How old were you when you first got hooked on radio. Be that pirate or not? Also if you went on the donoirqte how old were you when you first did that? And how old are you now? Do you still feel as much of an radio anorak as you ever were ??? Or does the excitement wane for you as you get older? did you ever work in the radio / media world after the anorak kickstart ??

I was 9 when I got given my first radio and was hooked
I was 14 when I made a pantec hobby tx/kit, even took it to school and broadcast from their once , ha, the electronics teacher even walked around the school with his class to see how far it went in the grounds , lol

I was under 18 when I god my first Veronica FM 10w tbx from Stephen Moss and it was the first time I met the DTI as well

I pumped myself out on lots of other pirate stations and later after setting up my final station along with two others , then finally made the step into ILR radio

A 22 i had to leave my job at KFM because of my broadcasting ban of 5 years but later went back to Signal Cheshire when it expired.

Now I don’t do any radio, I’m now almost 50 which is scary but I’m still a very keen anorak but I admin it has waned a little as I’ve got older , maybe because I’m no longer as active myself)

I remember as a kid, trying to listen late at night to pirates and my mum wasn’t as keen on the next room, so I bought one of those under pillow speakers so I could listen too then fall asleep listening to pirates ithiur disturbing my mum.

What’s your story ??

I think I was 10. It was PCR (Paradise City Radio) from Bradford on 104.9. I'd heard about pirate radio and wanted to find one for a while and couldn't believe it when I found it one day when I was off school poorly. They were live 24/7. I was instantly hooked on the station. Following finding PCR, there was quite a proliferation of stations in West Yorkshire over the next year or so including Jive FM, Curfew FM (Huddersfield), Rapid and Peoples (Leeds), Emergency FM and WKLR (Bradford) and Wacky FM (various locations). In the few years following these, there were even more (Unique, Underground, Unity, two stations called NRG, Dream, Love 100... the list goes on). I was always listening to one or the other.

I did a few years on a couple of the stations, then went onto student radio and then earned a living for a number of years on commercial radio. I've still got the bug, but I don't get time to do anything these days. I still listen to pirates online and I always take a radio with me whenever I stay away, just to have a tune around. There's still some interesting and surprising stuff out there, it's just a lot thinner on the ground than it used to be.

I am the baby of the house and in my mid 50's, big brother liked Radio Dublin and big sister religiously listened to Radio Luxembourg Sunday nights - I was probably about 6 or 7. When I was about 13 I remember sitting on the beach picking up Radio Nova on the (mostly empty) FM band for the first time - stereo, optimod, a good few Kilowatts into a Phelps-Dodge antenna system off a big fuckin hill, I knew straight away it was going to kill the medium wave guys.

As one of the younger crew on the forum (though I don't feel young anymore!), my interest in radio proper started around 2003/4 when I would enjoy scanning the bands in the family car during outings. Always found it fun finding new stations and RDS names, back when everything was actually local rather than just a locally-advertising Heart/Capital.

Pirate proper was around 2009 when I first went to London. My mother is from down Kent and we had a family event in London, my mum drove down to there (I wouldn't even consider driving inside the M25, no idea how she put up with that ;P) and during my scanning I found a pirate playing house music and I distinctly remember the scrolling RDS advertising a rave (couldn't tell you which one, this was many a year ago now!). Oddly enough my mum actually knew straight away it was a pirate and she's not even a neck like myself!

After finding they were pretty common I tuned into them online back in my home town. Unknown FM was a favorite of mine, I'm glad I found out about these stations cause it introduced me to House/DnB/Garage etc.

Radio fascinated me - from as young as I can remember. Radio Caroline was probably my first pirate listening experience. In my teens, DBC, Invicta, JFM, became regular listening. My first electronic projects, were radio related (primary school days). First transmitter build - not too long after, was a simple, MW job; from a published design. Big, audio power amps, and FM transmitters followed.

In my case it was 1962 - Veronica to the Netherlands - as far as I remember....

A couple of years after that, I heard the start of Caroline North on Easter Sunday '64, because we'd moved to Merseyside.

The first pirates I heard were in the early 80's: the Dublin 'super pirates' on medium wave, specifically Sunshine and Nova and also found Radio Dublin on short-wave. Not long after that I trawled the 48 metre band on a Sunday morning and heard stations such as Krypton Radio, Radio Apollo, Britain Radio International, Spectrum World Radio and Radio Del Mare (and received QSL cards from many of them). I guess I would have been very early teens at the time.

I remember hearing a pirate in Lincolnshire back in 95 called ‘Power Cell’. I was really excited as they were playing the bangers that radio 1 hadn’t got their hands on. Unfortunately it was only mono, but the signal was massive. They must have been on one of the nearby hills. Perfect signal and good audio processing. They only lasted about a month unfortunately. Probably due to them handing out a Bt landline number.

