Offshore pirate radio.


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I used to love listening to the pirate radio stations in the 60's. There was: Caroline, Radio London (big L), England, 390, 270 & probably others I can't remember. Mam used to write to 270 for requests, she was always getting her name mentioned, & even I got mentioned when it was my birthday, I thought I was famous. Then the government banned them & spoiled the fun...

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Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them too, the BBC was really crap in the early to mid 60's, but the UK government had signed a treaty many years prior and was carrying out their obligation to remove pirate radio stations... The airwaves were licensed out to prevent overcrowding of the bands and causing interference to other legitimate stations.

Over here to gain an AM station license, you have to meet certain criteria, one is to be able to reduce power between certain hours at night, usually between sunset and dawn. Reason being the AM broadcast band "opens up" at night...Having one hundred license holders all on the same frequency causes listeners a lot of distress. It can be bedlam some nights, even with all those stations on reduced power.

The same problem occurred in Europe, but more to adjacent channel interference.... Now all those pirates dropped into slots licensed to other users...

I understand stateside has it's pirates at sea on the east coast, and I've read of FM land based pirates who have been busted by the "Federal Candy Company" as it's been nicknamed.. (FCC)

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Hello Everyone,

I did some research on this topic a few months ago. I was going to add it to our website as an extra little something, in respect of those radio heros.

But then the Jimmy S. situation - and - well I let it drop...and worked on other topics. Radio out to sea on rusted ships and it ain't fun. But the money was good. Back in the late 1960's I was a teenager - and all day I would listen to my mothers Hi-Fi in the living-room, because it had FM radio - unknown to you UK listeners as I understand it. College radio station - we had one WRPI...and it was heaven....as they played every new album that was released - what are now all the classic rock and progressive bands of the day....whole album sides without interuptions.....dope smoking DJ's On The Air - and that's where I got a lot of my music education from. Other times, you might get a female DJ into music that just wasn't my cup of tea! Change the dial and find something else....but there was something for everybody to enjoy - as music should be.

Forgive me if I wandered off the main subject - I didn't stray too far.

One question - do these off shore radio stations still exist? Or have they become obsolete these days? All FM Radio should be commerical free!

Says Me.....Dave

Just read the note above this one.....I could listen to my hometown radio station at night way up in the mountains where our summer camp was - 150 miles away....AM radio waves follow the curve of the earth - FM goes in a straight line they tell me.

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As far as I can remember all pirates were on medium wave (or AM as it's called now) & the ground wave seemed to travel well. The sky wave at night would have traveled a lot further & interfered with distant co-channel stations. I expect foreign governments would have got upset about this & that's why they had to go. I remember 270 was affected by selective fading at night when the ground & sky wave came in together & messed up the carrier & side-bands, it caused a screeching sound like radio Luxembourg used to make (the Luxembourg fade).

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Let me clarify what I meant by AM, as colly said, in the UK AM was used on medium wave and long wave broadcast bands.

Right having said that, AM and FM are modes of transmission, both can be used on any frequency, Hams often use both modes plus SSB carrier suppressed.

In the lower bands, below VHF, we get FM "flutter", hence the more common use of AM in those bands..

The broadcast band is a "short haul" daytime band, but a "long haul" night time band reflecting off the "D" layer at night. Imagine an mirror reflecting the signal during night hours..

During daylight hours the sun dissipates the "D" layer.

The VHF bands, typically above 50Mhz behave in a different manner to those below, they are subject to other influences.

But as the OP states, the "FM bands" produce some great listening for music.

I have friends who swear by AM mode, others FM mode, my hearing is so bad it makes little difference to me.

When I live in Australia, we did have AM stereo broadcasts, tbh, I preferred FM stereo, AM never sounded stereo to me, they were broadcast on the AM broadcast band. And I tried tuning to suit and with the stereo indicator, still didn't sound "right"...

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Hello Colly0410

It seems to me that someone on shore used to try and over-ride the ships radio waves. It had to be someone whith enough power to accomplish that feat....like the BBC for example. I guess these little ships really made their point very clear. The public wanted something different than the same old same old programing - and what your BBC was giving them. To the BBC I say "tough titty said the kitty when the milk ran dry".

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I could always tell the difference between AM & FM, I used to flick from one to the other (in mono) when radios 1 & 2 was on both bands, I preferred FM unless it was hissing due to low signal. I've never heard stereo AM so can't comment on it, I expect selective fading would mess it up. I've connected the audio out from my Freeview (digital TV) box to my hi-fi & usually listen to digital radio that way since my FM aerial blew down, sounds good to me..

