How Did Radio Pirates Set Up Tower Block Stations?

[stakkerhmnd]

Comrade Wingray.

Thanks for the tutorial advice guide on how to set-up a "local community radio service". This is direct encouragement to scallys to set up radio pirate stations and broadcast their so-called "garages" and "drill" music.

This means you are actively encouraging gang violence.

DTI needs to close down your channel, tbh.

[snowmanbuzzfm]

Funny things did happen from time to time which still make me smile. We lost a couple of boxes one after the other one time to caretakers and thieves so we decided the way forward was to shop around for an old safe. We bought this thing online and it near killed at transit van we carried it in. Anyway one Sunday morning we head over to a block in Denton in Manchester with a great line of site back to Old Trafford where the studio was. We had to haul this thing into the block and up the lift to the hatch in the roof. Took 3 of us to pull it up on ropes lol. Then we bolted the thing to a massive steel girder in the old boiler room. The noise was so great from the drilling an old dear on the top floor came out with a brew and biscuits for us and thanked us for fixing the lifts on a Sunday morning 👵👊🏻❤

[outlawandwize]

As a long serving pirate, I remember having a studio in the tower block and the rig on the roof using a microwave link system bouncing it of a window on a house back up to the roof! We clocked DTI at the time coming to take us off, but by the time they got out of there car and up the top in the lift we had taken it down into the studio lol 🤣 Power to the pirate's 👍

[fermitupoupon]

A couple of years ago they took down a pirate FM station from a then newly built tower block near my house. Turned out the pirates were using double-quad antennas that were mounted in the same type of enclosure that GSM antennas used. So the AT showed up, took the transmitter and then proceeded to take the GSM antennas and left the pirate station's antennas in place.

These days if it's considered a "community station" type of deal and the AT doesn't get any complaints from legit broadcasters, they generally do not bother to take the stations down any more. Though if they do figure out who operates the station they will go and knock on their door and ask them politely to not do it again.
There's a locally famous pirate station in a rural area about 100km from here, so no reception over here, but they are actually quite polite about the frequency they use. It's a public secret who owns and operates the station and he's been to court multiple times. The last time in court the operator's lawyer managed to drum up expert testimony from a psychologist that the operator had some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder that made him desperately want to run a radio station. The guy was told to go and get help and that was that. His kilowatt transmitter was returned to him and the 150m tall telescoping antenna array was left in place.
I was baffled to see an "insanity plea" in a case like that work out the way it did.

[smd-tech]

We used to fit silent alarms to the council tower block roofs, combined with lift alarms and elder care alarms. The early ones were either pye vhf radios with fsk telemetry signalling to hilltop sites then going back to council control rooms via leased dedicated pairs, or later ones used various dtmf or fsk protocols using auto diallers over the pstn. There was always something interesting happening.

[gammaleader]

I love how youtube can provide some interesting insight into some very intersting topics while at the same time bringing both pirates and security officers as well as the people working for and against both sides together in the comment section.

[petesmith]

The bit about some rooftops being alarmed reminds me of the time I set off an alarm protecting some police equipment. I had the job of installing four repeaters on four tower blocks for a council in London. This particular block housed a site for the Met’s old Motorola analogue trunked system which consisted of several 19” racks housed in a mesh cage which was protected by an alarm which included a PIR. We’d previously been to site to install the antennas and were told to give it a wide berth so as not to trigger the alarm. On this occasion, I took the repeater up first and again kept away from the cage. I quickly realised that the mains socket for the repeater which I would also need for my drill hadn’t been installed (battery drills of the time weren’t an option on reinforced concrete). As I had three other repeaters to install, I opted to move on to the next one and come back when the socket had been installed.
Just as I turned to leave, the alarm went off. After a change of underwear, I returned the roof keys to the caretaker and explained the situation. He didn’t seem greatly concerned and just said ‘they’ll turn up if they feel like it’.
So anyway, I’m just leaving the building carrying a black repeater unit with ‘Motorola’ in 2 inch high white letters across the front of it when two police cars and a van arrive at speed to an alarm call to their then new Motorola system. About ten officers piled out of the various vehicles and came running up the path towards me. So I’m stood there thinking ‘I’m going to have to do some explaining here’, but to my amazement, they ran straight past me and into the building. I did consider turning round and trying to explain, but after about 20 milliseconds, I concluded that it was a stupid idea and kept on walking back to my van.
There was a bit of comeback a few days later, but mainly aimed at the caretaker for not ringing them to get the alarm disabled beforehand.

[boilerroombob]

my friend was an apprentice then a radio applications engineer at the marconi site Chelmsford and occasionally on overtime at weekends ran a pirate medium wave / am station from its site using the company long wires zeps and inverted L ....along with there fantastic earth the gpo asked to come to site looking for it and asking g questions about access ....security said " sorry government site sensitive defence work go away please"
Chelmsford police at the time in early 70s did not have the appetite to attend either on a weekend as to busy with there own stuff x


Great vid Lewis keep em coming

[secondbackwaterdivide]

The pirates do hide their equipment quite well - it's surprisingly easy to to miss an FM antenna on the top of a block, especially if you're not looking out for it. I once saw a rig with 'biological' defences - a pigeon had set up residence on top of it!

