Halloween is typically the most active day of the year for shortwave pirates. This year, Halloween falls on Sunday, October 31st which essentially opens up a Friday through Sunday Halloween Piratefest. Expect pirates to emerge like The Great Pumpkin!
Here are two things you’ll want to do this Halloween weekend:
HF Underground
Follow real-time pirate radio spots and loggings on the HF Underground discussion forum. Chris Smolinski at HFU typically posts post-Halloween pirate stats on the SWLing Post as well–always a fascinating overview.
You might also venture over to Andrew Yoder’s pirate radio blog, the Hobby Broadcasting blog. Although he doesn’t log frequently, he usually makes time on Halloween (no pressure, Andy! Ha ha!)
Listen!
Photo by Bill Patalon
Listen for pirate radio stations today and throughout the weekend! Turn on your radio anytime today, but especially around twilight and tune between 6,920 – 6,980 kHz. Pirates broadcast on both AM and SSB; you’re bound to hear a few. If you’re brand new to pirate radio listening, you might read my pirate radio primer by clicking here. I will be listening until late in the evening.
Happy Halloween to all!
Thanks for timely article, Thomas. I would suggest also monitoring 4000-4200 kHZ, 5130-5185 kHz, and 6770-6915 kHz for Halloween programming.
Now you’re temping me to strung up a wire and resume my WW2 “armored tank” transmitter to run something on the 45m band
LOL
Ha ha! We won’t tell a soul, Andrew! 🙂
Working on getting a site built quickly- but for now- I have set up #Shortwave IRC channel on irc.geekshed.net if you know how to use IRC. http://www.irccloud.com is good these days to get started. Working on a website for it. Nice to have real time communication on pirates for Halloween!
-OneBTS