I don't remember z fm as such but what i do remember is one weekend early summer 1990, there appeared a station on 100 fm calling itself "century 100" which played some mid to late 80's stuff, in stereo and sounding very good tbh. Anyway, they were playing pre recorded shows and one of them they were Zfm. I never knew at the time summer 86 to late 88 that pirate radio existed in Sheffield and i was tuning around quite a bit when not out and about doing what kids do!
I may convert these tapes and post them on here or YouTube and hopefully the lads that did the station see and play the files and have a bit of a giggle..

Aha, ZFM, t'was I (plus a few friends and buddies) as was Century 100. Be interested to know where you were able to receive us from. Century 100 ran about 50 Watts and the TX site was very near the Radio Hallam MW transmitter, if you know where that is.

Or8 reverend.. Well i picked up century when i lived in Darnall in the east of Sheffield. Had to move me wires a bit coz they were set to receive the pirates from Norfolk Park to the west and the Hallam mw tx was to the north of me, i think.. Anyway, i enjoyed the output with the jokes and messin about ooh and the mad jingles lol... I've got 3 c90's with century on and i will upload them somewhere once they have been encoded.. Nice to hear from you reverend.. 30 years ago

Are these the same people who did ZFM in Kent around 1996/97?

'Ow Do Pirateaddict - do let me know if you get those tapes encoded, I only have snippets of recordings. Be interesting to see how we sounded. Around 1988 we learnt about sound processing so the audio quality increased immeasurably, before that it was just down to guesswork.

Sparki - no, nothing to do with the Kentish namesake.

Rev

Found in my archive an old recording of ZFM from 1988 that someone posted on a forum ages ago, with the DJ larking about and have posted it on the ZFM web-site: http://mf2fm.com/zfm/_sources/zfm-sheff ... -15h00.mp3

Good:

• If memory serves, it was a synthesized transmitter
• From what I know of the guy who recorded it, I believe this recording was made about 15 miles away so that's not a bad signal at that distance (especially with interference from Pennine FM on 102.5 in some areas)
• It's in stereo, with a home-made stereo-coder built around an MC1496
• The compression isn't bad for that era - it was a home-made 2 band device (LF and 'everything else')

Bad:

• Terrible jocking
• Crappy music
• Naff music beds

Good job my role was technical then!

Rev

Or8 mate... Will give this a go in a minute... I've seen a upload of the century 100 fm you did in 1990 Easter time on pirate archive... Also I'll be doing two tapes of century 100 very soon as I've got my stuff together now..

pirateaddict wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 2:43 pm Or8 mate... Will give this a go in a minute... I've seen a upload of the century 100 fm you did in 1990 Easter time on pirate archive... Also I'll be doing two tapes of century 100 very soon as I've got my stuff together now..

Magic! Look forward to hearing them.