The Illegal Pirate Radio Station Hidden In The Old Mill
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 พ.ย. 2022
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Radio Aquarius Radio Aquarius
• Radio Aquarius
Andromeda Independant Radio
• A Hidden Pirate Radio ... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
That's hilarious they walked in and demanded the rig back then straight back on air 😂
And they gave it without question!
Balls of steel 😂
The best part is that it WORKED! They actually gave it back, it's amazing!
A friend of mine and I had a station when we were at school, Rebel FM, broadcasting from Rotherham on 105.4 in magnificent mono. 50w on a stacked co-linear.
We had a servo controlled blade that chopped through the transmission line if there was a raid.
Heady days!
Even though “illegal”, it’s cool hearing about these “outlaws”. Thanks for the video!
The best setup for not getting caught was by car. A thick sheet metal base that had a welded on piece of v-shaped iron with brackets to hold a very tall pole with the antenna on top! The idea was you drove the back wheel of the car onto the metal plate to secure the antenna pole. The car was rather toasty with the 100watt amplifier running for a few hours 😆 Those were the days. If you saw lights in the distance you disconnected and laid down the antenna in the grass and drove on. It worked a treat.
That is a genius setup, I might make an antenna bracket like you described for use with my Mobile radio when I'm out in the mountains. That bracket and a collapsible pole would be perfect for a Basecamp setup.
Mashing the baseplate into the ground with the car probably provides a pretty good ground, no?
I guess if it was marshy ground you'd get something of a ground. The car would also act as a bit of a counterpoise too. What about two holes in the edge of the plate? You could insert lowercase "t" shaped stakes from the underside and then use the weight of the car to drive them in as it rolled onto the plate. Getting them out again might be more problematic though!
@@RCAvhstape I built one like that 30 plus years ago but out of bed Fram angle iron n a pipe couple nuts weld on so bolts coud hold the poll in title used it camping for my ham radio
You can buy those drive over plates ready made.
As a former American broadcaster and three-station owner, I find these types of stories absolutely wonderful. Here are young people, excited about radio and in tune with what the community wants to hear. They are creative and know how to put together great programming that people obviously listened to. While I don't promote doing anything illegal, these stations were probably some of the best on the air. These guys who put the pirate stations on were not in it for the money, they were in it for the creativity and fun; the best combination for a great sounding radio station. I never could figure out why the BBC didn't recruit some of these guys and give them stations to program. I guess it's too easy to have government people on the payroll to go shut them down, rather than give the community more, better radio stations. Here in the United States, terrestrial radio is simply awful. A handful of corporate owners have sucked up all the decently sized stations and program them in a cookie-cutter fashion. Radio here all sounds the same and is all totally crap! I'm glad I got out 15 years ago. I'm thinking of putting a "micro-AM" on the air just for fun. 200-foot coverage sounds pretty okay to me!
Thanks for these videos. They're simply excellent!
Same happened over here with our Independent Local Radio (ILR) stations. When they started coming on the air in the early 70's, they were all independently owned and their output was unique and generated within the area. But one by one they were swallowed up by a couple of big operators and when there were enough within either group, they would combine and share their programming. It was no longer 'local' radio, more regional. Then it went further and the locals just became transmitters of national content. The BBC is following suit, they are abandoning AM and combining the remaining stations.
BBC did start Radio 1 as a response for Pirate radios. Some of their most famous DJ's, such as John Peel, started from pirate radio.
As a fellow Yank in the Pacific Northwest (born, raised, and continuing to live here), I can totally agree with your take on the deplorable state of American radio. I'm a Gen-Xer born in the early '70s, but both of my late parents were born in the early '30s, and lived through the era when radio was the dominant means of communication and entertainment; it's likely through them why I had such a passion for it in all its forms, though solely as a listener.
Sadly, those days are long gone, and in the past couple of years, I don't believe I've listened to more than a handful of hours of terrestrial radio. I don't even watch television in real time anymore, nor have l had a TV or access to cable TV service for a few years, so I have less of a clue what's going on with that medium. Largely, I'm now either "virtual crate digging" here on TH-cam, and subscribe to a number of genre-centric channels and the channels of various artists and labels that are of interest, or download and listen to archived broadcasts from either college or freeform radio stations (eg, UMFM in Canada, KBCS here in WA), or WFMU, and (less frequently these days) KEXP, etc.
