“Mama, they’re playing your favorite dance music!”
For your listening pleasure: 32 minutes of pirate radio station, WMPR.
I recorded this broadcast of WMPR on 6.925MHz AM on February 17th, 2013 at 10:00 UTC. You’ll note that this recording sounds a little “brighter” than a typical shortwave radio recording. This is due to the fact that I widened the AM filter to match the bandwidth of WMPR’s signal (about 17 kHz!).
Click here to download the MP3 of the recording of WMPR, or simply listen below:
“It’s time for some Wolverine Radio!”
Wolverine Radio was the strongest of the pirate radio stations I heard last night.
Wolverine was broadcasting on 6.935 MHz in the upper side band. Very good signal and excellent fidelity for SSB. Typical of Wolverine, lots of music variety and no commentary other than station ID throughout.
Wolverine Radio–at least each time I’ve heard them–sends an SSTV image at the end of the broadcast. Last night was no exception, though I had a difficult time decoding, and no time to tinker.
UPDATE: Thanks, Ragnar of Pirates Week, for both of the Wolverine images.
Ragnar decoded both SSTV graphics using using MMSTV in Scottie1 mode.
Click here to download an MP3 of Wolverine Radio’s broadcast, or stream via the embedded player below:
Bust A Nut Radio‘s AM signal came in fairly strong last night sometime around 5:45 UTC (February 2nd) on 6,940 kHz.
You’ll hear a great variety of music–from classic rock to electronica–complete with originally produced ID’s and bumpers in this pirate radio recording.
Click here to download an MP3 of the entire show, or simply listen in the embedded Archive.org player below:
Note: This is a recording of a real pirate radio broadcast. If you are easily offended by strong lyrics and offensive music, you should slowly back away.
Last Saturday night, I caught the shortwave radio pirate, Red Mercury Labs, on 6.9251 MHz in the upper side band.
This broadcast, which started around 1:57 UTC, contains a great mix of rock music with some commentary throughout.
You can download the full recording as an MP3 file by clicking here, or listen via the embedded player below. Enjoy:
“Wow–those were short!”
I was travelling Saturday night, but had the foresight to set my WinRadio Excalibur to record the pirate spectrum. There were few pirates on the band–less than I would have expected to hear on a holiday weekend in the US–and some of them were plagued by a local broadcaster whose spurious emissions wiped out the whole band at times.
I did catch a couple of interesting unidentified broadcasts, most likely transmitter tests as both were very short. The first broadcast came on around 3:10 UTC (Jan 20) and consisted of two songs, ending with the Tardis sound effect from Dr. Who. Click here to download the MP3 file, or listen in the player below:
The second broadcast came on just after 7:00 UTC and consisted of only one song–no IDs at all. I would suspect this was the same pirate; however, the first broadcast had a tinny sound that this broadcast lacked. Indeed, their USB signal was quite amazing (wish s/he would have broadcast a full show). Click here to download the recording, or listen via the player below:
Please comment if you think you can ID these broadcasts.
Friday night (late) I caught Renegade Radio on 6.93 MHz in the upper side band.
Renegade’s signal was consistently clear for unusually noisy conditions, though the station was occasionally plagued with transmitter problems. I did not edit these out in the recording because dead air never exceeded a few minutes. So, if you hear dead air, simply fast-foward a minute or two. Total broadcast exceeds one hour and, near the end, Renegade informs us that his transmitter was getting hot. I’ll bet: I don’t know Renegade’s set-up, but many pirates use modified ham radio transceivers that were never intended for those 100% duty cycles, often at full power. Keeps a pirate warm on a winter night, though!
Feel free to listen to the recording of Renegade Radio in the embedded player below, or right click and save this link to download the MP3 directly:
Santa likes Dit Dah Radio!
Being a fan of Morse code (or CW), I have a special affinity for pirates that use “the sacred language” in their broadcasts.
Last night, around 00:30 UTC (only a few minutes after WKND began broadcasting) I heard Morse Code on 6.935 MHz USB.
If you, too, love Morse code, you’ll love “Dit Dah Radio;” after their preamble in Morse code, they follow with The Capris’ 1960’s hit, Morse Code of Love.
You can download the full recording as an MP3 file by clicking here, or listen via the embedded player below: