John Cruzan's Free Radio Net is back! All you need to know about free radio, with the latest communique from the Rodent Revolution, Capt. Ganja's latest graphics, Al Fansom's tire pressure reports, etc.!
Of course, different people will give you different definitions, but by pirate radio most people mean unlicensed broadcasting. Unlicensed two-way traffic, which can be realpirates or drug smugglers (or just fishing boat captains), is known as bootleg operation. Pirate radio was critically important in re-introducing rock-'n'-roll to Western European audiences through Radio Caroline back in the '60s. This type of radio never gained popularity in the United States, at least partly due to the fact that instead of fighting to keep young people's music off the air, like the BBC, radio programmers in the 'States actively courted the younger audience. Perhaps the closet thing in the U. S. was border radio, but then, XERF had a license...
Pirate radio in the United States is as old as broadcasting. Guitar genius Les Paul for many years had a pirate station in his basement, and Glen Miller, the Dorseys, Benny Goodman, et al., would come by after hours and do live broadcasts till the milkman came. More recently, pirate radio became part of the '60s counterculture revolution, and, in the '70s, moved to shortwave, due to the availability of inexpensive surplus amateur gear. To this day, most pirate activity is on the shortwave bands, with the exception of LPFM, or Low Power FM, also known as microbroadcasting, which has been embraced by the heirs of the counterculture pioneers and indulges in a somewhat Quixotic campaign against the NAB, or National Association of Broadcasters, who represent the moneyed interests contending for control of the radio-frequency spectrum. (Incidentally, both these groups are misleading themselves. The airwaves belong to those who can build and maintain transmitters, antennas, and receivers. Everyone else is just along for the ride.)
Activity dropped off during the '80s, but resurged again around 1990. Today it is not unusual to hear two or three stations a night, playing original satire, music which would never get airplay otherwise, and, in some cases, music you could hear any day of the week over regular radio. It is hard to understand why someone would run such large risks to play the latter, but the urge to play d.j. runs deep.
And pirates do run risks. The Federal Communications Commission is charged with keeping them off the air. When pirates pick the time and frequency they use carefully, so as to avoid interfering with licensed services, they minimize their risks, but they sometimes get caught anyway. When caught, they face fines of up to several thousand dollars, and possible jail time!
It isn't easy. Amateur radio operators switched from regular AM style transmissions a generation ago, and have used suppressed-carrier single sideband, or SSB, for years. Since almost all pirates use surplus amateur gear, many if not most of them broadcast exclusively in SSB. Unfortunately, the cheapest shortwave radios won't pick up SSB. Look for a switch or knob on your radio that says "SSB," "USB," "LSB," "BFO," or "Clarifier." Any of these indicate the ability to receive SSB transmissions. If you don't see such a control, you may still be able to receive SSB transmissions by using a second radio as a BFO. This doesn't work nearly as well as a receiver with SSB capability built in, however.
Another problem is that pirates, being anxious to avoid detection, must keep a low profile. This means they generally have very small antennas very close to the ground, and the smaller and lower the antenna is, the poorer job it does of radiating radio-frequency energy. So, the pirate listener tries to make up for this by having large antennas high in the air. You will hear very few pirate stations with a whip antenna, such as is built into many shortwave receivers, or an indoor antenna. A full size, resonant dipole, as high as you can possibly get it, helps greatly. Lately I have also enjoyed excellent results with loop antennas.
Almost all activity today occurs around 6955 kHz, just above the old 6 mHz marine band. These frequencies are also used by bootleggers, so you sometimes hear real pirates! Tune through in SSB mode; you can still hear any AM transmissions in this mode, but it is difficult to hear all but the loudest SSB stations in AM mode.
If you live in the Midwest or on the East Coast, you can listen any time of day, but the characteristics of the 6 mHz band are such that most pirates fire up after dark, when the band goes from regional to world-wide coverage. The odds are very strongly against you hearing any pirates the first time you listen; sometimes weeks go by with no real activity. Listen on holidays, especially Hallowe'en and New Year's. In addition, Fridays and Saturdays see more activity than weekdays, but you never know if someone is on unless you listen. Many serious pirate listeners buy old reel-to-reel tape decks, put them on slow speed, and leave them on all night. Then they run through the tape at their convenience using the "cue" function.
Some of the best programming is original satire and drama. Allen Maxwell's KIPM, for example, once had a program rather like the War of the Worlds, in which the radio-telescope at Arecibo was attempting to contact "C-Comm control" with news that extra-terrestrial intelligence had at last been heard from. The next day it was all over the Web that the Arecibo radio-telescope had been contacted by aliens, and that the government was covering it up, but that "ham operators" had overheard the conversation! Others who excel at this type of programming are Ground Zero Radio, and James Brownyard's WHYP, with its distinctive "EayEayEayEay!"
Heavy metal and hip-hop music are often heard, as well as more common forms of music. One station, MIDI Radio, features a man playing a MIDI keyboard, and rather well. Another plays the music of Sinatra and Karen Carpenter and mixes it with Satanic Metal and other harsh sounds, identifying only as "AM 740-Prime Time Radio." There is even someone using AM who broadcasts nothing but Les Baxter, Kay Starr, and other such stuff from the thirties, forties, fifties and early sixties, and never identifies.
Finally, there are the stations that are too original to categorize, such as the Runaway Mahareeshi, who uses the first few bars of the Beatles' "Sexy Sadie" as theme music! Many of these stations make inside jokes about pirate radio and the civil wars that inevitably spring up between pirates, who are by nature individualists with strong opinions. A good example of this is the ongoing saga of the Roden Revolution, led by Commander Bunny of WBNY, and their struggle to subvert humankind, particularly a pirate listener named Al Fansome. WBNY even has a parody numbers station, whose broadcasts are followed and decoded by the utility heads at spynumbers.com as though they were a regular numbers station.
One of the best sites on the web, and especially for pirate radio, is John Cruzan's Free Radio Network. Pay particular attention to the loggings page in the Grapevine section; it will help you anticipate who will be on and when.