Aside from the multi-state corporate entities grabbing up all of the available existing frequencies and grinding them down into unlistenable dreck with horrible programming, voice-tracking, relentless hyper repetitive commercials, and lifeless "personalities", the stations that weren't grabbed up by the corporate suits get grabbed up by other interests and converted to non-English language stations (either Spanish, SE Asian, or Russian), or the religious community (primarily the Catholic Church) comes in and takes what had been longstanding independent, local, community-based stations and turns them into additional mouthpieces for their drivel.
It is a real shame what has happened to radio, but it's been a long time coming (occurring over much of my life), but it's only getting worse. I can't help but wonder what all the great minds of the past who devoted themselves to the advancement of this medium would think if they could return to the present and see how far we've fallen. It truly does seem that pirates are the more commendable participants, in comparison.
I fell in love with radio when I was living off grid and it began served as my connection to society and sanity
You may not advocate illegal things...but at one time the US didn't exist and said enough of your regulations and defied them with bloody brawls. Then at one time it was illegal for blacks to ride in certain bus seats or use certain facilities...legal doesn't mean right.
I ran a pirate monitoring station that monitored many frequencies for years, and no one knew about it !
In the late 50's until early 60's, Radio Mercur was broadcasting FM to the young people of Copenhagen. They managed that feat for a few years because they prepared the tapes with the radio program off line in Copenhagen and then sailed them out to a small broadcasting ship located in international waters between Denmark and Sweden.
Fantastic! I remember listening to KFM in my youth from Rossendale. At one point I went round collecting some signatures on a petition, presumably lobbying for their license.
In the 1990's pirate radio stations in Miami, Florida had the best music. They also liberated us from the constant American regime propaganda and conditioning that we were all force fed through mainstream radio stations.
Did something similar with a friend, we were 15 and broadcast an hour every Wednesday night from his attic room. In my bedroom I had set up a relay to a different FM frequency to have a longer range. We used to jam the local radio once . They attended an event and had set up a link from the event to the studio on 88.6 MHz. We tuned our transmitter to that frequency, put everything in a car and drove close to their studio. The looks on their faces as our music took over theirs.
Has been fun.
Not sure why you would want to block a station...
@@jstanovic Just for fun and to prove that their own link was illegal and not secure.
Hi Lewis It was impossible to comprehend the excitement of hearing these Stereo broadcasts in March of 1974. The only stereo we had before this was the BBC radio 3 classical music service. The early Piccadilly tests I have taped in Stereo were also classical music as dictated by IBA policy at the time. So the Tom Tyrell broadcast followed by Piccadilly jingles was a great relief! In early March the FM transmitter was switched on with a low power Mono FM signal with a pre recorded loop cassette of very low quality I also taped. The audio cuts off the full announcement at the end each time so I assume this was a very hurried 1st initial test. The voice on the tape is that of a senior IBA engineer I guess as it is c the same man who voiced the Capital radio 529m test transmission. This was then the start of commercial radio in the North West as before then only RTE and Manx radio were heard here. Picadilly radio and Radio City once fully fledged put pressure on the IBA to try and stifle Manx radios popularity by objecting strongly to it relaying the IRN news service but the story of Manx is another fascinating topic! Keep up the good work in your very informative and accurate reporting.
I still remember the frequency of a pirate station between DC and Ocean City Maryland as that was were we went for beach week. 103.8 FM Easton Maryland. 35 years later I wonder if anyone else remembers as it was well known among our age group.
Mine had an Orban Optimod stereo composite generator . With the Harris compresser and limiter . You couldn't tell the difference between mine and a real radio station. I had 250 watts. I built an amplifier specific for the frequency I was on with VHF low bi polar transistors. I think they were Motorola MRF492's .
The intro jingle is so great !!!
Thank you for solving a 40-year-old mystery. When I was a child, we were driving up the M6 once when we heard the sound of children screaming cutting through the radio signal. Suddenly everything makes sense.
My understanding of the jamming is that some people behind the first incarnation of Carousel Radio (Studio at Strawberry in Stockport and tx at Mellor Moor) were behind it. I was involved in the second incarnation of Carousel in the 90's. The chap who imparted this info, and it was a long time ago, can't unfortunately be pressed further on the issue since he's sadly no longer with us. I can't remember if he told of the motivation behind it or not. I was a huge KFM fan as a kid, naturally. I've been fortunate to meet Charles on a number of occasions which I very much doubt he'd remember
What a fascinating story! I am fairly new to Manchester (lived here 3 times in total) but I was aware (via the internet) of KFM, and what it became. The last "independent" station to cover Stockport was Imagine FM, which was purchased by Bauer and now broadcasts Greatest Hits Radio. Very sad indeed!
