Tag Archives: Shortwave Pirates

Tim recommends shortwave pirate “Ballsmacker Radio”

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Tim Brockett, who writes:

Good Morning Thomas.

I enjoy receiving your daily posts. They are informative, helpful and sometimes enlightening.

I wanted to alert you to a change in frequency for Ballsmacker Radio.

I tuned into them on Friday, March 26 at 6960 kHz. They came in well at Willow Beach, Arizona which is just south of Las Vegas, Nevada. The broadcast started at 01:00 UTC and ended at 02:25 UTC.

Ballsmacker is a pirate station that airs from “somewhere in the northeast” in the USA. He uses just 200 watts but has a great frequency and time. I have routinely picked him up in Willow Beach.

His website is at https://ballsmacker.net/

He welcomes reception reports and sends out eQSLs that appear to be different for each week. He broadcasts once a week at 01:00 UTC. You can also stream past shows from his website. The theme of last night’s show was “luck”. Each song had something to do with chance or luck. Most of the show is popular music from the 20th century. The music is interspersed with station IDs, email and website addresses.

His email is [email protected]

Hope this assists with your fine work.

Sincerely,
Tim Brockett

Thanks so much, Tim! You’re right: Ballsmacker Radio puts out a great signal and certainly offers up proper music variety! Thanks again for sharing your tip!

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BBC Newshour Reports Jamming of UVB-76 (The Buzzer) With Music and Digital Imagery

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark, who writes:

Thomas,

The morning (EST) edition of BBC Newshour on Wednesday presented a five-minute report on the jamming of Russian shortwave mystery station UVB-76 (The Buzzer) with music and digital imagery.

Newshour – Uncertainty over Russian ‘de-escalation’ near Ukraine – BBC Sounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172xv5lss6rtdm

Report begins at 37:26

Also at:

BBC World Service – Newshour – Available now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsnk/episodes/player

Sincerely,

Mark

Thank you for the tip, Mark. Impressive that this bit of shortwave news would be included in a Newshour report. They did a fantastic job including some audio clips from the Conet Project and authentic UVB-76 audio.

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Chris analyzes HF pirate radio activity from 2017-2020

Richard logs shortwave pirates WDOG and Radio Station EFP

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Lacroix, who shares the following:

First off, thank you goes out to John Hudak’s timely post on the ODXA group. Shortly after his post, I was able to quickly tune-in and intercept 2 pirate radio stations on September 5 2020 during the period 00:30 to 02:17 UTC.

John’s post read:

“Pirate station WDOG is on 5060kHz. USB right now as I write this – 0027UTC Sept. 5, 2020 (8:27 p.m. EDT Fri. Sept. 4). Fairly good signal, playing various rock and pop songs. Frequent ID’s between songs and sound of dog barking.”

There were in actuality 2 sequential broadcasts. The first from WDOG on 5060.0 kHz USB from an unconfirmed start time until sign-off with “Star-Spangled Banner” played by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock at 01:53 UTC.

The second broadcast followed suite by Radio Station EFP, as well on 5060.0 kHz, but this time in AM mode. Radio Station EFP continued to broadcast until approximately 02:17 UTC after which it started to exhibit deep signal path fades and eventually went off-air at 02:17:40 UTC.

Armed with the combination of devoted listeners posting reception reports and a radio always at the ready, this made for a very exciting 2 hours of SWL.

Included is a 10 minute audio compilation for everyone to enjoy which I stitched together from the 2 plus hours of off-air broadcast recording I saved:

This is brilliant, Richard! Thank you so much for sharing your notes and recording.

I haven’t done nearly enough pirate radio listening this summer. Your timely report reminds me it’s time to change that! Arrrrr!

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Check out this amazing QSL and off-air audio from shortwave pirate “The Purple Nucleus of Creation”

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This morning, I uploaded a recording of 2001 shortwave pirate The Purple Nucleus of Creation to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA). The recording was submitted by Adam C. Smith, a regular over at the SRAA.

Adam’s six minute off-air recording was made on October 27, 2001 at 0009UTC on 6,928 kHz USB with Adam’s Grundig 800 and 100’ wire antenna. Check out the audio embedded below or via the SRAA.

But first? Check out this extraordinary QSL card:

This QSL is more intricate than a wedding invitation! I love it! Thanks for sharing, Adam!

Here’s Adam’s off-air recording:

Adam also included other correspondence from The Purple Nucleus of Creation:

Again, thanks so much, Adam, for submitting this recording and memorabilia with everyone via the SRAA. Now your recording will (literally) be shared with our thousands of podcast subscribers and also streamed to devices across the globe via TuneIn. It’ll also be permanently preserved on the SRAA website and the Internet Archive.

Note that you can subscribe to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive as a podcast via iTunes or by using the following RSS feed: http://shortwavearchive.com/archive?format=rss You can also listen via TuneIn.

Of course, one of the best ways to listen to recordings and read all of the recording notes is by visiting the SRAA website.

Post readers: Did you log The Purple Nucleus of Creation back in the day? Who sent you your favorite pirate radio QSL card? Please comment!

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Halloween: A playground for shortwave pirates!

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Halloween is typically the most active day of the year for shortwave pirates. Halloween falls on Thursday, October 31st, and although this is the middle of the week, expect pirates to emerge like The Great Pumpkin!

Here are three things you’ll want to do Halloween night:

1. Hobby Broadcasting Blog

Check out Andrew Yoder’s pirate radio blog ,the Hobby Broadcasting blog.

Andrew is the author of the Pirate Radio Annual and a guru on shortwave pirate radio. Andrew has already logged some Halloween stations this weekend.

2. HF Underground

hfunderground

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.

3. 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!

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Now available: The 2017-2018 Pirate Radio Annual

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Thomas Ally, who notes that Andrew Yoder has released the 2017-2018 Pirate Radio Annual.

Here’s the announcement from the Hobby Broadcasting Blog:

2017-2018 Pirate Radio Annual is done and I’ve received the copies back from the printer already! This edition is 308 pages and contains an audio CD-R (playable on standard CD players) with clips from 87 different pirate stations from around the world, nearly all from 2016 and 2017. This edition contains 181 illustrations and entries for approximately 307 stations reported in North America in 2016 and 2017 (280 North American shortwave stations and 27 from Europe and South America).

It also contains some “articles” on the Common and Precious Beacon, Radio Pirana International from South America, and upcoming Global HF Pirate Weekends/propagation for reaching different parts of the world.

This edition will cost $20 ($16.50 + $3.50 shipping) in the U.S. I took the packed book to the post office for the international shipping cost and was shocked to discover that it will cost $24 to ship it anywhere in Europe (so, $38.00 = $16.50 + $21.50 to Europe) I’ll eat a couple dollars of the cost because the shipping is so high. It’s so expensive that it will soon pay for airfare to Europe just to deliver copies!

This price is good for the next month (up through 5/1/2019). I’m not sure if I’ll keep the price the same or raise it at that time.

Please send check or money order to:

Hobby Broadcasting
PO Box 109
Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214

or send the money via PayPal to info [at symbol] hobbybroadcasting.com. If you trust that I won’t run off with the money to Sealand, please use the “Friends and Family” option so that PayPal won’t charge a fee.

4/2 update: One final note about ordering via PayPal: Could you please include your shipping address with the PayPal order? The PayPal messages haven’t included addresses and when I sign into PayPal and click on the “more information about this transaction,” the address still isn’t coming up. So, I’ve been e-mailing people for addresses, which could delay shipping.