Are pirated FM radio stations relevant today?

When I was still in school, class at 7, I got a cheap Chinese FM radio. It had a display and only 2 buttons, fast forward to the station and reset to the initial frequency of 88 MHz. I was happy, walked and constantly listened to music from the radio. MP3 players then only began to appear and were very expensive. Once, on a cool autumn evening, before going to bed, flipping through radio stations in the hope of falling asleep, I stumbled upon some, as it seemed to me, telephone conversation. I began to listen, delve into, and after a few hours of listening I realized that this was not a telephone conversation at all.

As it turned out, a young guy, a little older than me, assembled an FM radio transmitter at home, put the antenna on the roof, handed the cable to his apartment and began to broadcast his radio at night. The air of his radio station was very different from, familiar to us, the air of commercial radio stations. He connected his home phone to the line and anyone could call on the air and talk on some interesting topic. For 1 call, a limit of 3 minutes was given, and non-annoying music played in the background. This whole topic quickly interested me, and as the Internet and PCs began to spread actively, I moved to study this issue through PTN via Dial-UP. As it turned out at that time in our city was broadcasting about 20 such non-profit, free, pirate radio stations. Of course, I wanted to get hold of my own. This was the beginning of my study of radio electronics,

After a couple of years of skipping school and studying the principles of building radio transmitters, a new non-profit radio station “RadioActivitY 96.9 FM” was born in my hands. At the same time, dedicated Internet lines began to develop, along twisted pair cables. Having hardly persuaded my parents, I became the proud owner of a dedicated Internet at a speed of 1 megabit per second. This gave me the opportunity to quickly download and broadcast music on my barrel organ. Having connected my home phone, in the evenings I began to broadcast live, receive phone calls and put music to order. Time passed, knowledge in radio electronics was replenished, the power of the radio transmitter increased, and with it the number of radio listeners increased. With neighboring radio stations, we began to arrange radio bridges, organize radio meetings and just have fun. By the way, a large number of listeners gathered at radio meetings, once even more than 100 people came. The government bodies didn’t particularly touch us, for 5 years of broadcasting, 1 time only a guy called the home telephone and asked me not to turn on the radio transmitter during the G8 summit. The coverage area of ​​the transmitter at that time was about 40% of Peter, with a power of about 50-70 watts. There were, of course, interruptions in broadcasting, because you also had to study. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations. The government bodies didn’t particularly touch us, for 5 years of broadcasting, 1 time only a guy called the home telephone and asked me not to turn on the radio transmitter during the G8 summit. The coverage area of ​​the transmitter at that time was about 40% of Peter, with a power of about 50-70 watts. There were, of course, interruptions in broadcasting, because you also had to study. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations. The government bodies didn’t particularly touch us, for 5 years of broadcasting, 1 time only a guy called the home telephone and asked me not to turn on the radio transmitter during the G8 summit. The coverage area of ​​the transmitter at that time was about 40% of Peter, with a power of about 50-70 watts. There were, of course, interruptions in broadcasting, because you also had to study. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations. for 5 years of broadcasting, 1 time a guy just called on a home telephone and asked not to turn on the radio transmitter during the G8 summit. The coverage area of ​​the transmitter at that time was about 40% of Peter, with a power of about 50-70 watts. There were, of course, interruptions in broadcasting, because you also had to study. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations. for 5 years of broadcasting, 1 time a guy just called on a home telephone and asked not to turn on the radio transmitter during the G8 summit. The coverage area of ​​the transmitter at that time was about 40% of Peter, with a power of about 50-70 watts. There were, of course, interruptions in broadcasting, because you also had to study. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations. The mountain of the burned-down Soviet transistors KT 904, KT 907, KT 920-922 and others, I still have as a memory. At some point, the broadcast turned from night to round-the-clock, and foreign Internet radio stations were broadcast. Stereo and RDS appeared. The sound quality was not much behind commercial stations.

After a while, the Internet and social networks began to pick up radio listeners, and there were less and less calls to the air. And at one point everyone just disappeared. Nobody really wanted to broadcast into the void and this was probably the very point, the point of no return. It seemed to be the end of the pirate FM broadcast era. I watched how from a range of 88-108 fm, one by one turned off the radio transmitters of free, not saturated with commercial radio stations. Some FM radio stations moved to the Internet, some broadcast by inertia for several more years. In the end, this topic was buried.

Nowadays, the majority of people listening to FM radio stations are, of course, motorists traveling to work or somewhere else. Hoping to somehow find my listeners, I moved my equipment to the cottage, since the gardening mass is large. Tried to somehow interest gardeners gardeners relevant music. At some point in the summer holidays, I even gathered a small handful of local radio listeners, drunks, but all this was not right. I had to forget about radio piracy. The topic of radio communications has always been interesting to me, and even now, after 10 years, listening to negotiations between air traffic controllers, police and other interesting departments, in my free time, I often have a desire to revive all this. And then I ask myself a question, is this possible?

(c) Denis. 30 years old. St. Petersburg.