Really interesting series Lewis! Makes me want to put together something for the pirates in Ireland. Just read this week that our state broadcaster RTE is switching off their DAB multiplexes. Goes to show how popular FM still is here, which just means pirates are still alive and well :)
I remember IBC radio. I think it stands for "The Illegal Broadcasting Company" It was on something like 104.5 Mhz and was a very strong signal over to Tameside (East Manchester). I remember them mocking Piccadilly radio often!
In the 90's, there was a (short-lived) show on a US community radio station, that the host based on tapes of various UK pirate radio stations. Primarily the show's focus was on-air live DJ mixes and occasional club sets. At first it was tapes recorded off the air sent to him by his friends and family in England, but as things progressed he was able to get soundboard recordings from the pirate stations and the DJ's themselves. The show attracted a lot of listeners in the area and had quite a following. A local music scene newspaper famous for hating everybody actually gave his show really positive reviews. After a pretty solid couple year run the show simply vanished from the station's lineup with no explanation. A mutual acquaintance told me the guy moved to Ibiza to start DJ'ing for real
I guess being able to set up an online radio station without having to look over your shoulder along with lower operating costs has made people go legit. Plus streaming services pretty much lets you be your own DJ. This has impacted on radio listenership figures.
Right I’ll try again as YT ate my words ffs. Ok first off. Great short film. Well done. Thanks for the feature. Buzz actually came back on in Dec 2005 and we limped through until Feb 2009 (weekends only) during which we got raided twice and then the final time when Eric got raided while live on the air. Myself and Eric took part in a short film about pirate radio which was filmed in the last incarnation of the Buzz studio in Aug 2008. Google ‘Stay Sailing on Vimeo’ and the video will come up. Big Al Rockwell from KFM and Buzz is a good friend and is still active doing adverts and voiceovers in his perfect American voice. I was with Al on a raid once...but that’s another story lol. To the person asking about 99.7 tapes...YT won’t let me reply to your comment...but there are quite a few Love NRG tapes on YT. I did upload loads of tapes in my early days on here but YT blocked them due to copyright and to the BT engineer...the station will probably have been Frontline as they had a studio in Charles Barry crescent in the bullring estate in Hulme.
It just shows that the punishment dispensed the first time was totally inadequate. They should have thrown the book at you. Maybe then you would have had some respect for the law.
In my youth in the 1960's I used to huddle down in my bedroom with my old second hand radio set and listen to radio London and Caroline together with a raft of other stations including Luxenberg (who could forget Mike Raven's Blues show !) as an essential part of my musical education. Medium wave was always best in the daytime - night brought all kinds of interference and noise which my old set succumbed to all too readily. I get pirate radio but sadly my musical tastes are firmly locked back in time .
Pirates are rare here in Australia but there have been a few. In the 1990s there were several transmissions on shortwave from Radio G’Day somewhere in NSW. Southeast Melbourne was known to have a few FM pirates in the 80s and 90s. STD-FM on 96mhz, POX-FM “A pox on all the others” was run by a radio ham, another was caught while broadcasting from a boat in Port Philip Bay. Radio Uranus made several broadcasts in Melbourne. More at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_Australia Edit: Just realised I forgot a notorious CB pirate in Melbourne. Callsign was FU2 and they broadcast regularly on Ch11 in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in the late 70s. A cassette was found in a garage in the early/mid 80s of one of their broadcasts
Your documentaries are really great Lewis! Very interesting and interspersed with excellent pictures. The late 80''s and 1990's would have been an interesting time to have been an FM BCB listener around the UK's major cities.
Radio frontline was a pain in the butt in the early 1990s. It transmitted on 100.4MHz and had no filtering. As a result there was a strong sub harmonic on an ssb calling frequency on six: 50.2Mhz. It was S7 eight miles away to the North East in Oldham so it disrupted local ssb activity. I was told it caused interference to business radio on vhf too!!
If there were more pirates about I might actually listen to the broadcast bands. The trouble with commercial broadcast is they're financially motivated to target the widest possible audience so they all tend towards generic pop music slathered with adverts. It's that or the BBC and that's mostly the same bar the adverts. I'm used to have a radio alarm clock but the buzzer has more depth and variation to it than broadcast radio today. How's about a video sharing your thoughts on this new EMF risk assessment thing Ofcom are adding to the amateur license to appease the 5G conspiracy theorists?
Fun times. I ran a few back in the day. Dance Energy 105.7/107, Vision FM 105.5 and Essential 107 from my parents house in Cheadle Hulme. 50’ aerial on roof LOL.
