Brenda Ann wrote:

"Bushcraftgregg" wrote in message
...
On May 19, 1:54 pm, Bob Dobbs wrote:
wrote:

There is a Long Beach,Mississippi too,

My first pirate (WLBM 1530) was there in the early 60s, used a rooftop
two turn loop around the eaves, had an FM station on an "S" shaped
folded dipole but never settled on a constant frequency and was on the
verge of airing a pirate TV ch2 when I became a hippie instead. We used
to hang out at the Merry Mansion over by Cowan Rd before Camille got it.

--

Operator Bob
Echo Charlie 42

That's a pretty good pirate story there.

Got a better one, and an FCC letter to show for it.

1973, I was 18. I set up a 20 watt FM pirate in a small town about 25 miles
outside of Portland, OR. There was a large ridge between me and the city,
so virtually no signal got out of there toward Portland, and not much got
into the area FROM Portland.

The TX was a homebrew redesign of a 220 MHz AM ham rig. The coils were
simple to rewind. The oscillator stage was at ~12 MHz IIRC, and all had to
do to make it FM (it was a variable oscillator to start with) was to add a
varactor diode and bias network.

I built my own stereo modulator for it using Compactron tubes. It wasn't the
most stable, since it was a free running 19 KHz oscillator, but it did work.

Range on the setup, including a home-made 1/4 wave vertical dipole on my
roof, was ~ 15 miles, and could be heard much further away at the top of a
mountain about 26 miles distant, on a Sony stereo boom box (one of the very
earliest such). Don't know what the range on a decent car radio would have
been, since the car I drove back then didn't have a radio in it.

I had a deal with a local record shop where they would loan me a new LP in
exchange for a public radio style sponsorship plug. It worked out really
well, and I had a good listenership (remember that signal problem mentioned
above?).

It all came crashing in one day when the local FCC field engineer stopped by
(probably didn't help that I was dissing the FCC fairly heavily) to shut me
down. Seems that I was interfering with the channel 12 TV reception (nearly
non-existant at the best of times) of a neighbor. Two guys came to my door
and asked me if I had a pirate radio station. After admitting I did, they
asked to see it. I showed them the setup, and they asked if I had a
microphone (stupid question, since I obviously did, and they could see it
there on the boom at the console). I said yes, and they said "open it, and
tell your listeners you're going off the air by order of the FCC." I got on
and made my spiel, then they said, "now, turn it off, and LEAVE it off!"

They didn't even confiscate anything (amazing, that was, especially since
hanging on the window frame above my console was my 3rd. class phone license
with broadcast endorsement, which wasn't even cancelled, and I went on to
gain a 1st class phone license a few years later), but I did get a nice
letter from them a few weeks later. Paraphrasing: You done it. Don't do it
again, or we'll slam your butt in jail or fine you $20G, or both!..

It was fun. It wasn't my last pirate. I even had one in Portland on AM a
year later. Cat and mouse with Uncle Charlie.. it's the American way.

Congrats! You've actually owned more radio stations than 'Eduardo' ever did!