BUMP!

After my computer came back from a major overhaul and upgrade that I was unable to accomplish with my minimal desk and a few tools I find I'm not the only pirate radio aficionado. Starting at the beginning, thanks to an old ARRL Radio Amateur Handbook I built a 100W transmitter, a 6146 modulated by a pair of 807s, and the business end of a Gates Sta Level peak limiter. This abortion was fed with a Bogen PA amp as a mixer, a turntable and professional tape deck, my stereo amp, and speakers, a 160ft quarter wave wire antenna, and finally a Collins air monitor. My friends and I rocked 1340KHz from June 1965 to August 1970 when the FCC shut us down.

Then there was Al Insane on his pirate ship anchored off Long Island simulcasting on MW, a number of SW frequencies, and FM, the only signal I heard faintly buried in the noise generated by a receiver's front end. Radio New Yawk International is what became WBCQ in Maine beamed to Mexico with 50KW, minimum SW legal power, but of course the real target is the US. Brokered air time leaves much to be desired, he's mostly another Bible beater, all that's left of what was once International SW broadcasting. The reason why his pirate ship couldn't be heard is he split power with several low power transmitters and inefficient antennas. On the other hand besides four fingers and a thumb was Radio Caroline heard all over the UK and much of the continent with almost FM quality audio. Financed by Ronan O'Rahilly (RIP) they had top of the line equipment from a Gates console, through an Orban AM 9000 limiter to an RCA BTA50H Ampliphase 50KW transmitter feeding my favorite antenna, a grounded vertical folded monopole welded to the deck with the best radial field of all, salt water. Today their AM does very well with a 1KW solid state transmitter feeding a quarter wave mast left over from the BBC already tuned to 648KHz clear channel. Their AM channels are spaced every 9KHz while ours are every 10.

The 40M pirates have had their day and it's over thanks to an FCC crackdown on pirate radio. They were on air for hours at a time using AM, decent fidelity and very entertaining. They degenerated into a few wayward hams using their Japanese rice burners on SSB with what Timtron calls telephonium audio, not worth listening to, a song or two, a brief ID and off they go playing cat and mouse with the FCC. I had the distinct pleasure of using a friend's super station all frequencies QRP to QRO, the AM station was all broadcast from mic to 1KW AM broadcast transmitters retuned, to antenna, a grounded vertical folded monopole that put out a whale of a signal from 160 to 40M. From 20M on down tuning gets too narrow to be workable. The exception to broadcast equipment was a Johnson Valiant I modified to take line level balanced audio from the processor rack feeding the modulators directly, it proofed out from 40Hz to 11KHz. Nobody really minds a 22KHz wide signal as long as it doesn't QRM anybody, and the FCC no longer monitors. The receiver was an R-390 I restored using the full shop manual, I often listened to the 40M pirates in the vacated telephone relay band just below 7MHz. One day I loaded up the Big V to 6925 and recited the lyrics to I Am The Slime by Frank Zappa slightly modified, "I am the slime oozin' out of your ham radio set." and they asked back and forth "Who is this slime guy?" ROTFLOL!

Commander Bunny WBNY eat your heart out! No, he's not W3BNY Ren, one of our old friends, nor is he WBNY Buffalo, NY.

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