Have good memories of KFM, used to get a strong signal north of Manchester towards Bury. When they went to AM I remember being able to pick up the second harmonic. I think you might have the 1987 date wrong for the use of the 103.0MHz frequency for Piccadilly Radio. I remember the lunchtime switchover, listened at school in the common room, made a recording of it but it has a background whistle as a drink got spilt in the tuner and it messed up the MC1310P stereo decoder IC. Happened in the middle of them playing E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite. This would date it 1985-86, I left school in '86.
The switch from Piccadilly to Key 103 would have been in 1988, I worked for part of the company (Piccadilly AV and then Piccadilly Sound and light then Piccadilly Squire Sound and light when it acquired Squires) when it happened (always made me laugh as we listened to Radio 1 in the workshop)
Renegade broadcast from a pig pen in Droylsden. We used to put the music to tape first, & talk over them, rather than getting our decks / equipment / records nicked. Can't remember the frequency now.
you get a few FM pirates here in Australia. I've heard a few via FM skip. One from the Mackay QLD area at 1670km (called Max-FM) on 88.8Mhz, one from the Gold Coast QLD on 88.2 at 1000km simply called "88.2 FM" & one from South Australia on 91.0 at roughly 1000km (It just relayed a London dance station webstream). Pirates are easy to spot if they're on an even offset frequency which aren't normally used in Australia (we use odd offsets same as the US). These received around 2018
I didn't realize there was so much pirate activity in the U.K. If the powers that be actually put on the air a decent radio station that the people wanted, chances are there would be less pirates on the air. One of the famous pirates here in the U.S. was the legendary WHOT 91.5 in Brooklyn, New York Circa 1989
@@zeez9053 I honestly don't see how anywhere else could be even remotely close to being as bad as it is in the United States. Maybe it's just me, but even a few of the independent freeform stations that I once really liked and supported with donations are getting tiresome, and have taken off so many of the programs that first compelled me to tune in to online. 😢 And streaming radio just ain't the same as being able to pull in something great from out of the ether, without having to be connected to anything - save for a power cord.
Love the pirate radio used to always tune in and be up and down my loft moving aerial for different stations in Hertfordshire Baldock . and I’ve built a couple of transmitters That I still own 👍👍
That rings a bell. If you were living 5 miles from the station, the signal wouldn't always be that good, so I'd constantly be re-tuning, moving aerials, trying to improve the quality!
I remember KFM, Frontline and IBC. I knew people who operated a station in Salford based around a small 5-10w FM transmitter built by a guy that made higher power gear for other pirate stations. There were stations in Middleton towerblocks that I knew of too. Risky business back in the day.
I listen to Merseyland Alternative Radio, MAR. 40 YEARS an still rolling out every weekend on 87.5 and online to the world. Manchester used to have kiss 💋 which was good. I used to listen when I lived in Bagley off Altrincham Road. Enjoyed your video mate. Very informative with excellent aerial views. Stay tuned and sane, 73 Lee, Seacombe Wirral.
Brilliant video. Interesting that the genres of music played such as soul, reggae and funk (my favourites) keep popping up due to invisibility on the legal stations. Surely that should be a message to anybody in the broadcasting authorities that these stations DO have a substantial audience and always did. I've mentioned me listening to Southside before but I have to confess that I made a tape of 9 year old me singing to 'Into the groove' off Signal Radio. Why is this relevant? Well, it was around that time that I was listening to Southside FM so I'm pretty sure it was on air in Summer 1985 when that was at number 1. My dad has kept the tape somewhere😳. I might listen to it and see if there is any Southside footage for you.
Wow this brings back great memories, when living in pickford court the high rise flats in old trafford in the early 90s i came across frontline radio. i loved this radio stations, all the dj's were fantastic along with the music.i came across sting fm a few years later. loved listening to reggae, ragga and jungle.. i remember walking to murray's music city in the heart of moss side and purchasing music like the ninja man, bounty killer, jungle hits etc. i also remember listening to unity radio a few years earlier which i also loved too, for me these are my three favourite pirate radio stations. such a shame frontline has now gone, lucky for me i still have a handful of audio tapes where i recorded many tracks off frontline radio and sting fm but sadly lost the music i recorded from unity radio. the memories come flooding back when i play them...
I LOVE RADIO. How interesting. Great and an important documentary on local history. Real visionaries on the air. Responding to local tastes, and views, news, independent from big financial concerns. Pity they weren't granted a license.
