Do you have any funny stories???

[Xerox]

Not very technical but still anorak. Years ago I worked on one of the black stations in Birmingham. To not embarrice them I won't say the name but it's still the most popular one. Anyway when it started 15 years ago it was just weekends. And one friday i helped install the transmitter. I was surprised to see that the 100 watt (apparently) TX didn't have a heatsink. It had a big metal frying pan bolted to the top. Funny enough though the signal was strong as f**k. But to save money they had used granny's favourite pan. Anyway next day there was some technical difficulties. Popping and crackling sounds. When we went up to the roof someone had pissed in pot. And from the 100watt amp with no fan the piss was bubbling over the sides of the pot into the transmitter. Obviously it had short circuited. But the lift room stank of boiling beer smelling urine... I never did another show on the station after that.... True story....

[toshiba1]

I was on a chimney stack lashing an Ariel in a new location we just moved too, my mate calls me in from the window where i was feeding the coax. I climbed down and through to be greeted by two plain clothed officers. It was virtually pitch black outside and it obviously seemed odd to them, so they asked me what i was doing. I thought fast and mentioned i was fitting an Ariel to pick up Kiss FM.

It did not end there and while they excepted that as a reasonable answer, they had to quarantine for forensics as we found out that it was part of serious investigation. I asked for how long, as I made the case that me and the missus were moving in that very evening and we had nowhere to go? This was laughable as the room which was in a shitty old slum landlords, with water seeping though the ceiling where we were, it was pretty rough looking. One of the CIDs said not too worry we can put you up in a hotel for the inconvenience as it will be no more than a night and a day. So that is what happened we got a 3 course meal a bottle of champas and b&b on the plod. It turns out there was a muuurderrr, but not there, however the forensics taken tied the culprits by association from DNA that had been gathered.

As mentioned this place, became the studio, many rooms mainly residents of refugees and very poor people. One evening one of the Djs on his first stint, went into the wrong room, only to be witness to some guy banging his wife. They took it well though. There was also a secret nightclub at the back of the building, which we did a couple of do's in but not on the same nights as a certain Michael Barrymore, that frequented. Apparently... I'll say no more.

[Albert H]

On one occasion I didn't let the lack of a heatsink prevent a station getting on the air.... We bolted the rig to the underside of a cold water tank at the top of a pretty high block in West London, using plenty of self-tapping screws to ensure firm contact and good heat transfer....

The rig lasted for about five weekends until Gotts & Co found it. They unscrewed it from the water tank.......

....and flooded the top two floors (at least) of the block!

[sinus trouble]

I once hacked the band 1 link of a BIG London Pirate station!

This was never my intention, I was just experimenting with my own Band 1!

I know its in the past! But i am truely sorry for ruining your weekend Broadcast!

[yellowbeard]

I was on a station back in 1981ish, it was in a hotel in Dublin city centre. There was a bin strike on at the time and the back of the hotel had bin bags stacked up about 10 feet high out back. We had the engineer in putting in a new mod transformer, after that me and him went out the back to smoke a spliff of gold seal black I had and wanted to show off, the first blast of it was like a smack in the head with a hammer. He was sat there stoned when a rat ran out of the rubbish, up the outside of his jeans, sniffed his bollocks, jumped off and ran back off into the bin bags. He did one of those silent screams, either it didn't come out or it was beyond human hearing. He never smoked dope with me again.

[Albert H]

I once hacked the band 1 link of a BIG London Pirate station!

This was never my intention, I was just experimenting with my own Band 1!

I know its in the past! But i am truly sorry for ruining your weekend Broadcast!

I found that I had a station just a few hundred metres from my home, and I really didn't like their particular brand of violent, nasty, misogynist (c)rap that the played at the time. It was the matter of a few moments with a scanner to discover their link frequency (Band 1, and not particularly strong, suggesting that their studio or their mid-point was some distance away)..... A quick rummage around in the junk pile found a Band 1 rig that would do a couple of Watts... and a few minutes of tweaking got it bang on their link frequency. I connected a stereo coder (they were in mono), and found my drives full of miscellaneous Jazz (guaranteed to annoy them), and a spare laptop to play them....

I loaded it into the longwire aerial I had running down my garden, and tweaked for some kind of reasonable match. It was very satisfying to hear their audio disappear, to be replaced with the white noise I was sending. A moment later, the jazz started....

It stayed on for three days. They obviously couldn't get back into their site to either turn the rig off or replace the link receiver, so I gave North London an additional stereo Jazz station over that Bank Holiday weekend!

On the Tuesday, they removed the rig. When it came back on a couple of hours later, playing their usual (c)rap, it was obviously some distance away, and they'd changed link frequency...... A few minutes, a bit of tweaking and a 10 Watt PA later, I replaced their output with BBC Radio 3! [Thanks Dan for the programme suggestion, by the way!]

I don't think they every re-started that particular station again. Perhaps they got the message that the kind of thing they were broadcasting wasn't wanted.....

[sinus trouble]

went out the back to smoke a spliff of gold seal black I had and wanted to show off, the first blast of it was like a smack in the head with a hammer.

Haha! That brings back some mellow moments!

That stuff was like "Play Doh" The aroma was so nice! Id happily plug my nostrils with it!

[sinus trouble]

I found that I had a station just a few hundred metres from my home, and I really didn't like their particular brand of violent, nasty, misogynist (c)rap that the played at the time. It was the matter of a few moments with a scanner to discover their link frequency (Band 1, and not particularly strong, suggesting that their studio or their mid-point was some distance away)..... A quick rummage around in the junk pile found a Band 1 rig that would do a couple of Watts... and a few minutes of tweaking got it bang on their link frequency. I connected a stereo coder (they were in mono), and found my drives full of miscellaneous Jazz (guaranteed to annoy them), and a spare laptop to play them....

I loaded it into the longwire aerial I had running down my garden, and tweaked for some kind of reasonable match. It was very satisfying to hear their audio disappear, to be replaced with the white noise I was sending. A moment later, the jazz started....

It stayed on for three days. They obviously couldn't get back into their site to either turn the rig off or replace the link receiver, so I gave North London an additional stereo Jazz station over that Bank Holiday weekend!

On the Tuesday, they removed the rig. When it came back on a couple of hours later, playing their usual (c)rap, it was obviously some distance away, and they'd changed link frequency...... A few minutes, a bit of tweaking and a 10 Watt PA later, I replaced their output with BBC Radio 3! [Thanks Dan for the programme suggestion, by the way!]

I don't think they every re-started that particular station again. Perhaps they got the message that the kind of thing they were broadcasting wasn't wanted.....

You are a bad man Mr Albert!

I was only using 5watt and it was a VFO! So i probably took over half the Pirates in London at some point!

I only noticed a problem when a mate of mine who worked with the station was furiously ringing my phone!

He knew i was a possible suspect in this crime!