Tag Archives: Chris Smolinski

Halloween 2015: Chris charts pirate radio activity

Many thanks to Chris Smolinski, from the HF Underground, who has crunched some numbers from North American pirate radio loggings on Halloween. The number of pirates (and his charts with times and frequencies) are most impressive and informative.

Chris posted the following on the HF Underground and has kindly allowed me to share them here as well. Chris notes:

Here are two charts showing who-was-on-when-and-where this Halloween.

The first one is for Friday night:

Click to enlarge.

And the second is Halloween (Saturday) night:

Click to enlarge

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Tune in: Halloween weekend is a pirate radio playground!

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Halloween is typically the most active day of the year for shortwave pirates…so, here are three things you’ll want to do this Halloween:

Listen for pirate radio stations this weekend! Turn on your radio anytime this weekend, but especially around twilight and tune between 6,800 – 6,990 kHz. Pirates broadcast on both AM and SSB; you’re bound to hear a few. For a comprehensive primer on pirate radio listening, check out this post.
Note what pirate stations are being logged–in real time–on the HF Underground pirate radio forum. This is a very active community of pirate radio listeners; I often check the latest loggings to discover frequencies where stations have surfaced. Click here to view the HF Underground pirate radio forum. Posting to the forum requires registration and approval by the moderator (so do this in advance!).
Check out Andrew Yoder’s pirate radio blog with its deceptively simple title, the Hobby Broadcasting blog. Andrew is the author of the Pirate Radio Annual and a guru on shortwave pirate radio. He’s already logged a few mid-week, pre-Halloween pirates. Bookmark his site while you’re at it!

Happy Halloween to all!

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Chris reviews HF pirate radio activity in 2014

Updates to the Shortwave Broadcast Schedules smart phone app

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A smartphone app that I find quite useful is Shortwave Broadcast Schedules by Chris Smolinski at Black Cat Systems.

Chris has just announced an update which adds features like the ability to enable schedule reminders as well as keep track of your favorite broadcasts.

I’ve been using this app for a year and have noticed frequent schedule updates–indeed, A14 schedules were ready at the beginning of the season.

It’s an ideal app to use for one bag travel–indeed, you don’t even need an Internet connection to browse the listings. Admittedly, the typical smartphone screen is fairly small to display such a large amount of broadcast data, but Back Cat’s interface is designed with this in mind. I find the app easy to use and very useful while I’m on the go.

I have only used the iOS version on my iPhone. Black Cat also offers an iPad version which, I believe, would be ideal. I have not tested the Android version of the app.

Shortwave Broadcast Schedules is available on the iPhone/iPad ($2.99) and Android ($0.99) devices.

Click here to check out our comprehensive, frequently updated list of radio apps.

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Halloween was a very active night for pirate radio

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Haloween-Pirate-Radio You might remember my post from last week saying that Halloween is a pirate radio holiday? Chris Smolinski from the HF Underground has crunched some numbers from North American pirate radio loggings on Halloween. The number of pirates (and his chart with times and frequencies) are most impressive.

He writes:

Here’s some more pirate activity info for you: http://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/topic,13574.0.html

Quite impressive, 28 transmissions logged.