Great content as usual Lewis, I heard they use to use uplinks not sure if this is true? So they would transmit from the studio to the big transmitter on 50mhz then the transmitter would boom on the main FM band this way Ofcom RCA could only find the main transmitter away from the studio. I use to love going to London as soon as near the M25 start tuning for the pirates. Now music is freely available UA-cam / online in the 80's and 90's you had to buy a CD or a tape or listen to rubbish local radio.
You have a question mark for the end date for Carousel Radio. I can answer this. It got relaunched in 1992 (firstly as Premier Radio) and again as Carousel with a new jingle package and really rather seriously powerful tx. The last day was bonfire night 1995 when the tx was taken.
I remember one back in the early 90s Clash FM based on the dance tracks at a club called the hippos in Middleton. Renegade FM I think had something to with it.
In Leicester we used to have Fresh FM and Kickin FM in the 1990's they where the best here. And then in early 2000's there was a small one I had made that I called Trance Mission FM, it was a 7w, PLL, RDS, but was not serious, I was just playing at making diferent kinds of Transmitters and this transmitter was the last I built.
@@sparkidee No sorry no recordings, it was long before I became a licenced HAM and as stated was nothing serious, I only went on for about an hour a day was just testing out transmitter designs and builds realy. And yes it was trance only.
There was something exciting about the pirate radio stations, back in the 60's, and even now. I feel like a conservative rebel (work that one out). I was sitting in a studio one day, imagining what it would be like as an announcer in Radio Caroline, only to stop day dreaming when the song finished on the turntable (pre CD days) to realize I was in a properly licenced community FM station...drat...there went the romantic radio feeling. That was back in the early 80's. But just the same, doing radio was fun. Then the first born came along, a beautiful baby girl...and eventually left the station...too busy enjoying being a new dad... but my radio experience was good while it lasted. I'll be a rebel by saying....long live pirate radio...😂
There was a pirate radio station transmitting from a house on the corner of Alness & Range rd, Whalley Range. For a year or two, Don’t know which station
Interesting history of the Manchester pirate radio scene. I must admit to not hearing about any of these. Then again, I was never a big music radio listener. In fact, most of this time, I listened to radio 4 as it was the only station I could get without having to put the car aerial up!
Wicked video mate. Pirate radio is fascinating, it's such a shame that local enforcement comes down so hard on the lads and lass's that run / ran these community stations. 73 for now
KFM playing local bands was an excellent idea, especially when all the good culture comes from the regions. I wish London had something like this today, especially when Radio X is so bland. Real punk and real indie needs to be heard.
About 15 years ago I was once tasked with tracking down some interference using a hp 8590 on a dodgy 12v inverter while hanging a heliax in a grey coloured radome out of the car window on the outskirts of manchester airport. It didnt end well. Im sure the fact it looked like a missile didnt help and i spent most of the day explaining what i was doing to security, the police and some other agency having been detained. Luckily they eventually got in touch with my employer and shortly after I was freed. It wasnt funny then but I laugh about it now and looking back it was a bit silly. Good though we found the source and it was a faulty wireless analogue cctv receiver. Funny enough it was always the receivers which would broadcast the interference and never the tx of the cameras or occasionally it was sky boxes and vcr's.
Yes, transmitting equipment is usually cleaner, only because you don't expect the rx to be sending signals lol. In the old days TV and even radios used to vibrate a signal inside the tuned circuit, this was then emitting that noise from its antenna or even injection into the mains wiring. You could back in the day tell if someone had a radio or even a TV from a "detection van" and measuring the frequency offset of the internal feedback you could also work out what station they had on, almost all this was happening with the old valves but has been known with old transistor sets when capacitors go electrically leaky and start to pass ac and dc
Fuck the Radio Inspectors. S'long as you don't interefere with other stations, there clearly is no problem. Ahhhh, now we have INTERNET :D Great review/report, Lewis....LOL
in my country am radio is filled with talk radio ,god casters and some sports along with hispanic music. radio is dead . a friend of mine ( who is now deceased ) said , if a kid can do it better than u , get out of the way. i do know in my country radio is a bussiness and were at one time setup to serve the public . now their own bottom line . also the governing body , the fcc has decided to sell spectrum space that belongs to the people . the have been doing this since the 80s . good documentary there sir.
