BRISTOL PIRATE RADIO RECORDINGS

This blog is intended for me to post my pirate radio recordings. Most of the recordings are from Bristol, most will be pirate but there will be some legal stations and stations from other cities or national stations.

IF YOU OR YOUR FRIENDS HAVE ANY TAPE RECORDINGS OF PIRATE RADIO FROM BRISTOL, PLEASE SUBMIT THEM TO THIS BLOG BY RECORDING THEM TO MP3 (CLICK HERE FOR A HELP GUIDE) AND UPLOADING THEM TO http://www.sharebee.com, or a similar site such as Megaupload, Mediafire, ZShare, but not Rapidshare as it's getting a bit hard to use. SEND THE URL IT GIVES YOU TO ME VIA A COMMENT ON MY LATEST POST or BY EMAIL AT bristolpirates at gmail.com (you'll have to correct that with the proper @ symbol, I started getting spam on the address). WE COULD ALSO ARRANGE A PICK-UP OF YOUR TAPES IF YOU LIVE IN BRISTOL AND CAN'T CONVERT TAPES TO MP3. THANKS IN ADVANCE, YOU WILL BE CREDITED.

Friday 29 March 2013

Free FM - 105.8 - Caroline 319 Gold (Dutch) Relay

Free FM has ceased to relay Laser Hot Hits recently, and is now relaying Caroline 319 Gold instead :)

Tecsun PL-310 and PL-380 dB Meter Comparrison


I use Tecsun radios for portable station finding and listening.

Ujima 98FM is a community station in central Bristol, and just North of Bristol it comes in the weaker of the two community stations currently on air. I used it for this test as it is a good example of a weak but audible station.

First, the PL-310 without being affected by inductance from my hands / body was reading around 4dB on the level and 0 on the S/N meter.

Second, the PL-380 without being affected by inductance from my hands / body was reading around 18dB on the level and 0 on the S/N meter.

With inductance (holding the radio, or trying to record holding the camera close) I can increase these to 6dB level and 1 on the S/N for the 310, and 20 or 21dB and 1 S/N for the 380.

There are major differences in the readings for some reason, yet the reception (though you can't hear it in the video so much as on the 380 I had to hold the camera away and zoom in) sounded roughly the same.

When I get my 2nd 310 in a few weeks, we'll see if there is a difference even on the same model.

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Apologies

Perhaps I've not always been as careful as I should with some of the information I give out. Some broadcasters are OK with this, some are not. To those who are not, I apologise and I will endeavour to keep information to a minimum in future.

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Dutch Pirates

As there is nothing to listen to close enough to hear on FM in Bristol, I've been turning to Short Wave and Medium Wave for the thrills. The pirates of Europe can be heard above 1602 AM (get a radio that allows you to change to the US MW band that runs all the way to 1710 AM and tune in 1kHz steps) and in various spots on SW. Of course, UK SW pirate Lazer Hot Hits is on SW too, on 4026kHz. Their signal isn't that strong in Bristol, but with a half decent aerial attached to the Tecsun I can hear them well enough to listen most of the time, when the dreaded interference isn't around.

That is exactly how I came across the Dutch tuner 'Ulft FM' on Global Tuners. I was actually looking to hear some MW action from closer to the source, but instead found that this tuner had FM presets for a number of Dutch FM pirates.

http://www.globaltuners.com/receiver/704/classic - You need an account!

Somebody on Radio Necks also posted this link - http://geheimezender.com/streams.php - which has a variety of streams of these pirates.

Anyway, here is a recording of one I made from the Ulft tuner....



As you can hear, they like their traditional music in the Netherlands, and their Beer. Here is another less hectic clip from another one....