[stuartrobb]

I recall in the eighties the Friday night trudge up tower blocks in Stockwell with our trusty FB1 and 2 keys (I think FB4 came later). Invicta rigs were about 90w, using a 587BLY output and had a band 3 link receiver from a studio usually based around Clapham. We always knew the DTI would take the rig on a Sunday, so we started using standby rigs shortly before Chris found the legal loophole and we all shipped off to Crystal Palace. They were happy times…

[richiehoyt]

I've long been fascinated by the contrast between the evolution of pirate radio in the UK and in the Republic of Ireland (although I should say, I'm mostly talking about the Irish pirate radio scene during what is generally considered its heyday, between the late '70's and the late '80's. A tougher legal environment and the emergence of Rave culture meant that by the '90's the Irish scene more closely resembled what was happening across the water.) During their 'glory years' though, the Irish pirates operated in something of a legal grey area where they could be shut down, but penalties were trivial and they could even claim their transmitters back. Simultaneously, while the Dept. of Post & Telegraphs, and the State broadcaster RTÉ who had previously enjoyed a monopoly in broadcasting had the pirates on their sh|+ - list, the attitude of the various governments that came and went during these years towards the situation tended to vary between apathy and tacit benevolence; no 'witch finder generals' like Tony 'Sir Anthony Wedgewood - Benn' Benn here! As such, they could operate right out in the open -- high street offices and studios; addresses (real addresses, no PO boxes!) in the phone book, great big f%&k - off aerials, 'roadcasters' plastered with their logos; 'gala' days at shopping centres, complete with the usual hoop - la and free tat; household name advertisers - and even, on 1 or 2 occasions, airing party political broadcasts!
While the UK tower block pirates had transmitters that operated in the watts range, rather effectively too it appeared to me when I lived in London in the '90's, their Irish counterparts were thirsty entities with power requirements in the kilowatts. 5 or 10 kilowatts was absolutely routine; Caroline alumnus, the late, storied, Chris 'Spangles Muldoon' Carey's Dublin station, Radio Nova, ran 50, 000 watts. Foreshadowing Atlantic 252, he even had plans to go on Long Wave, broadcasting to the UK market! As was usual in the '80's, the Irish operators were typically on AM, though often with a second FM channel. Out Nova~ing Nova - on FM! - 'border blaster' Kiss was pushing reputedly 1, 000, 000 watts uphill into Belfast around 100 miles away and out ~ shouting the BBC local. Being purveyor of dance tunes to the city on the Lagan was only _half_ the story, though - the station's main purpose was reaching out to our extra~terrestrial visitors; no, really! but that didn't stop it from making some nice 'fat stacks' for the owners. And doing its bit (ahem) for inter~governmental Irish - British relationships in those troubled times... Again though, that was in the '90's, so a little outside the period I'm highlighting.
As was clearly illustrated by your series on Radio Aquarius, there has always been an involvement by what I might lazily describe as the "love'n'peace'' type in British 'free radio' from its earliest days, but I'd hazard that even moreso than rigs and mixers and decks, those early pioneers were in fact most closely related to the "98•2FM Wiv a Rush!!"× types through drugs [citation needed 🤞🙄] Music policies typically favoured by the high - rise pirate, as those reading will of course know, tended to feature genres like Dub, Jungle, Ragga, the constantly fracturing styles broadly known as 'Rave', Soul and what would later be commodified as 'Urban'. Now for me, you say 'Urban', I'm thinking Punk. 'Hardcore'? Again, Punk. So I'm not going to pretend to be able to speak knowledgeably on the playlists of the British inner city pirates; I suppose for me they might be best characterized by paraphrasing the old joke from the movie The Blues Brothers: "Oh, We play _both_ sorts of music here -- Garage _and_ Techno!"
Music on the Irish pirates would go in this direction, too, eventually, but by then they were few and far between, and deep underground. During the good years a not inconsiderable number of the Irish pirates tried to fulfill a community radio role -- lost dog notices, céilí band requests for '80 years _young'_ grannies, and all that; but for the more commercially minded, music was, on 90%+ of stations, Rock & Pop (with an accent on the Top 40) with a smattering of stations favouring Country 'n' Western (Blues Brothers again, HaHa!) or ''Country 'n' Irish". Undeniably, a 'paler' music policy than 'Over the Water', for those who like to keep track of such things, but in fairness, this only reflected the demographics of the country at the time. Rather like the seaborne British scene in the '60's, it was still a damn sight more variety than was heard on the country's legal airwaves in those days, with the honourable exception of ex~pirate Dave Fanning, a sort of Irish John Peel.
Probably the most notable difference it appeared to me between the scenes in the two countries was the apparent lack of 'argy - bargy' on the Irish scene, in spite of the fact that, at least amongst the 'premier division' of players there, there was some serious money being made; which it isn't to say it was all peace'n'love either. Robbie Robinson, aka Robin Dale, another past pupil of the Caroline school had his mast cut down (or blown up, depending who's telling the story) in an attempt to thwart his entry into the lucrative and supposedly laid back Irish radio scene. And, very likely, for the sin of being too obnoxiously 'British' for some sensibilities! However most events of this kind turned out to be the work of the particularly loathsome 'Captain' Eamon Cook, (who had much to lose from Dale's arrival), a man rejected as too scummy for them by the IRA, and whose own station, Radio Dublin, generally seen as precursor of the 'Superpirates' was trashed by the staff in his absence when they discovered some of his child pornography collection in a drawer. The late, and, as such, un~libel~able, Cook (who, in any case, seemed almost to revel in the rumours) maintained an UNDERGROUND shipping container near his transmitters in the Dublin Mountains, is known to have gotten more than one underage girl pregnant and before his death would 'neither confirm nor deny' being responsible for the murder of a missing schoolboy. Notwithstanding the odious Cook, though, most of the unpleasantness between the Irish stations was characterized by 'handbags at dawn' stuff, like the Cork station who made it clear to their DJ's that fraternisation with DJ's from rival stations would be seen as a sacking offence! Stations of this kind that had grown a bit fat on their own success had a tendency to develop sensibilities a little above their, er, _'station', _ and while generally welcoming the common or garden fan calling round for window stickers and 'shouts - out', they could be a bit sniffy, indeed _snarl~y_ ("Come around here again and I'll put the dogs on you!") towards Anoraks - but that said, one could only imagine the reaction on the other side of the ditch to some wooly - jumpered beardy - weirdie or speccy school kid rocking up to some fortress of a tower block in Hackney looking to see 'The Rig'! 😝
Ironically, given the value and relative vulnerability of their multi - kW RCA transmitters and so on, the Irish had far less to fear from each other (Cooke notwithstanding!) than they did from RTÉ and the 'Posts & Telegraphs' - particularly jamming; but this was rarely sanctioned at the governmental level, tending more to be unofficial action given a nod and a wink by management angered at the loss of advertising in RTÉ’s case, while perhaps being more ideological, or at least political in the case of the P&T where the trade unions had a lot of clout. The unions had been 'down on' the pirates from more or less their earliest days, when, for example, journalists from the community minded CCLR (Cork City Local Radio) would be conspicuously blanked by their newspaper counterparts. It was the aggressively Libertarian Chris Carey who really brought things to a head though with his management philosophy that union membership was incompatible with employment at Nova (NB, no relation to Dublin's current station of that name). Indeed, while Carey shrugged off raids with relative ease and indeed turned them to his advantage, his war with the unions set in motion events which would see the eventual messy winding down of his Nova empire and his quitting Dublin before the long awaited legalization of independent, commercial radio in Ireland and a new, some would say 'purer', environment for pirate radio there. In the meantime I suspect the tower block operations in the UK might well have taken the attitude to the concept of trade union difficulties "Ha!! I *WISH!!"*
Which is probably as good a place as any to wind up this (unwitting) dissertation. To finish, let me say that the late, great, British Anorak Leon Tippler made an excellent 4 part audio documentary on the Irish scene, "The Irish Pirates", which is a great listen for anyone with an interest in the subject (indeed I've probably drawn from it unconsciously here!) which, with a slight bit of effort, can probably still be found online.
×I've made up the numbers, having long forgotten the real ones!