I would really love to learn some more of the technical aspects not just of pirate radio, but of normal ham radio and whatnot! I hope others would be interested too.
This is a wonderful story! Thanks so much for sharing. Though I know radio piracy still happens, it must be so much more difficult to pull off nowadays. Yet I suppose it's needed now more than ever, what with all the consolidation and monopolisation of radio stations and formats. There's surely far less variety in radio programming now than there ever was. Cheers!
Far fewer listeners nowadays so it's mostly a waste of time and money.
Loved those days! I started as a scout for Radio Jackie around 1973/4, trudging through mud to keep a look out for green van's and police! Drying my socks over the transmitter and eating marmite sandwiches! Ran a few small stations for a while and one using a 150w TX that didn't last long due to increased risks of getting caught. Those days will never come back but I will never forget the pioneering spirit of it all.
Cracking stuff, Lewis. The Wood & Douglas link rings a bell, they made all kinds of amateur radio kits at the time. I had one of their 1-watt in/7 watts out linear amplifiers for 70cm. Oooh the power! I had a nice clean copy of the KFM recruitment tape, but I'm blowed if I can find it now. The bit where Charlie says 'write now, in your own hand...' always makes me chuckle, it sounds so quaint!
I was wondering about the "In your own hand" bit! Was that a 'thing' back in the day - like an employer might offer you a job at least partially on the basis of your handwriting?! So, if you wrote like an alcoholic suffering from the DT's, wearing boxing gloves, you could look forward to a position in management seeing as you were most probably a doctor, and so on..!
@@richiehoyt8487 Yes, I'm pretty certain it was to get a quick idea of the type of person applying. Green ink, big loopy writing or scrawls on a page torn out of a school book would not be entertained. It's a pretty good starting point IMO!
@@richiehoyt8487 A handwritten letter is a good way of checking someone's basic literacy, command of the English language and breadth of vocabulary. Also, since it takes a while to write a good letter, it helps weed out the non-serious, speculative applicants.
@@andyhowlett2231 Thanks for the 's.p.' Obvious really, I suppose! Having come from a fairly poor background, it seemed to me when I was in my teens that having a typewriter, or at least going to the trouble of snouting one out to write your application, showed an employer that you already have a proven earning ability (which you spend sensibly!) or failing that, you've at least displayed a degree of application and initiative, and _drive_ . It hadn't really occured to me that while employers value those things, access to a typewriter is not going to impress them, being regarded rather as a given! Your handwriting though will, in the manner you describe, potentially give an employer a much clearer idea whether you're the sort of person they are 'after'. Or _not_ after!
@@Mike-H_UK If I may say, it seems to me that a lot of those things would 'come across' just as well with a typewritten letter (punctuation for an example); and furthermore, if the letter is _well_ typed, inasmuch as it neither gives the appearance of having been typed in an unsure, hesitant manner, nor having been *pounded* out; and the spacing is appropriate, the margins are right, etc, etc, then it would imply a degree of familiarity with working in an office environment, or at least that the applicant has had some secretarial training or some training in office procedure. Admittedly not of much use if the position being advertised is as a scaffolder, but still!
That said, I think I get what you're driving at; for one thing, as you alluded to, it demonstrates the expenditure of a degree of effort on the part of an applicant. It's one thing to fire off 40 typed or printed applications all starting "Dear _'Blaaank',_ I am writing with regard to the position of _'Blaaank'_ which was..." Etc., etc,. - but when you have taken the trouble to write a letter, by hand, to that _specific_ business, expressing an interest in a vacancy that has opened up in the firm, well it (hopefully) gives the impression, at least to them, that you are genuinely excited at the prospect of taking up employment in that happy enterprise! (Ironically, when I was leaving school, a looong time ago now, I had been of the opinion that possession of a typewriter sent employers a signal that you were a sober, sensible sort of fellow. Here you are, spending your money on the sort of things that indicate you mean business, while your contemporaries are spending their money on motorbikes, and taking out women!Of course, to employers a typewriter, stencilled - yes, _stencilled!_ - applications, and so on were simply a given, no more remarkable than a carpenter owning a hammer and sporting a pencil behind his ear!)
