There's a short memoir about a pirate FM radio station in Los Angeles titled "44 Watts from Nowhere", written by a woman who was a DJ and unofficial station manager. They were playing a lot of punk rock and other things that didn't get airplay on mainstream commercial radio.
I recognise a few of the names on the membership list. I was there 1986-1989 Computation. "Have you got a license?" "Yes" "You're club president!" (I helped acquire some SU funds for the club.) I remember playing AX25 from the shack on Wednesday afternoons. Drinking night was Thursdays with old members (Duncan and Pete) turning up. Happy days!
@@nickhubbard3671 We worked (well, turned up and got paid!) together at BBC Monitoring - Pete was one of the legendary Crowsley Boys. A very clever chap who told me a lot about UMIST's Pirate, sorry, "Amateur" Radio Society. ☺♥
I'm soo interested in the history of these thousands of pirate stations in every city and town during the 70's and 80's... Before these people die, lets try to collect and save pictures and audio tapes. This is forgotten history. I'm doing my part here in belgium.
Your content is very much in accord with what I remember, but your dates are a little out, UMIST radio society was certainly revived and very active when I arrived in 76, the FT101e was already in use. The big ex-army antenna tuning unit photographed was picked up at a rally in 77, we all chopped in a few quid to purchase it. I think the unlicensed repeater was first rumoured to be active in 78. Thanks for bringing back some happy memories.
Very interesting, a friend had an RS number starting 541 and that was in 1982/3, so it times the letter from the SWL to before that. I'm amazed they got away with the pirate stations, usually they were caught fairly quick.
Tut tut. We did something pretty similar in the late 80's. Pottering around in the 143MHz area, talkthrough repeater links in our cars and UHF links. Fun times, educational and we managed to get away without gettting caught.
Interesting about the earlier days of ham repeaters back then I started with FM repeaters here in the US In the early 1970's while in the US Air Force, at Pease Air Force Base, Portsmouth, NH, only about an hour away from here in Nashua, NH where we now live. I then had as my first rig, a 12 channel, crystal controlled Drake ML-2, "Marker Luxury", with a tube final output of about 15 watts, until I obtained the early Synthasizer ICOM IC-230 in 1976 with 10 watts output and it cost about $500.00 back then. 73 de W2CH Ray
refreshing my memories on my fm pirate years , great to learn this pirate virus was all over europe . great fun to build LM2219 and MRF 237 transmitters , so small and still all over town
Another very interesting video, although I'm not even from the UK. This channel is really unique, keep up the good work. I hope some of the equipment from the abandoned shack could be saved somehow.
It would have been rude not to have had gb3mu and radio rag from a site such as this ....Im glad the operators wandered of into the alternative radio scene good on them....a great history Lewis where mischief was good ....keep digging please ...we all so look forward to the future installments x
I love the way your channel is evolving and growing Lewis! Interesting stories even for non radio heads! Keep going, keep growing and congratulations on you 50k subscribers!
Great stuff, Lewis! Although my radio experience is limited to (illegal) AM CB in the UK, and later on, short range marine VHF, I find this historic stuff fascinating. Maybe it's just because I'm getting old? 😁 Anyway. I look forward to the next one. All the best, young fella. P.S. I sometimes listened to pirate radio stations, but I didn't inhale. 😉
I have the ultimate license you can get as a single entity. US Army MARS. I can legally own any type of new or modified equipment for any and everything radio. The End.
Another fascinating video Lewis 😀 . It reminds me when I first passed my ARE in the 80s and would visit the Longleat Amateur Radio rally each June and come away with PYE Cambridge, PYE Europa and PF70s and the odd PF1 to modify. Those crystals (2 for each channel) were expensive at £7 each from QSL Crystals. I still have a box of PYE gear in the garage 😬
Thank you for all your hard work and research. This makes me wonder about similar clubs in the US. And it's inspired me to write up a history of our local writers' club that is now defunct. So, thanks for that too.
It’s really really strange how university radio got started very early but now one of our major universities in Melbourne in Australia actually have a full FM licensed radio station it’s called SYN And it’s a part of RMIT
Back in the early 90's, the UCL full colour with NICAM pirate TV used to operate. It was still working in 2003 when I visited london. It ran with central london coverage most weekend nights after the student union closed during term time. We used to broadcast the very latest movie releases, that were shown in the Bloomsbury theatre to the UCL film society, complete with Pearl and Dean advertising It was still there (at least the roof TX box and antenna was) in 2017. It operated by relay to confuse anyone trying to find it. And the quality was superb. Full broadcast standard, with good filtering ensuring no interference to regular broadcast TV. Anyone could watch it within about a 3 mile radius. To this day, I'd really like to know how big an audience it had.
