London (or even UK) FM SDR's/web Tuners receiving pirates

[drumandbasshead010]

New to these SDR's and online tuners and what have ya but just wondering if anyone knows of an online FM tuner which receives some of the pirates? Know they all have online streams but would just like to listen to them as they would sound on FM in realtime etc. Cheers.

[XXL]

Buy a radio.

[teckniqs]

Someone was telling me if you download SDR Sharp you can use some of the other SDR nodes and some of them are in locations where you can hear pirates, but I've never tried it or looked into it any further.

....Personally, I use Global Tuners quite often but there seems to be a lot less 'nodes' on there these days but some of them on there you can still get a few pirates, like Fairoaks Airport in Surrey and Sutton Coldfield in Birmingham which both use SDR's.
There used to be a great one in New York using a Sony XDR tuner, you could get loads of pirates on that but the fella has relocated.

But the problem with SDR's is some of them are very cheaply made and susceptible to interference from local transmitters and even create their own sproggs which can be annoying when it's wiping over what you want to listen to.

[teckniqs]

Buy a radio.

Well that was helpful, so a radio will pick up FM pirates all around the world will it?

[drumandbasshead010]

Thanks for that Teckniqs, trying to get my head around this one based in Teeside atm, just tried to pick up a Teeside station apparently on 95.0 on it (legal, but just for trial) but don't know what KHz to set it to or anything. Need to educate myself on these things. Finding Globaltuners complicated enough. Have it set to NFM on 95.0 but signal is crap atm. Probably that I have the wrong settings or whatever. Dunno.

[SD-E1102]

Thanks for that Teckniqs, trying to get my head around this one based in Teeside atm, just tried to pick up a Teeside station apparently on 95.0 on it (legal, but just for trial) but don't know what KHz to set it to or anything. Need to educate myself on these things. Finding Globaltuners complicated enough. Have it set to NFM on 95.0 but signal is crap atm. Probably that I have the wrong settings or whatever. Dunno.

Try changing it to wfm

[drumandbasshead010]

Thanks for that. Can I ask: 1. What is the difference? and 2. What KHz should it be set to (I know it's FM, but it still seems to give me the option to change the KHz.

[SD-E1102]

NFM is narrowband which is used mainly for amateur radio, airband etc.

When you refer to khz do you mean the side band? If it is then anything from 150k upwards should be useable but I recommend tweaking the settings to what sounds best for you.

[g33ky]

Thanks for that. Can I ask: 1. What is the difference? and 2. What KHz should it be set to (I know it's FM, but it still seems to give me the option to change the KHz.

Set it to around 200khz. Most spy servers will only do 150khz or at a push 192khz, which is perfectly fine.

I regularly check the spyservers but I'm yet to find a good London one. There is one that says London on the map but its nearer Kidderminster, and I can't get jack other than Kriss on 95.1. There's one in Birmingham on the map which is actually Northern Ireland, picks up Irish/NI shortwave pirates S9!

[teckniqs]

NFM is narrowband which is used mainly for amateur radio, airband etc.

When you refer to khz do you mean the side band? If it is then anything from 150 k upwards should be useable but I recommend tweaking the settings to what sounds best for you.

No the Air Band actually transmits in AM, yes it's still in VHF just above the FM Dial up from 108 to 136 MHz but the mode of transmission is Amplitude Modulation.

.....I usually have them set around 50 KHz or 80 KHz for weaker quieter stations but stronger stations will need a larger bandwidth of at least 100 to 300 Khz (WFM) .

[drumandbasshead010]

Thanks for this people!
Messing about with GT a bit atm, should I always use WFM when scanning the normal FM band (87.5-108mHZ!?€€)

[teckniqs]

Yes