Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by sinus trouble » Fri May 17, 2019 2:03 pm

I have to agree with Mr Oldskoolpirate!
In the past I have broadcast for months solid and not a dickie bird from Ofcom!! In London!!

Yes it is uncertain when the knock on the door will arrive? But I am sure raids are not as simple as that!! Planning and legal proceedures are time consuming! Unless there is some kind of 'Emergency' threat!
I am as stupid as I look! :|

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by McDonalds » Sat May 18, 2019 9:49 am

still have my 30 watts but not going to use as much I have a much smaller TX just to cover my house and next door dought they will bother with this.
I may turn the 30 watts one on now and again though.

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by radionortheast » Mon May 20, 2019 9:43 am

McDonalds wrote: Sat May 18, 2019 9:49 am still have my 30 watts but not going to use as much I have a much smaller TX just to cover my house and next door dought they will bother with this.
I may turn the 30 watts one on now and again though.
don’t know if thats a tx I saw a video about a while ago, I think their kind of transmitters that can only be operated at full power else they might put out sprogs, I can understand why your not using it. I don’t know if these transmitters from greece might be any good on ebay, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FM-PLL-TRANS ... SwFb5aFH4S
they are 1w stereo, thought I don't have that transmitter, I find 1w is enough here to tx down to some woods, I can still dx it 12kms away, with the aerial high up.

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Albert H » Mon May 20, 2019 1:30 pm

I know of someone (some years ago) who was building a rig and was caught with just 100mW into a couple of paralleled 100Ω resistors! He'd just moved to his new flat and discovered (the hard way) that his neighbour two flats away worked for the Post Office RIS!!!
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Electronically » Thu Jun 06, 2019 2:32 pm

They amplifiers are crap

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by TGillies » Tue Aug 06, 2019 12:43 am

trancetechnic wrote: Mon Mar 18, 2019 10:45 am I can remember back in 2006 I tried a 150 watt TX @ home And an hour later I got a big knock on my front door And of course It was The 'DTI'. I never let them in!...Fortunately They eventually got fed up and left. :lol:

So, my advice is Don't broadcast with the transmitter from your house Especially If it's rented from a housing association As you will be evicted for 'illegal activity'. :tup
I got busted in 2006, was a council house and never got evicted

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by SamTheDog » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:20 am

The fastest for one of "OUR" stations was two days later....

I say two days later because I was working for a station which used the ferrier estate in SE-London with a rig on one of the blocks, and it went off... The guys with the baseball-bats attended and slashed the tyres on an RIS (now ofcom) car which really pissed them off... (I wasn't there at the time to advise against this action)... Usually the site was attended within minutes, but if the raid was official nothing was done.. (only if it was some thieving bastard stealing the kit).

so that station went back on the air, and two days later the studio (in eltham if I remember correctly) was raided... One of the DJs got away by hiding in the wardrobe... That was Radio- KAOS London.. RKL who used the 100 spot briefly (as wellas other frequencies). before KISS took it over....
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Albert H » Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:08 am

We were installing on the roof of a disused department store in North West London. It was a valved rig (transistor drive into a 4CX250 giving close to 400 Watts as I remember), and we put it in what had been the lift motor room, in a cupboard. The very tall aerial mast was clamped to railings that ran around the roof of the lift equipment housing. The studio was in the basement of the building, and the mod was being fed up the old building telephone wiring. We fired the rig up and checked the match into the aerial (a J-pole). We closed the lift room door and legged it across the roof to the top of the stairs we'd come up. It was damn cold, because this was the day before Christmas Eve.

Down in the "studio", the man once voted London's most incompetent DJ put on a record and opened the fader. My pocket portable sprang to life with the somewhat distorted sounds of Fleetwood Mac. We dashed into the studio and reduced the output level from the amplifier driving the cable up to the roof. It sounded good.....

..... for about 45 seconds. The music was replaced with white noise!

We got to the roof in time to see Gotts and Garlic going down the stairs on the far side of the roof with my nice, shiny transmitter! We'd managed to broadcast for about 1½ minutes, and the first minute of that was over-mod! That was the shortest-lived rig I ever used. It was replaced about an hour later with a somewhat less powerful transistor rig - into the same aerial - which stayed on until New Year, when we closed the station down.

There was one (slight) upside to the whole event: Brian Holder later told me that Gotts had managed to get one hell of a belt off the 2.2kV anode supply for the final of the rig, which is why they didn't do their usual trick of cutting the coax up into little, unusable pieces and then destroying the aerial - Gotts wanted to hurry to A&E to get checked over!
Last edited by Albert H on Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by nrgkits.nz » Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:18 am

That’s quite funny Albert, Gotts must have known when you were installing the rig.

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Albert H » Wed Aug 07, 2019 1:20 am

I think that someone had reported "activity" on the roof when the aerial was being put up earlier in the day.
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by SamTheDog » Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:55 pm

I had a rather odd one near Deptford-Park... (the Evelyn Street incident....)

A few days before. The station DJs had put a rig and VHF link-rx on a block off of Evelyn St. I was busy elsewhere at the time, so I told them to put the main antenna up (a groundplane 5/8 wave that just sat on the roof). and put the TX under an upturned bucket with a couple of bricks on top to keep it dry..

A couple of days passed and I was called to sort-out the TX which had gone off-air during the night. Up to the block, on the roof, they had put the TX IN a bucket, No bricks, and it had rained. so a wet and stuffed TX... a lack of comm's there then...

I sent them down to find some bricks while I started taking out the dead TX. "just shut the door on the way down, Give me a call when your'e back and I'll let you in...."

