a pirate station was as professional as a proper radio station??

Yeah, I do think they would not be that bothered.
10
59%
No, I think they would bust any pirate station they possibly could.
7
41%
I hate pirate radio stations and I am not bothered anyway.
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 17

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Yoda
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Pirate Radio

Post by Yoda »

Hi, we (myself and a few other people) are setting up a priate radio station some time in the not to distant future. I would like to hear about any experience you have with pirate radio whether good, bad or indifferent. The equipment used and the way people go about it.

The main reason I want to find out more is that a while back in my home town there was a pirate station. It went on for weeks and weeks and became quite big. They only transmitted on weekends and started to become quite professional at it. Until one day...... The radio pirates had a few guests round one saturday afternoon and there was some drinking going on, then after a short while they all became louder and then a few swear words, obsenities were said and more and more. The next day they were off air for good, they had been busted.

Do you think if they had not got drunk and swearing the authorities would have left them alone, as they did not cause any interference, the music they played was good, and the presenters were quite professional about it.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.
I have removed my e-mail address due to spam through this forum!!! please now use:
simon (at) dreamtechnologies (dot) co (dot) uk

May the force be with you.

http://www.radiorave.co.uk/
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Re: Pirate Radio

Post by Fleetinglimpse »

Yoda wrote:Hi, we (myself and a few other people) are setting up a priate radio station some time in the not to distant future. I would like to hear about any experience you have with pirate radio whether good, bad or indifferent. The equipment used and the way people go about it.

The main reason I want to find out more is that a while back in my home town there was a pirate station. It went on for weeks and weeks and became quite big. They only transmitted on weekends and started to become quite professional at it. Until one day...... The radio pirates had a few guests round one saturday afternoon and there was some drinking going on, then after a short while they all became louder and then a few swear words, obsenities were said and more and more. The next day they were off air for good, they had been busted.

Do you think if they had not got drunk and swearing the authorities would have left them alone, as they did not cause any interference, the music they played was good, and the presenters were quite professional about it.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences.
Repent ...Quit your Job and slack off..and read below
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42892,00.html

The line between what's perfectly lawful and what will get a radio station's license yanked seems undeniably fuzzy, but some examples may clarify the FCC's position.

Indecent: "Soon she was fondling my Peter Paul and Zagnuts, and I knew it wouldn't be long before I blew my Milk Duds clear to Mars and gave her a taste of the old Milky Way..."

Not indecent: "Dick suggests maybe getting a mega-Dick to help out, but you know, you remember the time the King ate mega-Dick under the table..."

Indecent: "Well, it was a nice big fart. I'm feeling very gaseous at this point."

Indecent: "Could you take the phone and rub it on your Chia Pet? Oh, let me make sure nobody is around ... Now was that really your little beaver?"

Not indecent: "American wives all across the country have confessed to using erotic aids to spice up their sex life and ... thousands of women say they fantasize while having sex with their husbands."

Indecent: "The man complained earlier that he was so large that it was ruining his marriages. Big is good if the guy knows how to use it ... somebody big is just going to have to find somebody that's big."

Indecent: "Have you ever had sex with an animal? Well, don't knock it. I was sodomized by Lambchop."

The characters depicted in the above Editorial i assume are fictional in intent from the Authors points of view i would imagine..I trust no one here present would be so imbecillic as to interpret or exrtrapolate the points being made by the author of that article as some kind of subtle hint directed at anyone that i know personally.

From past observations the Denigrates of mine has mis_interpretated and used a biassed and unethical standard of measure in regards to my Personal State of Mind etc..etc...and in so doing thay will attempt to act out a false sense of resonateing with the intended and relevant points being made.
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Post by marek »

