Discussion on Russian Mediumwave Pirates

[Shortwave_Listener]

This is the most popular transmitter design used by these stations (I think this is it anyway).

The text on the top states " УКВ приставка", meaning "FM add-on", the thingie allowing to receive FM broadcast (OIRT FM those times) on AM-only device. It was quite useful and somewhat popular gadget, since at the moment FM broadcasting started there, many people already had AM receivers - that oldschool ones, all wood and metal, often combined with vinyl player (this type was named радиола)

Looks like I had the wrong schematic 

[minorukun]

well, these things were kind of capable of transmission - essentially they were demodulating FM and modulating it to AM. Put somewhat more beefy tube as "finals", string up something resembling an antenna and viola, AM transmitter.

[minorukun]

An ordinary citizen had to apply for a permit to buy a TV or radio

no, it is just scaretale. Soviets was not that bad. And seriously, why need a permit to access 100% government-owned media censored to the roots?

it took months

maybe for some devices, as production was often lacking. Btw because of said lack of production volumes there were written queues for the applicants to reserve wanted device, which may be confused for "permit".

up to a year's salary to buy one.

may be for the top-line devices, but in general no. Mostly the tube-era receivers werent cost more than 1-2 monthly salary, and many were significantly less than 1.

but the parts themselves were hard to source until late USSR, true. When the semiconductor industry finally succeded (it was long and painful struggle with the quality, some early transistors were around 90% defective), outdated tubes became easier to get. Nowadays the tubes as a final amplifiers are popular between makers because of their durability and forgiveness to design and operating flaws - it takes significant effort to kill the tube like ГУ-50 or ГУ-81. And there is a large aftermarket having metric tons of the soviet-made tubes with reasonable prices (except nixies btw).

[Pigmeat]

Those Sovtek and Svetlana tubes sold by the thousands to US hams after the end of the Cold War.

[minorukun]

for those wanting to witness technical wonders of 3MHz "QSO-ers", like carrier drifts or severe off-freq operation in the net, couple of good websdrs

http://troyka.tambov.gq:8902/ , dedicated for this purpose, Tambov, LO02
http://89.113.2.111:8901/ , marked as "juligan band" on 80m band choice, Tula, KO84, near Moscow.

mostly activity starts at the evenings, around 1700-1800z.