So I took out the old TX and was waiting in the LMR for them to return.. before i installed the replacement. I saw a little movement outside the door and it swung-open to reveal 2x PC-Plod... (the guys forgot to SHUT the sodding door......) After the "Let me guess what you're doing here? Shall we take a look on the roof..?" line, I went top-side with one PC-Plod, as the other wasn't keen on heights....

He tried to call it in on his R/T but it wasn't working too well.... I asked him if he wanted me to take a look "I am a radio engineer mate..." A quick clean of the battery-contacts and he was chatting to his control again....
"we've got one here installing a transmitter" he said... I interuppted and said NO, that kit was already here, I arrived with my kit but am waiting to know from my guys if I should install or not. So you can only do me for trespass which technicallyisn't a crime unless you can prove I've done criminal damage, Maybe ask the local council....

He relayed the message to his control and they said get everything in their van and ID me....

I helped them get the old TX and my new one down and into thier van. Unfortunately I had some ID on me so they had my name/address.... they said I would hear from them soon... I didn't... A year later I had a note through my door from the police to contact the property-officer at Deptford-nick. After a call and a visit (By-Train to new-cross) I collected two big transparent bags with plastic evidance-tags... Two complete TX/Link kits and a damaged, bent-up antenna. ( one later went on the air with WNKR / RFNK).... Was pissing myself laughing at that fiasco for ages!
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by SamTheDog » Thu Aug 08, 2019 2:08 pm

.... Maybe I should have put a claim-in for the damaged antenna..... Tee Hee......
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Albert H » Fri Aug 09, 2019 12:49 am

Sam

There's a story about a raid (Gotts & Garlic again) on RJR on Broadwater Farm. The kiddies kicked off, and there were several van loads of coppers despatched to quell the riot.....

About 45 minutes after they'd gone off the air, the guys at RJR studio (downstairs from the rooftop they'd been using) were astonished to receive all their gear back from two very confused-looking coppers, with instructions to get back on the air immediately to help to calm things down!

They didn't get raided again for several months......
"Why is my rig humming?"
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by SamTheDog » Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:09 am

Superb.... Oh for a little local support! If only the rioters would turn out to protect us more..... !

Back in the early days of WNKR on shortwave We used to get people (dog walkers mostly) plod through the woods and check our kit... one day a dad and son were there he was pointing out the rather long wire-di-pole strung between trees and showing son how it went to the transmitter.. They were rather surprised when we turned-up with a car-battery to swap half way through the broadcast.... Curious, BUT they didn't report us to the police... We carried on with that site for a bit longer before moving to another location with mains-power.

One of the locals was an RFM DJ (Hugo Lee-Jay). occasionally he would take his dog for a walk via the TX-site... and let us know if all was well.
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by projuicer » Fri Aug 09, 2019 10:27 am

Back in 2001 there was a station here in the West Midlands called Groove FM - which, having been off for a while announced on the internet that they were coming back... 150 watts from Eve Hill Dudley resulted in a huge signal - which lasted a little under 3 hours.

Didn't quite catch the rig going off. But this was that:

https://www.piratearchive.co.uk/westmid ... 2-9-01.mp3

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by teckniqs » Fri Aug 09, 2019 12:00 pm

projuicer wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 10:27 am Back in 2001 there was a station here in the West Midlands called Groove FM - which, having been off for a while announced on the internet that they were coming back... 150 watts from Eve Hill Dudley resulted in a huge signal - which lasted a little under 3 hours.

Didn't quite catch the rig going off. But this was that:

https://www.piratearchive.co.uk/westmid ... 2-9-01.mp3
Slightly off topic so apologies for this, but your post reminded me of something I was warned about around 10 or so years ago regarding London's Unknown FM DJ's plastering their Facebook pages with stuff like "catch me on Unknown 10-12" etc and a load of them got done for it, so I was warned if I had anything like that on mine to take that off my Facebook page straight away, but I never had anything on mine anyway to worry about. But your post reminded me about this...

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by projuicer » Fri Aug 09, 2019 12:08 pm

The "Loud, Proud and Illegal" book has got an interview with a DTI/OFCOM RA Guy, who confirms a few things about intelligence gathering and the timing of raids!

https://www.broadcastbrothers.co.uk/sto ... ck%29.html

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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Albert H » Sat Aug 10, 2019 12:17 am

SamTheDog wrote: Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:09 am One of the locals was an RFM DJ (Hugo Lee-Jay). occasionally he would take his dog for a walk via the TX-site... and let us know if all was well.
Hugo used to be on Radio Weird as well. He also had his "dog-walking station" that he used to fire up each day when walking the dog to give himself something worth listening to. It has been argued that Hugo's Dog-Walking station was the longest-running pirate in the UK!
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by SamTheDog » Sun Aug 11, 2019 9:54 am

HLJ used to live rather close to myself and DM. we'd often see him at the local pub too.... some of my WNKR music was from HLJ.. He gave me some albums as he thought I needed a few more blues-tracks.... I still have them here!... He once told me about one of the radio weird transmitters which was based on a VHF valve-based tv-tuner.. Cool chap! My WNKR radio persona "sam the dog" was the human DJ incarnation of his "Dartford Terrier" of the same name....!
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Re: Shortest FM TX time to not get caught ?

Post by Albert H » Sun Aug 11, 2019 7:53 pm

Hugo once told Barney (in The 7 Scars, as I recall), that his station should be called West And North Kent Electric Radio.....

Hugo and Legless Lurch famously tried and beheaded Justin Simmonds on the air for "Interfering with a much nicer radio station". I think that I've got it on tape somewhere:

Judge (Les): "You stand accused of interfering with a much nicer radio station. How do you plead?"

Justin (Hugo): "Sycophantically, your honour!"

Is Hugo still around?
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
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