There is a problem here. The authorities can sit like the three monkeys in the TV ad; see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, but the problem is that the stations you're competing with, no matter how worthless they are, won't sit silent.
I ran a pirate station in 1991-1992 consisting of one main transmitter with 150W and three slaves with the same strenght. Together the transmitters covered an area with a population of approx. 500000 on the Swedish side and 400000 on the Danish side. The station ran for around a year and a half and sounded professional (even the Swedish state network P3 admitted that we had a better sound than they self had after we got caught and they really have a superb sound). Also the program quality was ok and I tried to run the station as professionally as possible.
I tried to legalize the station applying for licences as often as possible, but never got one, no matter what I presented and sometimes the grounds the authorities presented for their negative decisions were more or less puzzling (it stank!!!).
Now we come to the core of the problem. All the involved authorities knew about the station and even listened themselves. We interviewed the police daily about traffic and criminality and Televerket, at that time the authority that saw to it that the laws were obeyed, knew about the station, but never intervened. Actually Televerket had problems with us. The phone station broke down some times because of all the callers to the station! The only radio station that usually made polls at that time, the state radio Sveriges Radio (P1, P2, P3 and lokalradion), knew about the station and we had quite good results in their the polls I learned later. They didn't say a word.
One day, the only commercial station, a quasi pirate, quasi licenced station, made a poll themselves, got 11% of the listeners AND got beaten by... correct, us. We got 14% in this poll and they couldn't tolerate it no matter what. Some advertisers left them, because they didn't want to go to whoever is no. 2. At that time nobody thought of profiling to a certain group of listeners by taste, age etc. This annoyed this station so much that they made a complaint to Televerket, which forced them to act, whether they wanted or not. However, I got a tip from them and turned the transmitter off. The problem though was that one of the crew turned it on as soon as I left the building and because of that they found us using a military helicopter taking the bearing of the main transmitter. Seven police cars, a truck and a Televerket bus arrived at the station and a few minutes later around ten persons, mostly police officers, at my home. I got arrested. At this point I can say that the circumstances above is more than you normally learn to know in a case such as this. The interviewing police officers however showed me report from the commercial station etc. etc. They listened to the station themselves. Btw, I knew quite many of the people at that station, so called friends, and learned that they cheered in champagne that day... Some of them had even made shows at our station. A**h**es!!!
I took the hit and the rest of the crew didn't get anything for it. I got half a year, got equipment for 30000 Euros and records for 10000 Euros seized for this prank, that I today consider very much naive and ignorant from my side. I was only 22, naive y o and became a celebrity from this, but negatively, and people that just left the diapers then know about me. Most newspapers in Sweden, foreign newspapers like The Sun and N.Y. Post wrote about the spectacle. Now I'm 34 y o, sound better than ever, but are paria in the radio business here in Sweden (and even Denmark). If I'm to transmit it's only pirate, because I don't get a job anywhere. How fun is that if you love to do radio?
What's the lesson from this. You want to do pirate radio? Think over it, once, twice, plan it as much as you possibly can. Have a great sound, make professional programs (I mean really high quality). The authorities either won't recognize you as a pirate or ignore the fact that you actually are a pirate, BUT the other commercial stations WON'T and they are the ones reporting you. Therefor choose an area where those stations won't get too much competition, so that they ignore you, i.e. an area between two commercial stations. You will gain listeners from this as they usually don't have an alternative to listen to, but the commercial stations won't recognize the competition. This often can be done by a directional antenna or by linking to the transmission site. Try to limit yourselves. My station was transmitting 24-7 and had a crew of 20 DJ:s. I should have limited it quite a lot... In the end try to get a licence, even if it's LPFM. Among your listeners there often is someone with a thick wallet that is ready to offer some kind of companionship. Use them and start legally after a time. Your competitors won't last more than 6-12 months before they report you, if you're good enough! Otherwise the authorities will catch you. Be smart and professional!
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Yup i personally understand the point that you are makeing

Post by Fleetinglimpse »

However you all gotto understand that we in the USA do approach solutions differently..especially the Pirate Radio Operatives here in the State of South Florida..U.S OF A
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Post by Sir Nigel »

Is it just me, or are there just a lot of pirates in South Florida?
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Yoda
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Post by Yoda »

Humm, not sure. I'm in the UK and there aint many here...
I have removed my e-mail address due to spam through this forum!!! please now use:
simon (at) dreamtechnologies (dot) co (dot) uk

May the force be with you.

http://www.radiorave.co.uk/
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Post by Sir Nigel »

That was just an idea. I really don't know.

Back to the main topic. Sometimes it seems that the reason a station is busted is because of doing things that a "real" station wouldn't. So not just the fact that they are pirates.
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Post by marek »

No matter whether you get too popular in Europe or in FL, USA, I'm pretty sure you'll become a hunted person... You're just too much competition, but you don't have a licence which also means it's easy to get rid of you.
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NOT IN FLORIDA

Post by Fleetinglimpse »

marek wrote:No matter whether you get too popular in Europe or in FL, USA, I'm pretty sure you'll become a hunted person... You're just too much competition, but you don't have a licence which also means it's easy to get rid of you.
I think a quote from a Nickleodeon series with the Mafia Boys..Rocky.."We dont need no stinking id"..However that is just an anology because the jerkoff's denigrates that have used the 'KIDDE' factor presence here on this forum and others would use those sentiments as setting a bad example for the Kids..so once again why i regard this forum to be nothing but a bunch of "USERS"..Well it is time for all the participants to pay me my money..and i am not kidding either
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We try to stay Legal

Post by djjerme »

I actually work at a legal station here in the states(infact I am on the overnight shift right now)..and two of our cluster engineers run pirates as do I and we all try to run them as close to legal as we can...The equipment on the stations are of various degrees. One of them actually is useing the back-up Optimod 8400 for one of the commercial stations and the antenna is on top of our building (40 stories up) its a fricken flamethrower of a pirate..the automation we all are using is written by one of our PT remote engineers who has designed loggers for other companies in the US! Needly to say I know of atleast 6 pirates in the area and all of them work at actual commercial stations, and most are using back up equipment or retired pro gear. I along with a couple others are running PCS transmitters and the keep up with the pro stuff pretty decently! I just changed my antenna to a Scala FMV folded diapole and changed all my transmission line and am planning on adding a 150watt amp inline (WOOHOOO!)..Getting back to the point, if all these frickin Bible thumpers can string up translators and booster all over the dial then Pirates (if they stay close to legal should be OK)...our FCC field agent does know who most of us are and sometimes has to make an example of someone if they act stupid, but most of us operate near our own legal stations so the we would have to file a complaint on ourselves :)
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Post by Sir Nigel »

All I can say is COOL! :D
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