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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!harpo!eagle!karn
From: karn@eagle.UUCP (Phil Karn)
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Subject: AM Pirates
Message-ID: <1112@eagle.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Oct-83 17:03:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: eagle.1112
Posted: Mon Oct 10 17:03:57 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Oct-83 00:27:22 EDT
Lines: 38

For those of you looking for something completely different, try this:

Last night, while tuning the range 1.6-1.8 mhz looking for cordless
telephones, I came across a guy calling himself "KPRC, Pirate Joe" on
1.616 mhz.  This guy claimed to be running THREE simultaneous
transmitters from somewhere in New York on AM, shortwave (6.280 mhz) and
FM stereo (91.5). I was able to hear the first two but not the FM
signal.

This guy was quite talented.  His signon was "Who's afraid of the Big
Bad Wolf?" He played music, naturally enough, but the most entertaining
part of his show was the telephone call-in.  He gave a New York number
but suffix of the number was 99xx, which I suspect was a port of an
internal telephone company conference bridge (to avoid tracing, of
course.)  His first caller was from a fellow pirate ("WDX") who said he
would resume operations around Thanksgiving.  Another caller was a SWLer
who read off a long list of other pirate operations that she had heard. 
They then got into "hey, did you hear that so-and-so got caught by the
FCC a while ago and got fined $2000?  How much do you think you'd get
fined if you got caught?" "By the way, how much power are you running?" 
"Now you know the ground rules, there's certain things we can't talk
about over the air..." etc, etc.  Naturally, a pirate radio station
wouldn't be a pirate radio station without political harangues, so he
then went on awhile about Ronnie and Central America. Then he played a
pretty good parody of "Electric Avenue" called "Stupid Avenue", by
Pirate "N" and the Plate Tuners.

This went on for quite a while, with phone calls from places like
Chicago and London, Ontario, until at 2:30AM I decided I needed some
sleep.  He gave a PO box in Exeter, NH to which listeners could write
for QSL cards, etc.  I have about an hour or so of him on tape.

I think I'll have to drop him a line.  It'd be a shame for this guy to
get thrown off the air, he was so much more entertaining than the usual
soul-saver drivel on the AM stations!

Happy listening,
Phil