Even more important though, I suspect, to a prospective employer than the exhibition of interest and effort implied by a handwritten application, or even what is written in the application, is what might be discerned between the lines, as it were. Short of an interview there's nothing so indicative of a candidate's qualities as an application "written in their _own hand_ " now as I actually think about it! As well as the 'danger signals' discussed by the other person in the thread, I think there's a lot of truth in the idea that you can tell an awful lot about someone's personality by their handwriting. Assuming that the letter isn't written in a very formal Copperplate or Italic 'font', which in its _own_ way might be rather revealing(!) and the writing is not too dissimilar from how the candidate might write their shopping list (albeit probably more self~consciously 'neat'), in other words, the writer isn't making a deliberate attempt to _impose_ a particular 'Style' ('Style' with a capital - 'S') on their handwriting, then one might suppose that small, upright, uniform letters indicate a conscientious, painstaking type of character for example, while a more 'expansive' style, executed with a flourish would probably signal a flamboyant, possibly exuberant type of person. Sloppy, smudged handwriting, possibly accompanied with crossings - out and so forth would in all probability be a sign of a badly organized, untidy or scruffy sort of candidate - and so on, and so forth. Of course, taken too far this sort of thing can drift into the realm of pseudo~science, but for a boss or personnel manager faced with going through a lot of job applications it would be a useful initial way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. It's probably stating the obvious to say that a job applicant would do well to avoid letting their personal handwriting ideosyncracies manifest themselves in an application, for example someone going after a job as an accountant would be wise to avoid the practice of using a circle to 'dot' their "i's". Doubly so for Smiley Faces 🙂, Hearts ❤️ and so on! That said, if the job was working in one of those 'Angel Shops', for instance, it's possible that one might get away with it! Signatures contrived in the fashion of graffiti - tags would generally be a glaring 'No~No' - but if the job was custom - painting cars and vans, lorries, etc..?
As you can see, having asked the question, I haven't taken long to become quite the (self appointed) expert. I think if I were the one under the microscope, the verdict might be "Somewhat Ponderous. Takes an unwarranted amount of time over a given task. Possibly slow - witted..." Lol!
Still, it's interesting. For something that sounds so 'quaint', almost, to modern ears, as the OP said, (to be honest, I had assumed the chap in the radio station putting out the ad had his tongue in his cheek!) on reflection, it can tell you a lot. Of course, handwriting is now a thing of the past. No~one so much as scribbles an address down on the back of a |=ag~packet any more, it just goes straight in their phone! Naturally today's kids are taught keyboard skills as a matter of course, but for all that I resented teachers' attempts to constrain and standardize my handwriting as a kid, it seems a great shame to me somehow that joined writing (or 'Cursive', as they say, of course, across the Pond) is not on the curriculum anymore afaik in either the UK or US. Still - that'll be one less tool in 'their' arsenal for fitting pegs in holes; but then again, a society full of square pegs in round holes benefits nobody - least of all, the square pegs!
Anyway, sorry, this turned into a bit of a dissertation; and to make it even worse, I think I'm somewhat guilty of parroting your answers back at you! Still - as you can see, you most certainly gave me food for thought!
Go Charly Go! Love how people can challenge and beat the government! Thank you for the great documentary and keep up the excellent content!
I remember living in a block of flats, and a pirate radio station on the 15th floor, with a small ariel out of the window.... had a good run, with lots of local adverts. but I remember listening to the radio when the police were kicking the door in.... madness
When he is talking about the signal being jammed with children’s nursery rhymes and other random noises, I thought “That’s it!”.
What I’m talking about makes perfect sense to me now!
The Smiths - What Difference Does It Make - single version. At one point about 2/3rds of the way through the song you can hear children playing in the background. It’s very noticeable for about 5-10 seconds and has Always made me wonder Why? Why children playing? Why did the producer choose to do that? It’s sooo random … but works perfectly with the song!
And now I think I know why. He was listening to KFM during this period and was influenced by this jamming and incorporated into this Smiths song. Pure speculation on my part but still … it just fits perfectly now. At least I hope I’m right :-)
Really interesting, thanks Lewis. I can really see the attraction of being a pirate. The thrill of not getting caught, dealing with jammers etc but surely with their expertise, quality equipment and good ideas they could have applied for a license and 'gone legal'? Perhaps that's where the fun ends though! Cheers Lewis, I find the pirate stuff you do fascinating.