2:00 I saw there was a pirate radio station owner arrested :( but then I saw 2001? Then again in 2003, how can you be dumb enough to have a pirate radio station in the 2000's? The internet was comming out and scanners were cheap. Cool if you are a ship in the 70s not cool in your house when we had modern technology.
when having old 40 year equipment i was made to be used like an ls car airplane engine i still have my gear used to fix amps tuners rigs ham tx and rx get in them retune from china standard to english van tune up kids radio so they could pick up caroline and other stations
Some of those stations are extremely close to the 101.5 MHz frequency of Classic FM. One station should not be less than about 0.5 MHz from another on FM, due to the very high bandwidth requirements of FM stereo.
I can remember when Kiss FM was the coolest pirate station around. However, now they are licensed, they have become a *bubble gum* station loaded with ads, with narcacistic idiots talking a load of bollocks over the top. These days, I can't tune Kiss FM out quick enough. Not all change is good.
In the late 80s or very early 90s I worked for BT and remember going to the bull ring on Royce crescent in hulme to fit a phone line in a flat which on arrival found it to be a radio station I can't remember which station it was does anyone know ..i remember the tunes was booming out :::: great video 👍
_"...and to the BT engineer...the station will probably have been Frontline as they had a studio in Charles Barry crescent in the bullring estate in Hulme"_ - snowmanbuzzfm
i thought the pirates used a directional transmitter to the main transmitter so that they only lost the transmitter when they were busted and not all the decks and other equiptment.
Someone should make a simple 4g Internet radio that runs of a prepaid data sim that outputs on Bluetooth/ line out for the car. Smartphones kinda work via android auto but messy and a lot of cars dont have it.
Really interesting series Lewis! Makes me want to put together something for the pirates in Ireland. Just read this week that our state broadcaster RTE is switching off their DAB multiplexes. Goes to show how popular FM still is here, which just means pirates are still alive and well :)
Switching off DAB? Wow!
I miss the pirate radio days, used to be something to look forward to at weekends
Spotify is shit
I remember IBC radio. I think it stands for "The Illegal Broadcasting Company" It was on something like 104.5 Mhz and was a very strong signal over to Tameside (East Manchester). I remember them mocking Piccadilly radio often!
They had a "Mark Rhodes" or was it "Mark Roads".
i did a set on ibc was in a smelly coucil flat haha
In the 90's, there was a (short-lived) show on a US community radio station, that the host based on tapes of various UK pirate radio stations. Primarily the show's focus was on-air live DJ mixes and occasional club sets. At first it was tapes recorded off the air sent to him by his friends and family in England, but as things progressed he was able to get soundboard recordings from the pirate stations and the DJ's themselves.
The show attracted a lot of listeners in the area and had quite a following. A local music scene newspaper famous for hating everybody actually gave his show really positive reviews. After a pretty solid couple year run the show simply vanished from the station's lineup with no explanation. A mutual acquaintance told me the guy moved to Ibiza to start DJ'ing for real
that's a great story - any details of the US community station at all?
Yes Lewis these docs are getting better. Top work buddy thank you for your hard work.
Thanks mate
I guess being able to set up an online radio station without having to look over your shoulder along with lower operating costs has made people go legit. Plus streaming services pretty much lets you be your own DJ. This has impacted on radio listenership figures.
Right I’ll try again as YT ate my words ffs. Ok first off. Great short film. Well done. Thanks for the feature. Buzz actually came back on in Dec 2005 and we limped through until Feb 2009 (weekends only) during which we got raided twice and then the final time when Eric got raided while live on the air. Myself and Eric took part in a short film about pirate radio which was filmed in the last incarnation of the Buzz studio in Aug 2008. Google ‘Stay Sailing on Vimeo’ and the video will come up. Big Al Rockwell from KFM and Buzz is a good friend and is still active doing adverts and voiceovers in his perfect American voice. I was with Al on a raid once...but that’s another story lol. To the person asking about 99.7 tapes...YT won’t let me reply to your comment...but there are quite a few Love NRG tapes on YT. I did upload loads of tapes in my early days on here but YT blocked them due to copyright and to the BT engineer...the station will probably have been Frontline as they had a studio in Charles Barry crescent in the bullring estate in Hulme.
Amazing stuff mate, I’d love to chat to you via email if you don’t mind? ringwaymanchester@mail.com
@@RingwayManchester pinged you. Check inbox ⛄️
It just shows that the punishment dispensed the first time was totally inadequate. They should have thrown the book at you. Maybe then you would have had some respect for the law.
Can I mail you? I have a question!
@@rogeronslow1498 the law make no sense and there are no freedom of speech.