A very interesting production, thank you for having made this video and invested the time into researching their former history! A feel a bit sad seeing it’s deteriorated and abandoned space though and hope that it may one day be restored and preserved by either the university or radio club. I hope Manchester University still has an active and healthy amateur radio club/society today? If not then I truly hope that your story might convince some students and professors to consider resurrecting the club and restoring it to its former glory as amateur radio is still a great deal of fun and still presents many interesting technical challenges with innumerable niche ares of interest for people to latch onto. While radio may have seemingly lost some of its “magic” in the modern age of cellphones and internet there is still a great deal of magic to be found and enjoyed and it still presents numerous technical challenges for anyone interested. It is always a magical moment to make first contact with someone new from a foreign country an ocean, or even half a world, away and have a good conversation or get that much sought after DX contact on HF! There are also countless many digital modes to be explored as well (and for some extremely mic-shy or mute individuals these digital modes are their primary way of reaching out to the world since no voice is needed) and they can be a great deal of fun in their own right. (Here in the South Eastern U.S.) my amateur radio club has taken over several repeaters that would otherwise have been lost due to attrition as nearby clubs have become less common and their memberships dwindled. Fortunately, I have had a great deal of success rebuilding and growing the membership of our local radio club and over the past five years we have gone from a low of 30-35 paid members (all licensed), and declining, to more than 70 paid members (all licensed), and still growing, each year, with most of that growth occurring during just the past 3 years, and we are financially back in the black (prior we were losing $500-1000 of our reserves each year and that was unsustainable). We also now host our club meetings both in-person and simulcast on Zoom for those who can’t make the meeting in-person (so far no luck getting folks to allow me to archive our meetings on RU-vid, so you have to attend the Zoom meeting or you miss it), but I have invested a good bit in the equipment necessary to host meetings on Zoom: four selectable cameras (including a camcorder for guests), a desktop/screen capture for presentations (either local, through OBS desktop capture, or remotely as an HDMI capture input), a good omnidirectional mic (Blue) centrally located, external amplified speakers, multiple display monitors for myself, Board, and audience, and an elgato StreamDeck to switch between all the cameras and other actions. It was a lot of work to get it all setup on short notice when COVID hit in early 2020 but it has worked out well for everyone and allowed members to participate throughout COVID as well as while traveling out of state or country (we have a number of airline pilots in our club) or out sick. The greatest challenge, though, was getting my existing HP lower-end laptop to actually handle all of that hardware as it has only two USB 3.0 ports and one type C USB 3.1 port along with running both OBS and Zoom simultaneously in a mix of HD (1080p) and 1/2 HD (720p) while also recording the video and audio stream to SSD. My laptop is very nearly maxed out CPU-wise at times (between 70-95% much of the time) and I am using most of the bandwidth available from my three USB ports (2x3.0, 1x3.1) to handle the multiple webcams and camcorder HDMI capture hardware. The growth of our club has been made possible primarily through hosting numerous exam sessions throughout each year and inviting folks to join us or another local radio club. My Volunteer Examiner (VE) team (I say “my” team as I run the team and have the role of Team Leader and ARRL VEC Liaison and schedule and coordinate our exams as well as handle all the paperwork) was one of the few VE teams that were active and still offering exams throughout COVID, while making very good use of PPE so no VE or test candidate ever came down with COVID despite very high local levels at times, although I would temporarily shutdown testing during major peaks…a lot of managed risk that thankfully worked out well as many were very grateful just to have someone offering testing, even if such meant they had to drive from a neighboring state, or two, just to reach us!). All of which I share to make one very important point and that is that with a few devoted and very active members it is absolutely possible to still build and grow a very active and vibrant amateur radio club today. It isn’t necessarily easy and you absolutely need at least a few members willing to invest much more than most (I am by no means alone in terms of investing a good deal of time and resources into our club as there are several other such members in our club as well, each doing their chosen part and doing it very well), but clubs are not dead as an idea today…they are just hurting as the world tries to find a new balance between online and offline time and interests. But they are more challenging to start and keep going given all the innumerable other distractions and time wastes of modern life, but people still deep down have that need and desire for in-person socializing and sharing of interests one in one that can not be met by online social media alone!