Heard another in York roughly in 96 playing a mixture of techno and dance. Again, massive signal in the old montego with a signal meter built into the car stereo.

Heard plenty of pirates back in the 90s and 2000s in London. The sound quality of some of them still makes me cringe, but it is what it is.

Anyway, hi to my fellow necks. It’s been a while since I’ve been active on the forum.


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Welcome back then Maximus

I remember listening to Caroline on MW in about 1985, and KFM in Stockport around the same time, I knew a girl who lived at a farm in Mellor (she told me about them) , KFM were not to far from there, at the water tower in Goyt (well the TX was).

Matt wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 8:27 pm
two stations called NRG.

I once called one of my stations NRG, I had never heard anyone use it before, this was probably 1990 or 1992 ) memory is fuzzy, but it was whenever alphasound sent me a jingle demo cd, I took a liking to the ‘ENERGY - feel the energy’ package ) … anyway someone a couple of miles down the road thought it was a good idea to use the name whilst I was erm “off the air for some time”.

Did you know that when Veronica in Bradford needed a new name , it was me who suggested the name NRG KITZ (or kits). And the rest is history (it’s good to see the name live on , and I’m sure Stephen is up there somewhere proud of what he achieved , no doubt muttering to himself about someone’s dodgy soldering )

Were you in West Yorkshire when you did NRG? The first of the two NRGs I heard was 1992. I was briefly in touch with the guy that did that station but there's no way I'd remember a name and I haven't got a recording of it anywhere. It went off after a short while and then there was another NRG which, IIRC, was in Leeds and which after a time became one of the Dream FM frequencies.

Ah interesting
No, I used to broadcast from South Manchester and the dti said they could pick me up all the way from Preston down the M6 (they must have had a good radio in my opinion, ha). Although it was called Hardcore FM when the DTI stopped by.

The other NRG was in Chester Hulme, and the Mike who did that station now works in a phone shop in America from what I last heard. One of his broadcasts everyone heard his parents shouting at him (really going ballistic), he had forgotten to turn the mic down and the cd had stopped (it was mildly entertaining)

I was on IBC radio in bury/Heywood for a while too that was probably 1990

I also did a spin-off for a short time called IBC Southside

I was also on the Super Station which came from a farm near Mossley (not far from Oldham)

Maximus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 7:51 pm I They only lasted about a month unfortunately. Probably due to them handing out a Bt landline number.

Way back when, a few stations used BT landline numbers, but ones used for BT phone boxes. Phone lines would be “opened”, for a limited time (at which point the nominated gofer, would go and stand in the phone box, answer calls, and take messages / “shouts”, for a period of time. A lot of BT phone boxes, were outgoing only lines, and not all of those which were both way calling, had the bells / ringers connected. Finding one with the right mix of attributes, in the right location, was more luck than judgement. Finding one with all that, which hadn’t been vandalised, and didn’t reek of p**s, was the holy grail. Who’m I kidding. They all reeked of p**s back then !!

Shedbuilt wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 9:31 am

Maximus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 7:51 pm I They only lasted about a month unfortunately. Probably due to them handing out a Bt landline number.

Way back when, a few stations used BT landline numbers, but ones used for BT phone boxes. Phone lines would be “opened”, for a limited time (at which point the nominated gofer, would go and stand in the phone box, answer calls, and take messages / “shouts”, for a period of time. A lot of BT phone boxes, were outgoing only lines, and not all of those which were both way calling, had the bells / ringers connected. Finding one with the right mix of attributes, in the right location, was more luck than judgement. Finding one with all that, which hadn’t been vandalised, and didn’t reek of p**s, was the holy grail. Who’m I kidding. They all reeked of p**s back then !!

Yes remember doing that a few times, although the mum of a friend loved taking down dedications so we used her home number a lot of the time, but itoo did use phone boxes forma time (usually very dar away from tx), i also used a friends house as a snail mail address for a time, until a group of people came looking for me and wanted to know where i lived (or they would break his brothers legs) - some lovely people attracted by pirate radio back then (and some not so much....)
Ive also heard many stories of transmitter being stolen including mine once, and another group of our got the tx stolen too, turned out to be someone i knew and a little rocking rhe boat got it back anonymously , sadly that put us off broadcasting from that tx site every again and it was a friggin good place !

It was an incredibly good place Lee. I'm astonished that no one remembers Carousel, unless they simply thought it was a legit commercial. I remember being in a bar in Portugal and some bird said to me, "You sound like that bloke that does that Carousel Radio rock programme with all that old shite music on". Well, yeah love. Guilty as charged. Perhaps the programming wasn't irreverent enough thinking back. Maybe we should have been a bit more controversial

S

Probaby . . .
The good thing about Carousel on the internet is that we can see when someone starts to listen.
The audio is sounding pretty hot now, and i have been adding more tunes into thenplaylist.