[gavinbryant]

talking of dummy rigs we covered one in human shit and it still got taken it was just an old box with a brick and a working fan. the thieves left us alone for a while after that.

[garydrewworldwide]

We had to drop a mod lead from the roof down the side of the block into the studio to take the output from the mixer to the transmitter

[mysteryYK]

sick to see a video related to drum and bass history. dope!!!

[wisteela]

I like how you've had to put a disclaimer at the beginning. Some people eh? As informative and interesting as ever. 👍

[erikvermeulen]

In a few years from now all the national radios will be using DAB, so the 88 to 108MHz band will be the pirates playground...

[dktr]

I have a GP on my block, 40 meters of CNT400 in ventilation shaft, sometimes I push 150W there and you can hear it for < 30 km :)

[StuartClary]

There was a TV programme years ago (might have been 'Life of Grime') that featured a tower block with overflowing toilets. What had happened was that some pirate radio operator had mounted their aerial on a scaffolding pole and placed it into the top of the soilstack of the tower block. The pole had fallen down the pipe to the bottom where it blocked the drain and caused all the toilet waste in the block to back up out of the toilets in the lower flats. Grim!

[elesjuan]

Man I can't get enough of your pirate radio station stories and coverage. Do wish you had and could show more images of actual pirate stations the authorities or pirates themselves would've taken in the videos. Either way, pirate radio has always been super interesting to me.

[jack]

It s a good video I love your video so much you put good effort into your video Ringway Manchester I compliment you are love watching your videos not sit there for hours watching them