Look at 11:58
Was working on pirate radio in the 90s and 2k in London and Wales. Was great learning a little about the transmitting. While in Wales we fitted on a steel works chimney . I Mean a massive one like what you see on a power station . Scaffold clips and tubes in the dark . Good fun
A fascinating story of an ingenious enterprise. Thanks for putting together such a polished doc telling the tale.
It looked like the battle of Hastings was fought on that rooftop! Those blood red puddles 😂
In USA, DJ's and guests often use 27 MHZ CB radio, and it lets part of the listening public on the air. It's called wireless studio. Transmitters can use multiple studios but studios can run multiple transmitters. Digital timers are a great way to switch transmitters and studios on and off. The psyche of 12 volt stations are more mobile even if the station doesn't travel. Your most important part of a station is the transmitter. Have quality spares. Bedroom and kitchen studios are the best content until truckers and motorists cut in. Domestic issues kill more stations than raids. Aareff is a great hardware source. Classroom transmitters are the most mobile. Pirate stations cause more listeners to spill onto their licensed cousins and much broadcast talent comes from pirate beginnings.
Fascinating! I live in the area and know the bowstones and Goyt Mill sites well, but I never knew there was once a pirate station there. Thank you for putting the effort in to research this 😀
iv been thinking back (or trying to) after i worked with the guy who said he was a dj at kfm i years later ended up working at goyt mill on the top floor , in your vid it shows a long tunnel thing going upto the top floor this was a conveyor belt and the bottom part could be pulled out to reach into the back of a wagon (strange how things work out ?) and the owners at the time were 2 brothers and im sure that they said it was never raided but stuff was being taken out (moved / changed ?) while the station was still broadcasting , like i said it was many years ago and many beers ago and one of those conversations that you would never think you have to try and remember the details of some 30 years later , now i feel old !.
Hi there from Jolly Roger Radio - Ireland .
That was a trip down memory Lane!! Great documentary Lewis.
I remember KFM well, as a kid growing up in Stockport in the 80s - I listened to it all the time. It had a competitor for a while, I'm sure it was called Southside Radio, which, if the rumours were true, was based upstairs at Grove Records in Hazel Grove. I remember going into Grove Records' other shop in Romiley, where they had Southside playing, and I asked the guy behind the counter about it and he became very defensive and wouldn't answer 😁.
Excellent video, brought back many memories. I’ve still got some tape recordings (somewhere!!) of some of the local bands being interviewed.
Thx to the YT algorithm 'bots that pinged this to me. Always loved the 'what went on behind the scenes' in the pirate days, all now sadly missed.
A good video I love it so much good work
Thank you for this excellent documentary! Very exciting to watch, especially with al the clips from the original sites!
I remember it well and used to listen most of the time i even have a fair idea who the jammer was who didn't live too far away from goyt mill. Id heard a local group of so-called band police discussing the station one night on their converted icom cb radios (ILLEGAL) ! they were livid as a local youth was playing kfm over the muppet band the consensus was if we take the radio station out the problem will be over they portrayed to be whiter than white but were certainly far from it.
Ah the radio police were everywhere lol
your not wrong, there was and still is a dark underbelly of illegal cb operators running high power on modified ham units.
they frequent off bands from25mhz-26mhz and 28mhz-30mhz, using am ,fm, lsb or usb with no regard for anyone, the only time they frequent the "muppet band" is to harass honest legal operators of cb and amateurs on 10 meters, they seem to enjoy keying over stations.
as you can tell i'm not a fan, i had dealings with one years ago, he destroyed the output section on his expensive icom rig, and wanted it rebuilt, he got very upset when i told him i would only do it if and when he got licensed, he paid knights a small fortune to fix his sausage fingered tinkerings LOL.