In my youth in the 1960's I used to huddle down in my bedroom with my old second hand radio set and listen to radio London and Caroline together with a raft of other stations including Luxenberg (who could forget Mike Raven's Blues show !) as an essential part of my musical education. Medium wave was always best in the daytime - night brought all kinds of interference and noise which my old set succumbed to all too readily. I get pirate radio but sadly my musical tastes are firmly locked back in time .
Pirates are rare here in Australia but there have been a few. In the 1990s there were several transmissions on shortwave from Radio G’Day somewhere in NSW. Southeast Melbourne was known to have a few FM pirates in the 80s and 90s. STD-FM on 96mhz, POX-FM “A pox on all the others” was run by a radio ham, another was caught while broadcasting from a boat in Port Philip Bay. Radio Uranus made several broadcasts in Melbourne. More at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_Australia
Edit: Just realised I forgot a notorious CB pirate in Melbourne. Callsign was FU2 and they broadcast regularly on Ch11 in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in the late 70s. A cassette was found in a garage in the early/mid 80s of one of their broadcasts
Your documentaries are really great Lewis!
Very interesting and interspersed with excellent pictures.
The late 80''s and 1990's would have been an interesting time to have been an FM BCB listener around the UK's major cities.
some real blasts from the past there Lewis i really enjoyed this vlog cheers
I didn't know that Manchester was such a hotbed of pirate radio. Thanks for sharing!
Radio frontline was a pain in the butt in the early 1990s. It transmitted on 100.4MHz and had no filtering. As a result there was a strong sub harmonic on an ssb calling frequency on six: 50.2Mhz. It was S7 eight miles away to the North East in Oldham so it disrupted local ssb activity. I was told it caused interference to business radio on vhf too!!
@@Isochest Wow!
There was loads more stations in the 80s & 90s, only a handful are covered here.
In Manchester?
Excellent. Bonus points for the drum & bass.
Agreed.
If there were more pirates about I might actually listen to the broadcast bands. The trouble with commercial broadcast is they're financially motivated to target the widest possible audience so they all tend towards generic pop music slathered with adverts. It's that or the BBC and that's mostly the same bar the adverts. I'm used to have a radio alarm clock but the buzzer has more depth and variation to it than broadcast radio today. How's about a video sharing your thoughts on this new EMF risk assessment thing Ofcom are adding to the amateur license to appease the 5G conspiracy theorists?
i guess it is pretty randomly asking but does anybody know a good place to watch new movies online?
@Kenzo Misael try FlixZone. You can find it on google :)
Thank you so much for this project. The documentation and preservation of the history of the scene is so important.
Another great documentary Lewis. Great memories of the rise of the early original KFM Radio.
Fun times. I ran a few back in the day. Dance Energy 105.7/107, Vision FM 105.5 and Essential 107 from my parents house in Cheadle Hulme. 50’ aerial on roof LOL.
Any audio of them stations to listen to?
Have good memories of KFM, used to get a strong signal north of Manchester towards Bury.
When they went to AM I remember being able to pick up the second harmonic.
I think you might have the 1987 date wrong for the use of the 103.0MHz frequency for Piccadilly Radio.
I remember the lunchtime switchover, listened at school in the common room, made a recording of it but it has a background whistle as a drink got spilt in the tuner and it messed up the MC1310P stereo decoder IC.
Happened in the middle of them playing E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite.
This would date it 1985-86, I left school in '86.
The switch from Piccadilly to Key 103 would have been in 1988, I worked for part of the company (Piccadilly AV and then Piccadilly Sound and light then Piccadilly Squire Sound and light when it acquired Squires) when it happened (always made me laugh as we listened to Radio 1 in the workshop)
Renegade broadcast from a pig pen in Droylsden. We used to put the music to tape first, & talk over them, rather than getting our decks / equipment / records nicked. Can't remember the frequency now.
you get a few FM pirates here in Australia. I've heard a few via FM skip. One from the Mackay QLD area at 1670km (called Max-FM) on 88.8Mhz, one from the Gold Coast QLD on 88.2 at 1000km simply called "88.2 FM" & one from South Australia on 91.0 at roughly 1000km (It just relayed a London dance station webstream). Pirates are easy to spot if they're on an even offset frequency which aren't normally used in Australia (we use odd offsets same as the US). These received around 2018
Fascinating Insight into Manchester's Pirate Radio Stations
I used to tune into then back in the days. We used to do mix tapes for a small station called dance energy 106.9.
I B C was a cool station too
I think you might have done tapes for me back in the day.
Was on love energy back in the day...memories
Keep up the good work 👊
Really interesting. I love the level of detail you provide👏🏻😎
As always, thanks cally!
