Messages

1

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: UNID 6920 LSB/AM was LSB 0145 UTC 21 Jun 2025

« on: June 21, 2025, 0236 UTC »

UNID 6920 LSB/AM 0230 UTC June 1 2025
"I've got the power"  --- remix? hip hop. I dig it.
SINPO
55454

Peaking at 30 dB above the noise floor here in
Milwaukee Wisconsin USA
EN62ax
chloe@psychwardmedia.com if the broadcaster sees this - i'd love a digi qso

2

For Sale / Wanted / Barter / Re: Where to buy used ham transceivers?

« on: June 17, 2025, 1533 UTC »

I'm going to ask the question that for some reason nobody has asked you yet: What do you want to use it for?

if you want to be mobile with it - you need to purchase something that fits your level of mobility. Should it have a built in battery? Do you want to power it off your car or a car battery?
What frequencies? Are you doing microwave? SHF? Satcomms? VHF/UHF sideband?
Are you doing weak signal work?
How is your area for noise and strong signals? Are there nearby radio towers? Are you in the city?
What kind of antenna connectors do you want and how many?
Do you intent to transmit or just receive?
Are you DX ing?
Should your radio have built in digital decoding?
Do you want an SDR?
Do you care how your radio works? (superheterodyne, regenerative, crystal based, synthesized, whatever)
What do you intend your primary operating modes to be? Do you know?

This and so many more things will inform your decision. So here's a little about how i decide what radios I want:

My radio should always have several antenna inputs of different kinds if possible - I like to build antennas.
My radio should usually be pretty sensitive - I like hunting for weak signals
If possible it should handle strong signals and noise well, I'm near lots of radio towers and I'm in a rather rf noisy city --- BUT I'm also good at building filters/preselectors so I can deal with it if that's not a possibility.
I like flexibility with modes because I'm into Utility DX - so my radio needs to be able to do most or all modes in all bands, not just the standard ones either. This has led me to get an airspy hf discovery +. I like it a lot - but it gets a bit too sensitive sometimes and I need to pop in a filter.
I also have other radios - you should probably just accept that you're going to have several radios at some point in your life. We all do, each is good at it's own thing. Anyway - I'm sure I added to the confusion but hopefully it helps you ask the right questions. Also - if you're like me I highly recommend the airspy hf+ discovery. It's a in a whole other league, no sport even, from what an rtl-sdr is, or even a lot of commercial radios.

3

Software / ft8 log analysis software for multipsk

« on: April 23, 2025, 1033 UTC »

i wrote a software to analyze multipsk ft8 logs. Anything from basic analysis and statistics to geocoding and placing all your unique contacts on google earth (please give your project a unique name in for that with the appropriate flag - they will ban your ip if you don't, it's a whole terms of use thing) to complex mathematical models and even self trained machine learning to search for patterns. Oh yes, I'm very awesome. Link here. https://github.com/tech53/ft8loganalyzer/archive/refs/heads/main.zip the scripts are obviously linux only, so if you're on windows you'll have to look at the file with a .1 extension in a text editor for the manual and the dependencies script with a text editor to find your dependencies.

4

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Radio Marlene 6935 USB 0009 UTC 15 Mar 2025

« on: March 15, 2025, 0022 UTC »

SIO 433

Airspy HF + Discovery
Milwaukee WI EN62ax
End fed half wave resonant right around this frequency pointing south

"Manic Monday"

5

Equipment / Re: vertical or horizontal for sw pirate radio?

« on: March 05, 2025, 1419 UTC »

so how about a sloping end fed halfwave? I was bouncing the idea off of ai earlier - time for some human ideas. The idea is i have a 20-30 ft mast on a tripod. It doesn't quite make it above the rooftops here  (most are 2 story houses of a certain design here in milwaukee) but it gets close to rooftop height, and it gets higher above the ground. The thing that worries me is that I'm reading that this may be more susceptible to noise. There are a lot of low hanging electrical and communications lines all over milwaukee. Apparently this city doesn't like the idea of buried cables. Where I grew up everything was buried unless it needed to be above ground...probably due to all the tornadoes. Nehoo...thoughts? I was thinking i could do that and double down by putting a vhf vertical and uhf vertical on top of it spaced out by another 5 or 10 ft obviously. Keep in mind that for now this is receive only.

6

Equipment / Re: vertical or horizontal for sw pirate radio?