@@alynicholls3230 the radios they used were Muppet band radios with alpha channels on the switch they were badged as icom but nothing to do with icom the ham manufacturers
Hello, I know a tiny bit about ham radio, like what it is and that it is a hobby, but these videos have exposed me to a previously unknown culture. This stuff is making my brain buzzy with fascination, only cos I am not familiar in any way with many/most of the terms used throughout. Picture a clueless dude being told that hidden radio towers broadcast info to spies and double agents. That dude is me, and I am getting into it, despite being a big ole dardar unable to grasp the full gist of the topic. Anyway, thx again for a mind twisting, wig flipper of a video. Edit:Yeah, I subscribed. Good stuff, peace from Ohio.
awesome! thanks for daily uploads
A 1st class story Lewis a big well done mate 73s
Excellent good work Lewis👍👍👍
Another fantastic video Lewis. It is very interesting about the mystery jammer and the pilot tone. It was obviously someone quite technical. Probably something that the Andromeda crew had the expertise to do, (like Mr H.) but almost certainly not their style with an old friend.... Were the perpetrators ever identified later?
Mr H here. No, definitely not us, although I did have a spot of fun with the Superstation's link later on. Despite a break-up with Charlie we didn't hold any grudge, we just got on with our own thing. There was a certain amount of chatter among the radio amateurs in the area at the time, but no-one admitted to it.
Great video, I remember listening to KFM in Southport regularly.
Hey bro just wanted to say thank you for the wonderful little docustory your narration skills are impeccable
Thanks Eric!!
Lewis, you are churning them out so fast. Do you ever get time for sleeping?
Another good one mate.
No mate 😂 cheers!
I think Lewis is a super robot 🤖 lol great content as always !!!!!
love it, very good as always...
Once again first rate info and history ! Thx
Madness! I grew up rock climbing inside Goyt Mill through the 90's/00's (RopeRace is well worth a visit if you're vertically inclined), and I went to college down the road (the college building is visible on various shots in this video). I never knew there was a pirate radio station there back in the 80s, maybe someone should put a pirate blue plaque on it
wow memory lane we used to call them for shout outs during music lessons at Marple ridge high school we had a cool teacher , i remember them going of line after the raid
Excellent video and commentary remember had many local DJs on the station. Usually with alias remember playing frankie goes to Hollywood two tribes at time as guest Presentef
i myzelf im not into the pirate radio and stuff but my dad loves tinkering with radio stuff an whenever he succeeds he gets so happy i love it.
in about 1994 had a pirate station on 99.1 called it rock 99.1 never got hit by the fcc but did get hit by a lightning strike.
dam that was good Lewis nice work ❤
listening to Charlie Turner talking he sounds like the inspiration to Peter Kay's character Mark Parc from "That Peter Kay Thing" 😂
Another great episode.
I’m not located in Manchester but found this very interesting nevertheless. Thanks for another great episode. Fantastic effort. 👌✌️👍🇬🇧
I remember a pirate signal I used to pick up in South Manchester in 1992/1993 that just played Lisa Stansfield tracks back to back!
Cheers Lewis, KFM was awesome great memories
I think I'm right in saying Craig Cash and Phil Mealey cut their teeth at KFM. My memory may be failing me though.
Awesome documentary!
The radio stations are all told what to play by virtue of how they are offered licences to play music by the music labels.
Good stations are the pirate stations and as soon as they become legitimate they stop being the good station they were. Even worse you can be acquired by a bigger company who cares nothing for music but how cheaply they can run all of the stations, and how much they can charge for advertising, eliminating the last bit of personality they had in the process (Looking at you Kiss FM, AKA Kiss100)
HA!!!!!
THE PUGET SOUND AREA MARKET!!!!!
🤣 😂 🤣 😂
I drive a lot for work is same area and try to listen to AM talk stations, but it's 5 minutes of content and then another 15 minute ad blitz.
Soooo tiring.
And THEN there's Saturday programming.
Torture.
Purity Products buys up all the air time all over the dial to tell you about this week's "breakthrough supliment" guaranteed to put color back in your cheeks and even make the trains run on time.
The CD player is racking up the miles lately.
Any station owned by Clear Channel Communications.
One of the main reasons I don't even turn the radio on anymore.
"Kiss FM" has long been crap down here too, no acquisition has changed that...
@@JohnRunyon you mean,
All things I Heart aren't gold?
1969 I had a pirate radio station in my bedroom Forty Fort PA. A teenager with a bunch of crazy friends. WROU . WILD TIMES lol
Thanks fort this video👏
Great stuff 👍
Great memories of great times!
Cool series!!
Thank you
I remember Charles & KFM well. I was more involved with the other pirate down the road (small town radio/southside radio). Those were great days.
Great video.
What a great story to tell his kids!
Nice one Lewis. Regards to Charlie. BTW I have another story about link jamming that I’ll email you. Keep them coming!