Good on you Ethan. Here in the, comparatively small city of Christchurch, New Zealand (2 large islands 1,000 miles from Australia in the South Pacific) we have one highly active Amateur Radio club (another club had faltered a few years ago, and "we" absorbed their members). Close to 300 members with over 250 paid up financial. As I type this late Saturday night, 30 July 2022, we are mid way through one of our several times a year "Ham-Cram" teaching weekends, where the clubrooms are converted to a classroom, for all day Saturday and Sunday. With numerous club members volunteering as tutors. Approved volunteer examiners will hold the exam late Sunday afternoon. Our club is also very active with "A.R.E.C." who help police and search and rescue teams with communications in remote areas where cellphones don't work etc. We have 2 small trucks always fuelled up and ready for call-outs in the garage at our clubrooms. Our club also co-operates with other smaller clubs around the surrounding rural areas, and other cities around New Zealand. I believe the club's shack callsign is ZL3AC but I'm not into HF DXing personally. Tuesday evenings 1930hrs-2100hrs (local time) several folks are in our Radioroom/shack and occasionally, some of the older ones still use Morse). However we should recognise that Amateur Radio, can play a part if major emergencies cause normal telecommunications and internet access to be disrupted. Our club also allows other related interest groups to share use of our rooms at times, like an Experimental Electronics and a Vintage Radio (vacuum tube receivers restoration) club and these groups act as feeders for more new members as folks interests often overlap, with about half the membership of other clubs being licenced amateurs. 73's from ZL3CATH
Was this recently rediscovered by the University facility crew? Or did some former student remember about this stuff 40 years later and got permission to go up there and see if there was anything still there?
Back in 1968 G3 CXX operated from the UMIST building with a long wire on top of UMIST roof and used a KW 1000 valved rig I did visit it but can not remember what room it was in They had a Marconi amp given to them I think from Marconi might have been from a ship. There was also the University on Oxford road had a club station and also Audenshaw tech College where I study for my R.A.E in 1970 they had old school am gear Yours truly Martin G4LMZ
It would be SO nice to see that revived, at least tidied up a bit. Not throw all away but get the dust off, see if anything is operational still, maybe turn it into a museum- I hate places like this being erased from existence just because of being over the haydays. I still listen to FM stereo, no internet radio for me exept Radio Caroline.
Great couple of videos Lewis. I'm guessing that this activity is completely separate from the Aquarius and Andromeda guys who were also active in the 1970s and early 80s in the Manchester area.
I spent many Saturday nights in the UMIST bar from 84 onwards, but never heard of any radio club. I know the kind of people who went there though at the time. It was a lively place.
I remember April 1st 1984, when a few radio hams set up a bogus 2M repeater on Gower, to the west of Swansea, with the call sign GB3AF. Two transceivers were used, Rx & TX and separated by several hundred yards, with the audio from Rx to Tx carried by two UHF handhelds. The ident and control came from someone using a Commodore 64 and was sent via the input frequency. It operated for three hours between 9.00 GMT and 12.00 GMT before being switched off. During the three hour period many hams in South Wales and the West Country used the "repeater" and only a couple cottoned on to the significance of AF call sign. Why I know so much about it, I couldn't possibly say. 😎 GW4NFJ
How on earth did they get a dipole mounted on Holme Moss?! For a start climbing that mast is not for the faint hearted, and secondly there's supposed to be very restricted access.
Thanks for the various interesting videos. One thing I have always been interested in, and I'm in the United States, is how the public safety agencies switched over to being something that could not be monitored over in the UK. I'm curious about the laws, when they went into effect, and then when did the UK start encrypting traffic and creating these laws? I'm just interested in that whole story and what the laws are today as well as any rules. I know that here in Texas we had a few buyers of a trunk radio type of system that originated from the UK. I can't think of the name of it for the life of me right now but I will try to find it. I believe it was MPT1411 or something like that. I am legally blind so it takes me a little longer doing research than most. Is TETRA what is used today in the United Kingdom? And what about the laws governing scanners? I remember back in the late 1980s and early '90s I was always told NOT to bring a scanner with me if I flew to London. I was told that Customs would confiscate the radio and I probably would not get it back. Is that true for back then and is it still true today? On the various scanning forums I see a lot of UK listeners that monitor and don't seem to suffer any problems with the government. Scanner manufacturers, like Uniden, even have European models that begin with model numbers like UBT... If you ever get a chance to do a video on topics like these that I mentioned, I would really be interested in that. Is there a way to monitor something like police calls nowadays in the UK or are they all encrypted? Great videos and thanks for any answers on what I asked about or mentioned...