« on: March 03, 2025, 2330 UTC »

Well what I'm using now is a horizontal loop at around 4 or 5 ft high, it's the top bar to my chainlink fence, and I've sanded contact points and jumpered the connection between contact points on each joined bar. So basically  the top bar of a chain link fence and it's resonant around 5 and a half mhz. I can't get a poloe up that high on four locations, I live with my fiancee in the in laws basement, I'm disabled and fiancee is recovering from cancer. Anyway basically I'm fighting pretty hard just for the one 20 ft pole on a 5 ft tripod.i can stick pretty much what I want on it. I DO have the dipole portion of a buddipole antenna, sans "versatee" but that could easily get soldered to a feedline and supports to become a vertical dipole. Otherwise maybe a vertical loop? I'm surrounded by low hanging power lines, it sucks, but it's my reality.

7

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: UNID 6955 USB 0058 UTC 3 MAR 2025

« on: March 03, 2025, 0107 UTC »

UNID 6955 USB 0103 UTC 3 March 2025

6955 USB beatles? Some sort of british invasion era
25353 SINPO
Milwaukee, WI USA EN62ax
Airspy HF + Discovery
Horizontal loop (the fencetenna)

8

Equipment / good sdr to catch most of the shortwave pirate spectrum?

« on: March 02, 2025, 0244 UTC »

Hey just curious if anyone has suggestions. I have the airspy hf + discovery but don't even get a mhz. How is the SDRPlay? I see it gets 10mhz, but i worry it would let too much in...plus the bit depth is significantly lower. Maybe just another airspy? I dunno. I often find myself wanting to tune 2 different portions of the spectrum.

9

Shortwave Broadcast / UNID 9955 AM? 2232 UTC 2 March 2025

« on: March 02, 2025, 0237 UTC »

Non english music station.

Arabic? Farsi? These american ears can't tell, would love to know.

SINPO 35433
EN62ax Milwaukee WI
Airspy HF+ Discovery
Horizontal loop

10

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: RRI 6948 was 6940 USB 0016 UTC 1 Mar 2025

« on: March 01, 2025, 2223 UTC »

0031 on Brookfield WI sdr with fair S9 to S9+10 music, house and dance music,

Yo! I'm in milwaukee! What's up? EN62ax maidenhead grid. There should be a pirate radio listeners club in wisconsin.

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North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Real Radio International 6948 was 6940 USB 0016 UTC 1 Mar 2025

« on: March 01, 2025, 2218 UTC »

receiving you in milwaukee wisconsin, Strong S3 very little QRM. listening to recorded IQ file, wasn't able to listen last night so i recorded the iq.
Looks like near the beginning y'all have a real strong signal, love the ultra wideband USB and the proud boys comedy was on point. The proud boys can burn.

EN62ax grid square
Milwaukee WI
airspy hf+ discovery
horizontal loop
SINPO 35555

very good program. Much to my liking.

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Part 15 AM and FM Station Operation / Re: AI does Part 15 broadcasting.

« on: March 01, 2025, 0047 UTC »

gonna be real honest - this seems to go in the face of everything that counterculture is, and from what this very new person can tell, pirate radio is very counterculture, and part 15 seems to have spawned from it...am i getting this right? Correct me where I'm wrong. Just saying though ai can never make music like a human, even if it were sentient human intelligence equivalent ai, it's brain still works different, it's made of transistors and code and works on neural networks and large language models. Also that stuff puts real artists out of work. I too am tempted by the easy image access of ai, and i think there is a good way to do it but we haven't gotten there yet.

13

Equipment / vertical or horizontal for sw pirate radio?

« on: March 01, 2025, 0036 UTC »

Since most of/all of what i've heard is in marine bands...marine is typically vertical, but shortwave is horizontal...so im confuzzled.

14

General Radio Discussion / polarization question

« on: March 01, 2025, 0018 UTC »

what polarization do most shortwave pirates use? I know most hams use horizontal, but most marine stations which is what bands most pirates are in, use vertical, so im kinda wondering, I'm making a few antennas and I'm kinda thinking of making one tuned specifically for one of the pirate bands.

15

General Radio Discussion / newbie question on etiquette

« on: March 01, 2025, 0014 UTC »

are there any etiquette things I should know or do's or don'ts (aside from snitches get stitches)? Is it generally considered okay to record/post recordings/trade w friends in physical format? I was kinda thinking of starting a cd/cassette pirate radio recording trade thing on reddit. Thoughts? Other etiquette things to know? Any of our radio providers want to give their opinions?