Pescadores

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Pescadores, Spanish and Portuguese for "fishermen" (also perscatori in Italian), is a term used to refer to voices on the pirate bands speaking non-English languages, often Spanish or Spanish-sounding. The original assumption was that these were fishermen from Mexico, the Caribbean, and points south, on boats in the Gulf of Mexico, talking to each other or to bases on land, but this has never been proven. Normally these stations are a random annoyance to pirates and pirate DXers, but occasionally they seem to be making an effort to interfere with pirate broadcasts. Vice versa, pirate stations will sometimes attempt to interfere with the pescadores' conversations.

For current pescadores/peskys/peskies/fishing fleets/fishery radio/UNID two-way QSOs in Spanish, Portuguese and other languages/etc logs see the "Peskies" forum on HF Underground here:

https://www.hfunderground.com/board/index.php/board,34.0.html

Not all pescadores appear to be marine radio stations operating outside the ITU standardized marine HF bands. Some of them have been confirmed to be land-based transmissions, particularly Spanish speaking stations centered around 6900 kHz.

Several English speaking fishing fleets have been logged in the 6-7 MHz region as well, especially those with New England or Boston accents, which have been logged on 6095 kHz, 6212 kHz, 6215 kHz, 6953 kHz, 6985 kHz, 6993 kHz and other frequencies, all in USB mode.

One of the most common frequencies to hear "peskies" is 6925 kHz LSB, followed by 6900 kHz USB/LSB and many others. Peskies are known to use "cute" or "easy to remember" frequencies such as 6969.6 kHz, 6666 kHz, 6666.6 kHz, 6777.7 kHz, 6789 kHz, 6888 kHz, 15151.5 kHz, etc. Peskies don't follow rules relating to use of USB vs. LSB or frequency steps. As a result, it is not uncommon to hear peskies interfering with each other during good propagation. In the Eastern Hemisphere, peskies are Asian fishermen (and possibly also land based transmissions) found all over the 3-30 MHz range. There is some overlap between legal HF marine communications and pescadores, as fishing fleet communications are found in the 6200 kHz to 6525 kHz 6 MHz marine band as well as the higher frequencies (and lower frequencies!) above and below the MF/HF maritime bands.

Pescadores will also use LSB and AM modes in the legal marine bands and/or operate on non-standard frequencies (using offsets, operating between channels, using 5 kHz steps instead of 3 kHz steps like freeband CB, etc).

HF Underground contributors have logged pescadore traffic on various frequencies throughout the HF spectrum.

HF freebanders, sometimes known as "EC" or "Echo Charlie" operators (mainly in Europe) tend to operate on/near the following frequencies:



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