Hi, a few answers from you. The UK originating trunking system is called MPT-1327. Yes, we have TETRA in the UK for emergency services but it is called the Airwave network but is essentially TETRA. I am not sure of the exact laws in the UK regarding scanning, but we do it freely - scanners easily bought, frequencies shared, and scanners openly in use at air shows, near military air bases by plane spotters, etc. Late 80's was before I was born so I can't comment on the past but looks like things have changed - I just pack my scanner in my hand luggage when I travel never been questioned.
@@mcarda Thanks for getting back to me with some answers. And that was exactly what Decatur, Texas Police Department was using years ago for a short while. It was the MPT-1327 radio system / setup You mentioned. They didn't use it very long and I'm not sure why but it could still be monitored back then even though it couldn't be trunk monitored if it was even a trunk system. It was kind of strange and always wondered why they bought that system and started using it and then just dropped it like they did? Thanks for the answers and thanks for the interest in videos as well...
Oh my a 40 year old radio ...as a youth, I found an old radio, hidden in the attic, of an old German saboteur...files abound of American navy vessels, and a map of a local aircraft plant, the radio was neat, the code book pocket size leather bound printed 1880, Berlin.... contacted FBI, they had no interest?? So I kept the book and map as I wanted to get it translated ...map said wind to mark prevailing air flow over plant, the book seemed to be poetry ... in the base ent hidden in a drawer, were glass tubes filled with white phosphorus and very old toy airplane engines sadly my collection was destroyed by my sister while I was away ...she's an idiot ...colored in a few first edition books, including the little poetry book. Why ? Take care.
@@goodun2974 no the tubes were turned over to a WWII demolition expert, he broke them except for the one a friend broke. I approached the current owner of the property, to refresh my memories ...he has installed cameras and a bullet proof shield on the entry, hummm wonder why ?
How did you know about my 2m dipole at 600 feet and cavity filter (both of which I made) at Holme Moss? This was never used for anything illegal. It's interesting to note how many of those involved in this activity ended up working for BBC transmitters!
@@owensmith7530 It was for the Amateur radio 2m (144MHz) band. I made the dipole and the rigger installed it during another job. The co-ax feeder was already there with nothing connected.
That's the first time I've seen the word bogle (on one of the rag posters) in a long time. There used to be a" bogle stroll" during rag week in Manchester, which iirc was some sort of sponsored walk or run possibly in fancy dress, by the students.
@@RingwayManchester do you know what the term bogle means or where it came from? I never found anyone who could tell me, and I never heard it used in any other context.
@@crabby7668 A bogle seems to be similar to a boggart which is a malevolent spirit which haunts houses and other places especially in the north of England. Also we have the similar sounding bogeyman. The Scottish Tattybogle is a scarecrow. Did the MU Bogle stroll involve dressing up as scarecrows or something scary ? I assume that alcohol was involved.
@@rjmun580 I never actually went on it, but I think that students dressed in fancy dress and did a sponsored walk or run. I think you are right about plenty of alcohol because it was part of RAG week, so all the Manchester universities Inc Salford got involved. It would be interesting to hear if your suggestions about origin are correct.
I hadn't any radio training and when I first had to use one I said Over and out. My chief chewed me out. Still cringe when I hear someone say it in movies.
Don't know why this video popped up in my box but a little story my wife and I were stopping in a B&B in Jedburgh we had been there a few times the owners friend used to be their doing odd jobs he was a canny bloke very interesting to talk to shower me a stationary engine he had built went in the old water pump house showed me water engine powered the old mill , was like a massive turbo , talking to him one night he was telling us a story about the time another guest said to him you are not the David Bla Bla amateur radio something or other apparently was a wizard of electronics , he was about 60 very well spoken and had a habit coughing or sneezing quite a lot .
" .... and that is harmony bucket choir ..... " " Your with ....... " " Dr Johnny Fever " " WKRP . " " Les Nessman is up next ... " " Live from the Turkey Drop " " Come in Les ... "
I haven't seen the previous episode, I'm new on this channel, so I don't know what exactly you are talking about. Would you please include a link to the last installment you mention at the beginning of the video?
There was a powerful Reggae station on VHF during my student days in Manchester, around 1976/77. It MUST have been a pirate. Anyone know anything about it?