I didn't realize there was so much pirate activity in the U.K. If the powers that be actually put on the air a decent radio station that the people wanted, chances are there would be less pirates on the air. One of the famous pirates here in the U.S. was the legendary WHOT 91.5 in Brooklyn, New York Circa 1989
English radio is so bad and brainwashing
@@zeez9053 I honestly don't see how anywhere else could be even remotely close to being as bad as it is in the United States. Maybe it's just me, but even a few of the independent freeform stations that I once really liked and supported with donations are getting tiresome, and have taken off so many of the programs that first compelled me to tune in to online. 😢 And streaming radio just ain't the same as being able to pull in something great from out of the ether, without having to be connected to anything - save for a power cord.
Love the pirate radio used to always tune in and be up and down my loft moving aerial for different stations in Hertfordshire Baldock . and I’ve built a couple of transmitters That I still own 👍👍
That rings a bell. If you were living 5 miles from the station, the signal wouldn't always be that good, so I'd constantly be re-tuning, moving aerials, trying to improve the quality!
I remember KFM, Frontline and IBC. I knew people who operated a station in Salford based around a small 5-10w FM transmitter built by a guy that made higher power gear for other pirate stations. There were stations in Middleton towerblocks that I knew of too.
Risky business back in the day.
Bet that guy knows some good stuff
Yeah live in stockport n used to luvv buzz fm some good music in early 90s x
@@lisa.b.78 respect Lisa 🖤
Thanks for the mention aka Legacy UK Altho I was based in chorley I did once upon a time easily get into Manny.
I listen to Merseyland Alternative Radio, MAR. 40 YEARS an still rolling out every weekend on 87.5 and online to the world. Manchester used to have kiss 💋 which was good. I used to listen when I lived in Bagley off Altrincham Road. Enjoyed your video mate. Very informative with excellent aerial views. Stay tuned and sane, 73 Lee, Seacombe Wirral.
Thanks Lewis great knowledge as usual All the best
Love it when I see a 3m dipole on the top of a block of flats, sadly probably a dying art these days.
Too easy for the DTI to track down a transmitting dipole many switched to microwave links
Still a few pirates in the West Midlands, at least 4 on air tonight
Yes, there are I'm glad to say. Noticed that when moving from the North West
Brilliant video. Interesting that the genres of music played such as soul, reggae and funk (my favourites) keep popping up due to invisibility on the legal stations. Surely that should be a message to anybody in the broadcasting authorities that these stations DO have a substantial audience and always did.
I've mentioned me listening to Southside before but I have to confess that I made a tape of 9 year old me singing to 'Into the groove' off Signal Radio. Why is this relevant? Well, it was around that time that I was listening to Southside FM so I'm pretty sure it was on air in Summer 1985 when that was at number 1.
My dad has kept the tape somewhere😳. I might listen to it and see if there is any Southside footage for you.
Wow this brings back great memories, when living in pickford court the high rise flats in old trafford in the early 90s i came across frontline radio. i loved this radio stations, all the dj's were fantastic along with the music.i came across sting fm a few years later. loved listening to reggae, ragga and jungle.. i remember walking to murray's music city in the heart of moss side and purchasing music like the ninja man, bounty killer, jungle hits etc. i also remember listening to unity radio a few years earlier which i also loved too, for me these are my three favourite pirate radio stations. such a shame frontline has now gone, lucky for me i still have a handful of audio tapes where i recorded many tracks off frontline radio and sting fm but sadly lost the music i recorded from unity radio. the memories come flooding back when i play them...
You’ll enjoy this Stuart
Buzz FM Manchester Pirate Radio
ua-cam.com/play/PLAxEITuSnIjGKoYW7wxTEdVzCEV4_sQfV.html
I LOVE RADIO. How interesting. Great and an important documentary on local history. Real visionaries on the air. Responding to local tastes, and views, news, independent from big financial concerns. Pity they weren't granted a license.
DreamFM was popular in Leeds in the 90's Lewis...it reached most of Leeds and was a good station. 73
Great content as usual Lewis, I heard they use to use uplinks not sure if this is true? So they would transmit from the studio to the big transmitter on 50mhz then the transmitter would boom on the main FM band this way Ofcom RCA could only find the main transmitter away from the studio. I use to love going to London as soon as near the M25 start tuning for the pirates. Now music is freely available UA-cam / online in the 80's and 90's you had to buy a CD or a tape or listen to rubbish local radio.
