Pirates at the top of the dial

There’s been a buzz going around regarding the mystery oldies station on 1710 calling itself “The Big Q”.  See this post for more details.  More DXers are reporting reception and it was heard in Oregon as recently as last week on 1710 khz.  With all of this recent talk, it has reminded me of some old pirate stations that I remember hearing back in the 80s at the upper end of the dial.  I also remember that catching any pirate on medium wave was a big deal back then (to me anyway).  Snagging a pirate reception on shortwave was difficult...

AM 1710 – “The Big Q” oldies heard well this morning

I was cruising the MW band early this morning and came across something new and interesting on 1710.  Instead of the usual Boston pirate, I was hearing a strong signal from a station playing oldies music – Beach Boys, The Temptations, The Big Bopper, etc.  I listened for over an hour to this station and heard frequent announcements between songs.  This station was calling itself “The Big Q” (or maybe Big Cube?) and had slick liners between songs – all very professional sounding.  Was this a pirate broadcaster?  The most unusual part of the broadcast were several slightly different ads...

Shortwave beacon “BA” 6840.6 khz

It seems there is always interesting and mysterious stuff taking place in the range of frequencies from 6-7 mhz. Aside from the pirate broadcasts that took place this last weekend, I heard some other interesting things: 6953 khz USB – UTC 0200 – Conversation between two fisherman, both with heavy New England accents. The talk was about fishing, weather conditions, etc. Both were heard very well here. Very informal conversation with much colorful language, and of course no legal IDs! 6835 khz USB – UTC 0300 – Two shrimpers “Candyman” and “Bubba” conversing tonight, both strong signals with southern accents...

Recent shortwave pirate logs Halloween 2010

I made the effort this year to spend some time at the dials during the Halloween weekend to judge the current state of pirate activity on the shortwave bands.  This is the first Halloween weekend in many years that I’ve done this, and there was no disappointment in the amount of activity taking place!  Below are some of the stations that I noted.  I had the Perseus recording the whole 6.9 mhz band during various times of high activity and will be reviewing these files for some time to come.  After reading reports from others, this is only a fraction...

Pirate Radio St. Helena QSL

Pirate Radio Saint Helena heard well enough here on October 16th to earn this nice e-QSL verification.  Thanks to the station for verifying and providing the broadcast! A recording of the broadcast, as heard from my location, can be heard here: 11092 Khz Pirate Radio Saint Helena 16OC10 2305 UTC.mp3

80s Pirate Radio: Part 4

A few more additions to my 80s pirate archive have been uploaded: KPLU – time/date/frequency unknown – circa 1990 Short 2 minute clip of KPLU (?) broadcasting in SSB. Radio Free Euphoria / WREC – time/date/frequency unknown – circa 1990 30 second clip with nice ID “Broadcasting to the world, or at least some small part of it…” WLIS – unknown date/time/frequency – circa 1990 Short sample of “We Love Interval Signals” in this clip broadcasting in SSB. WPN – unknown date/time/frequency – circa 1989 Zeppelin Radio Worldwide – 7416 Khz – July 11th, 1987 – 0100 UTC I had...

80s Pirate Radio: Part 2

Work continues digitizing old cassette tapes of shortwave pirate recordings.  It’s a nasty job but someone has to do it.  Originally I thought I had about 70 tapes total, but the number is well over 100 as I keep stumbling upon more, not to mention other recorded shortwave oddities.  Here are the most recently added recordings with short commentaries: Action Radio – 7416 Khz – December 25th, 1990 – 2320 UTC Noted as the last entry in my pirate logbook, Action Radio’s Christmas Eve broadcast started out with a nice clear signal in this recording and gradually faded down by...

Pirate radio: tripping down memory lane

During the 1980s, I recorded many American pirate radio stations on cassette tape and actively traded tapes with other DXers.  A slow and long process of transferring these cassettes to MP3 was undertaken a few years ago with many more tapes left to convert.  Below is the start of a list of stations that I have recorded and archived, with more to follow as time permits to process them.  The quality varies from decent to down right horrible (depending on band conditions at the time, recording media, etc.), but nonetheless they are presented here for historical purposes. All recordings were...