BRISTOL PIRATE RADIO RECORDINGS

This blog is intended for me to post my pirate radio recordings. Most of the recordings are from Bristol, most will be pirate but there will be some legal stations and stations from other cities or national stations.

IF YOU OR YOUR FRIENDS HAVE ANY TAPE RECORDINGS OF PIRATE RADIO FROM BRISTOL, PLEASE SUBMIT THEM TO THIS BLOG BY RECORDING THEM TO MP3 (CLICK HERE FOR A HELP GUIDE) AND UPLOADING THEM TO http://www.sharebee.com, or a similar site such as Megaupload, Mediafire, ZShare, but not Rapidshare as it's getting a bit hard to use. SEND THE URL IT GIVES YOU TO ME VIA A COMMENT ON MY LATEST POST or BY EMAIL AT bristolpirates at gmail.com (you'll have to correct that with the proper @ symbol, I started getting spam on the address). WE COULD ALSO ARRANGE A PICK-UP OF YOUR TAPES IF YOU LIVE IN BRISTOL AND CAN'T CONVERT TAPES TO MP3. THANKS IN ADVANCE, YOU WILL BE CREDITED.

Sunday 21 July 2013

SDR# and R820T Dongle Bandscan

I've been getting used to using SDR# (aka SDRSharp) recently, having purchased a cheap DVB TV dongle called an R820T. These, and some other dongles are usable as Software Defined Radio receivers. You need to add an upconverter for freqs lower than 24MHz, which means LW, MW, SW need that extra piece of equipment.

Information - http://www.rtlsdr.org/

This bandscan demonstrates the capability on FM...


Friday 12 July 2013

Last of the Summer Wine

I have spent some time up hills in a bath... sorry, in Bath.

Back in May I recorded some weak signals in Alexandra Park, South of the centre on top of Beechen Cliff...


106.1 is Badminton Radio, the RSL for the Badminton horse trials 2013
105.52 is Swindon 105.5, Swindon's community station, battling a bit with Real Radio on 105.4 from Wales. There was a local artist being interviewed before I recorded this, talking about getting one-rings on the mobile phone during pirate radio shows :D

Then, yesterday I decided to go up on the hill at Lansdown just North of Bath (the P&R bus goes up there and conveniently parks up near some playing fields).  I have just about received UKs Finest / Sub Zero FM on 87.5 up there before, but today wasn't a good day for getting accurate normal signal levels. Atmospherics were causing a lot of different things to come in.

This was really uncomfortable to record, as a result it's a bit cak. Look out for the green thing that decided to walk across the top of the Tecsun!

Radio Ramadan from Bristol appears to be fading in and out with the atmos on 87.9. There is also a similar station on 87.8 but whether that is a Ramadan RSL or something coming in on atmos I don't know for sure, but I'd assume it was Radio Ramadan 87.8 FM - Walsall!

There is also something on 90.95 (I tune to 91.0 in the vid) which also doesn't look like an RSL to me.

There's something playing what sounds like a mix of Spanish and Arabic music in there too (accompanied by the green thing), and a bit of French.  There were so many signals in and out between 87.5 and 87.9 including French and some pop stations, no idea what they could be.

Isle of Wight Radio on 107 is normal on Lansdown in my experience.

When I wasn't recording or sat on the floor, Ujima and BCFM came in much better, Ujima reaching 19dB.

On 97, but not in the vid, was Fantasy Radio from Devises.

Free FM doesn't broadcast at the time of day I recorded this, so 105.8 has Wave 105 coming in on atmos. It also appears on 105.2.

You might just hear Heart on 100.7, next to Classic on 100.8.

Radio Solent is the BBC station on 96.1.

The rest I just didn't have time to ID. I'd love to spend a day up there in a tent with the laptop running SDR# to get a really decent scan, but that's a bit mad :D


Below, the view from the hill...


Above... Moooo!