Yes please! Can’t wait for that!
And they were so very professional about it all.
A legend in my books
liked and subbed, ex pirate radio DJ :)
After R. Amanda in n. London was busted in '84, another mw tx was built for rock n prog station 'Andromeda', 2 x 6146 = 120 watts into a small 'T' antenna. 'Gotts' out well from Hertfordshire, heard near Gatwick Airport south of London 60 smiles away.
This video was fascinating, but the comments below are golden.
Good documentary
The highlight was at 6:23 for the view of the blank brick wall where the equipment used to be = fascinating.
my brother was a DJ. on a local pirate radio station back in the early 90's Globe FM.
Thanks
Live on the road opposite the Goyt Mill for 22years now and never knew this.
kfm was a great station, i worked around the area whilst it was broadcasting and listened in as much as i could. johnny Owen was my favourite and i seem to remember a skinny chap from Stockport was it Dave Starr ? not sure rob charles was on the pirate one but he was on the legal one. there was some sort of promotion, if you heard the test transmission and phoned the number you were sent a t shirt. also lots of local shops had a sticker in the windows especially record shops where they gave out freebies. do you have any other videos or information about kfm? for instance, what did the initials stand for ?
great video, thanks.
Hey John. On the pirate station Johnny Owen did a morning show and I think Dave Starr did early afternoon. When legal Johnny Owen still did the mornings but Dave Starr wasn't involved.
As for the name KFM, Charlie just made it up, he thought it sounded new and fresh. The letter K means nothing.
There was a station that appeared east of Phoenix, Az that was all music, no commercials or DJs. The owner basically set it up to play music he liked, like a personal ipod. It was a licensed station, unlike the pirate station of this video. Call sign KCDX.
According to this it's still around?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCDX
Edit: maybe not. Someone should update the Wikipedia page then.
@@alexdhall It's possible it's still there. I'm about 100 miles west, so I can't tune it in. FCC shows an active license. Website and streaming seems to be broken since 2020.
The Toasters wrote a song called pirate radio. Snappy ska tune.
You should come to the netherlands enough pirate stations here on the 3mtr fm band😂
The sheer amount of standing water on that roof! 😐
I know! Some of it was a good few inches deep
So basically K FM is what Radio Veronica is to the Netherlands. (Started on a ship, international waters. Today is a legal station still broadcasting, under the same name)
Do you know Nick Catford? Ex radio Jackie back in the day. I think he’s a G8.
Spoke to him a couple of times Paul
The best stations, used a remote transmitter, so the studio never got bust, you'd lose an aerial and transmitter and relay but that's it
Wolf Man Jack! Hot Mercy!
They look like members of Black Sabbath
Now days there are unique online internet radio station streams. But also there are big corp.radio streams on the internet. The unique ones are the ones that run on ads and donations. Sone of the unique ones cater to scifi, cartoon, anime , and the furry fandoms.
I can see my house from this video😂
i live these real life dramas!
love*
Good. Airwaves should not be under the control of any government.
These stories are a really interesting look into a unique subculture. Archiving this stuff is important because the mainstream are boring, uninteresting, idiots glued to who wants to be the next this countries got talent and the coronation or some such on the tele. And wouldn't recognise real culture if it was blasted into their living room at a 6900 khz let alone watch docos on it.
I don't know anything about this. So its apparently illegal to broadcast your own radio station and it becomes "Piracy"? Why is it considered piracy? Why do you need permission? Who is supposed to give you permission to do it?
Can someone answer this question? Why doesn't my local radio station with it's 50,000 watt antenna not interfere with air traffic control?
I feel like the FCC doesn't want civilians to have strong fm xmitters.....without paying them a ton of money. Maybe I'm being a conspiracy guy, but it seems like BS to me. Our local rock station has a giant antenna on a hill about 10 miles from our biggest airport.
It doesn’t interfere because it’s a different frequency and radio systems use filtering to protect them from interference
@@RingwayManchester Thank you! Finally somebody answered me. Been asking this question for months.
So then the FCC just wants money then. Because it's illegal unless you pay them. I feel like they don't want people expressing their views freely without a huge fee. Or maybe the advertisers don't like it?
I'd buy the correct gear
Soooo one needs a permit to legally broadcast to a audience that can choose to tune in or not?
I’ve never heard about this topic but it’s very interesting