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Where we lived, we could only get a couple of the AM stereo stations, so no problems with fading...

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I remember when doing my army signalers course, I learned that a Marconi 1/4 wave aerial needs good earth conductivity or a ground plane, I bet the salty sea acted as a good earth. I wonder if that's why there signals traveled so well? I don't suppose there aerials were very tall compared to transmitted wavelength, so would have used loading coils &/or capacity hats.

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Same as the big shortwave broadcasters use, antenna tuners, very large variable capacitors and very large inductors.

I'd imagine standard broadcast transmitting antennas use the same, the towers are the antennas, mounted on a large ball insulator.

At sea the ocean is a counterpoise...

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Bless this message board !



I've been waiting for an excuse to put on youtube my old recording of some of Radio London's closedown in 1967 .



I was either living on Woodborough Road or West Bridgford then , so it gives a good idea of the daytime reception in Nottingham on medium-wave .



This was done on an old cheap Fidelity reel-to-reel from an ordinary transistor radio and then many years later transposed to cassette...... so it ain't hi-fi !



Also have to admit a boo-boo .



Somehow when digitising from cassette years ago , I accidently lopped off the final song that was The Beatles and Day In The Life , before the final sign off at 3pm . Immediately after that , when it went to "dead air", I tuned into Caroline who were playing We Shall Overcome but that isn't here unfortunately .



When I can find the original tape will have to do this again and add some photos as well . (sorry no time to sort out pictures so you will have to close your eyes , listen and pretend you are a teenager again ! ) Took me best part of an hour just to get this together :-(



So if you have 20 mins , listen to Paul Kaye, Kenny Everett, Tony Blackburn , Ringo, Dusty , Cat Stevens and hear those ciggy ads for Consulate and Du Maurier , long gone .



The final newscast also mentions the Test Match at Trent Bridge getting rained off .



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Does anybody remember the inspirational DJ Stuart Henry and his devoted wife Ollie. The management from Radio one sacked him in the early seventies in what they called a reshuffle, what they actually did was to sack him because they suspected he was either broadcasting under the influence of drink or drugs or both, what they didn't give him chance to explain was that he was suffering from the onset of Multiple Sclerosis.

He went on to have a succesfull career with Radio Luxomberg, in the later stages of his illness he was reliant on his devoted wife Ollie to assist with his very successful radio show regularly pulling in over 11 million listeners per show even perceviering when virtually paralysed and relying on Ollie to assist with the show presentation. What an inspiration compared to the overpaid overrated DJ's of modern day stations

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No mention of Radio Luxemborg. They used to belt out some power as all you needed was a coil and capacitor for tuning, and a cats whisker diode to listen at night in Nottingham. Picked up an army surplus headset from the shop on Carrington Street - remember them, the tunable vane capacitor came out of a WWII radio and wound the coil myself from instructions in a radio magazine.

Before the pirates Radio Luxemborg was the bees knees. There was an American forces radio station located in Germany somewhere that was pretty good too.

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From recollections, Radio Luxemburg had a directional antenna, I'm sure I read somewhere they aimed it in a different orientation during the daytime hours to comply with international treaties, then after 7-00pm beamed it to the west for the UK programming...

It was one of Europe's most powerful transmitters.

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I loved the Pirate stations in the 60's.

It's hard to explain how crap the radio was in 1964. So it was an absolute delight to tune into Caroline, London, 270 and all the others.

Without them I don't think the music scene would have been anything like as good.

We certainly wouldn't have had stuff like Motown, West Coast rock and the plethora of independent stuff that got made at that time.

The Pirates importance in the history of music has definitely been undervalued.

I believe a similar situation happened in the States around the late 50's when rock and roll was just starting to take hold.

They didn't have Pirate ships, but they did have 'border blasters' - high power stations transmitting from across the border in Mexico; beaming into the major cities. That was how Wolfman Jack got started. These stations played what people wanted to hear rather than what the FCC wanted.

God knows we need something now that would shake things up and get us excited enough to want to buy music again.

I thought that the internet would create the means, but so far all it's done is make it easier to get music for free - and mostly old stuff at that.

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I may have to take my video down as the copyright police have identified a Drifters song playing in the background of it . Amazing how they detect it , almost within minutes of it being posted .

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I may have to take my video down as the copyright police have identified a Drifters song playing in the background of it . Amazing how they detect it , almost within minutes of it being posted .

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed it, shame it has to go..

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