It's nice to know there's some half-decent old school DnB in the UA-cam audio library. :)
You have a question mark for the end date for Carousel Radio. I can answer this. It got relaunched in 1992 (firstly as Premier Radio) and again as Carousel with a new jingle package and really rather seriously powerful tx. The last day was bonfire night 1995 when the tx was taken.
I remember one back in the early 90s Clash FM based on the dance tracks at a club called the hippos in Middleton. Renegade FM I think had something to with it.
In Leicester we used to have Fresh FM and Kickin FM in the 1990's they where the best here.
And then in early 2000's there was a small one I had made that I called Trance Mission FM, it was a 7w, PLL, RDS, but was not serious, I was just playing at making diferent kinds of Transmitters and this transmitter was the last I built.
Any recordings from your station? and did you play trance?
@@sparkidee No sorry no recordings, it was long before I became a licenced HAM and as stated was nothing serious, I only went on for about an hour a day was just testing out transmitter designs and builds realy. And yes it was trance only.
I recall a Manchester-based station called Lightning International that used to broadcast on 6 MHz(48 metres).
Great bit of research Lewis 👍👏👏
Really great info, thanks!
There was something exciting about the pirate radio stations, back in the 60's, and even now. I feel like a conservative rebel (work that one out). I was sitting in a studio one day, imagining what it would be like as an announcer in Radio Caroline, only to stop day dreaming when the song finished on the turntable (pre CD days) to realize I was in a properly licenced community FM station...drat...there went the romantic radio feeling. That was back in the early 80's. But just the same, doing radio was fun. Then the first born came along, a beautiful baby girl...and eventually left the station...too busy enjoying being a new dad... but my radio experience was good while it lasted. I'll be a rebel by saying....long live pirate radio...😂
more good info Lewis and to be young in the 80s to the late 90s and a good choice to listen to
There was a pirate radio station transmitting from a house on the corner of Alness & Range rd, Whalley Range. For a year or two, Don’t know which station
What frequency and when?
Interesting history of the Manchester pirate radio scene. I must admit to not hearing about any of these. Then again, I was never a big music radio listener. In fact, most of this time, I listened to radio 4 as it was the only station I could get without having to put the car aerial up!
Wicked video mate. Pirate radio is fascinating, it's such a shame that local enforcement comes down so hard on the lads and lass's that run / ran these community stations. 73 for now
Nice sharing my friend
This is a great video thanks
KFM playing local bands was an excellent idea, especially when all the good culture comes from the regions. I wish London had something like this today, especially when Radio X is so bland. Real punk and real indie needs to be heard.
Thanks for this!
There was a station broadcasting from Bury called RNI 105 using a portacabin up in the Nangreave hills around 1985/6 no moer info im afraid
Pirate radio at heart 📡🔊👊👀👍💖 #1122wingnutradio
If like in the USA the UK government didn't have a BBC Radio monopoly, there would virtually be no pirate stations.
Thinking of starting one in slough/west London
Good luck did it in the 90,s and 2000,s have deep pockets lots rigs get taken use an link trust your mates
J Clarkson: "drum and bahss"
I had a pirate station in London . Best times ever
Nice one pal, dead interesting stuff!
I was mixology I wish I could have given you some input and pics from our days. If you need any info pls get in touch
I remember listening to your test broadcast waiting for 9pm for the first official broadcast, good times, excellent hardcore 😂👌🏻
May I ask where did you get the music from?
About 15 years ago I was once tasked with tracking down some interference using a hp 8590 on a dodgy 12v inverter while hanging a heliax in a grey coloured radome out of the car window on the outskirts of manchester airport. It didnt end well. Im sure the fact it looked like a missile didnt help and i spent most of the day explaining what i was doing to security, the police and some other agency having been detained. Luckily they eventually got in touch with my employer and shortly after I was freed. It wasnt funny then but I laugh about it now and looking back it was a bit silly. Good though we found the source and it was a faulty wireless analogue cctv receiver. Funny enough it was always the receivers which would broadcast the interference and never the tx of the cameras or occasionally it was sky boxes and vcr's.
That’s brilliant! I’d love to see a pic of the radome! Ringwaymanchester@mail.Com
Yes, transmitting equipment is usually cleaner, only because you don't expect the rx to be sending signals lol.
In the old days TV and even radios used to vibrate a signal inside the tuned circuit, this was then emitting that noise from its antenna or even injection into the mains wiring.
You could back in the day tell if someone had a radio or even a TV from a "detection van" and measuring the frequency offset of the internal feedback you could also work out what station they had on, almost all this was happening with the old valves but has been known with old transistor sets when capacitors go electrically leaky and start to pass ac and dc
Anyone remember I-tel fm in 2001 think it was on 88. Something…. And mixology fm 106.xx from around the same time
Fuck the Radio Inspectors.
