ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 29

July 2005
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

Non-number station radio news

[PoSW]

The pirate broadcaster "Radio Free London" was heard again on Sunday 29-May at 0715 UTC on 3,940 kHz with a strong signal and excellent modulation, last heard over the Easter holiday in March of this year after a break of several years. They were also announcing transmissions on 819 kHz medium wave, not heard at my QTH, and 6,275 kHz not heard on the Sunday but was up with a good signal on the following day, a public holiday in the UK.

A story on the subject of pirate radio appeared in the Daily Express of 12-March. Headlined "Radio pirates spark air traffic alert" it went on to say "Police have swooped on a pirate radio station after garage music drowned out vital instructions from air traffic controllers to jets coming in to land. Pilots making their final descent into Birmingham International Airport complained about hearing only thumping music. Inspectors traced the pirates to a tower block and seized a transmitter and aerials"

This kind of story shows up from time to time on a fairly regular basis and when reported on the television news there has often in the past been a quick and fleeting view of the transmitter and always looks like a piece of home-made junk operating in the VHF-FM band with no sign of a quartz crystal or the complexity of a synthesiser to ensure frequency stability. So it is not too difficult to see how a free-running oscillator running at the top end of the FM broadcast band might drift with temperature or changing supply voltage up into the VHF aircraft band just above it. I don't think there has ever been a prosecution against the operators of one of these FM pirates, largely I suspect because they tend to be operated by one or other of the ethnic minorities and the authorities know the civil unrest which would follow would not be worth the trouble.

[PLondon adds: I was once involved in a raid on a Pirate. The VHF FM transmitter was in a tank house atop a block of flats in South London. The access hatch was electrified to keep the Inspectors out. The transmitter was built in a Peak Frean’s biscuit tin and was very amateurish. The antenna was a proper folded dipole and matched with a tuned stub or three. The link from the raided studio was microwave. As PoSW states the station existed for ethnic music and I was never aware of any prosecution]

Sunday 19-June saw the one hundredth transmission of the RSGB GB2RS news for radio amateurs and shortwave listeners on the 60 metre "notice of variation" experimental band on frequency 5,403.5 kHz, USB