S'long as you don't interefere with other stations, there clearly is no problem.
Ahhhh, now we have INTERNET :D
Great review/report, Lewis....LOL
This was a great video
in my country am radio is filled with talk radio ,god casters and some sports along with hispanic music. radio is dead . a friend of mine ( who is now deceased ) said , if a kid can do it better than u , get out of the way. i do know in my country radio is a bussiness and were at one time setup to serve the public . now their own bottom line . also the governing body , the fcc has decided to sell spectrum space that belongs to the people . the have been doing this since the 80s . good documentary there sir.
2:00 I saw there was a pirate radio station owner arrested :( but then I saw 2001? Then again in 2003, how can you be dumb enough to have a pirate radio station in the 2000's? The internet was comming out and scanners were cheap. Cool if you are a ship in the 70s not cool in your house when we had modern technology.
when having old 40 year equipment
i was made to be used
like an ls car airplane engine
i still have my gear
used to fix amps tuners rigs ham tx and rx
get in them retune from china standard to english
van tune up kids radio so they could pick up caroline and other stations
DJ sausage fingers lol
Some of those stations are extremely close to the 101.5 MHz frequency of Classic FM. One station should not be less than about 0.5 MHz from another on FM, due to the very high bandwidth requirements of FM stereo.
None of them are on the air and haven’t been from anywhere between 30 and 15 years…
Oi there mate, you got a loicense for that radio station?
I can remember when Kiss FM was the coolest pirate station around. However, now they are licensed, they have become a *bubble gum* station loaded with ads, with narcacistic idiots talking a load of bollocks over the top. These days, I can't tune Kiss FM out quick enough. Not all change is good.
In the late 80s or very early 90s I worked for BT and remember going to the bull ring on Royce crescent in hulme to fit a phone line in a flat which on arrival found it to be a radio station I can't remember which station it was does anyone know ..i remember the tunes was booming out :::: great video 👍
Love it Vaughan
_"...and to the BT engineer...the station will probably have been Frontline as they had a studio in Charles Barry crescent in the bullring estate in Hulme"_ - snowmanbuzzfm
@@UCCLdIk6R5ECGtaGm7oqO-TQ thanks for mate its a very long time ago now
i thought the pirates used a directional transmitter to the main transmitter so that they only lost the transmitter when they were busted and not all the decks and other equiptment.
Someone should make a simple 4g Internet radio that runs of a prepaid data sim that outputs on Bluetooth/ line out for the car. Smartphones kinda work via android auto but messy and a lot of cars dont have it.
Anybody remember ‘fountain radio’ Manchester late 80’s
Wow. That’ll be frontline I’m believing now 👍
Any active pirate stations today?
Cool FM in London was good. I think they even went legit for a while
Kool fm and they've never been legal.
@@outlawandwize ah yes it was Kool FM you're right. I'm getting old lol, it was long ago now
What's that tune at the end?
How many watts?
I for one am a fan of ukf and drum n b. Great choons
Did you run a pirate radio station from the womb , back in the 90s?
I was born in the 1990’s, I actually founded a station called Renegade (not the London one) in 1991 aged 3
@@RingwayManchester And I was the copper hunting it down, aged 3 and a quarter.
I get blamed for topics I cover on the channel despite not being born or being really young 😂
@@RingwayManchester ahhh right! I did wonder lol
Quick question? Would you like to film a setting up of a pirate radio station in London? Lol Let me know 😉
me and dj bass got busted when we was in the flats on buzz 88
Damn it ate my comment 🤦🏻♂️ ofcom still trying to hold a man down 😆
these days we have internet.
Is pirate radio legel to do nowerdays ? Lol
Is it just me or is this repeated at 10:30 ?
What do you mean
@@RingwayManchester i meant the audio but i might still was sleeping xd
wicked video keep them coming lee 2e1hjw
I've got loads of tapes from 99.7
Ah brilliant! Any digitised?
@@RingwayManchester I think I still have a few yeah. I really want to digitise the rest. Just need a tape machine. I've got a full drawer of them
Would love to hear some MP3’s and see pics of the tapes! Ringwaymanchester@mail.com :)
@@RingwayManchester Wow, me too.
@@RingwayManchester ok will do!
👍🙃
not responding
I got GM constructfeelings from some of these buildings
Also I love the opening song
106.4 touch fm early 2000 garage dnb / jungle 👍🏻