Hello. Just wanted to advertise our pirate station Radio Drake. We broadcast on FM on 107.9 for the Plymouth area and all around the world on the internet. Just go to www.radiodrake.weebly.com and click on the link.

"Playing the greatest hits of all time! Radio Drake plays a Classic Hits format, playing hits from the 70s,80s,90s and a few from the 2000s!"

You need to move to Essex and do that shizzle. I would love to hear that.

Not being funny, that's what is needed, more variety. Different kinds of music.
Definitely a good move.

Exactly!!!

Sounds like it's a pirate version of Heart FM.

Only with far better sound quality and better presentation skills.
No, fair play to them.

OK, I've had a listen - I just don't understand. Fair play for pirate and all that, but why play what's already wasting pretty much the entire allocated bandwidth, regardless of whether the presenting is any better? This isn't a dig as such, I'm genuinely curious.

I can't help but think of how much bandwidth could be saved if Taylor Swift, Modjo and One Direction were played on just one frequency at about 10 MW ERP, instead of doing it over 20 MHz of spectrum.

It's trying to do the job of a community station though. If you want to appeal to the locals of Plymouth, I guess that means going down the familiar route music-wise most of the time. The rest of the time they need specialist shows in the evening, local music thrown into the regular playlist and more chat in-between tracks - basic community station stuff.

Thanks for all the positive stuff people. It makes a nice change to get the thumbs up. The Digitalspy forum has been very negative!

Radio Drake is still going on 107.9FM and online in Plymouth . We're very careful when transmitting however, we've already had an email from OFCOM asking us who we are lol.

If anyone from Plymouth can let us know how far we are transmitting it would help us a lot. We think we can get quite far especially when we are line of sight.

WEBB-TECH wrote:"Playing the greatest hits of all time! Radio Drake plays a Classic Hits format, playing hits from the 70s,80s,90s and a few from the 2000s!"

You need to move to Essex and do that shizzle. I would love to hear that.

Thanks for the thumbs up. We will do our best to keep broadcasting. We also want to broadcast on DAB now that it is technically feasible and starting to get cheaper. Keep listening!

teckniqs wrote:Sounds like it's a pirate version of Heart FM.

In a way we are but you won't hear "Happy" by Farell Williams 4 billion times a day!

radiodrake wrote:In a way we are but you won't hear "Happy" by Farell Williams 4 billion times a day!

Thank god for that! Sounds like an "old school" ILR type format? Used to be brilliant in the 80s for example. I think there's a gap in the market for that kind of format now that the likes of Heart have replaced it with brainless, repetitive tosh (I was listening to Heart this afternoon - don't ask - and even the phone calls were voice tracked).

radiodrake wrote:Thanks for all the positive stuff people. It makes a nice change to get the thumbs up. The Digitalspy forum has been very negative!

yeah, have seen that for myself. that forum has a number of problem posters on there. in the case of your station however, seems to be only one particular poster who has an issue, however he has an extreme vendetta against your station for some reason i can't figure out. he also accuses anyone who dares to give the station any praise of having something to do with it, mind you there are a few posters on there who like accusing one of having something to do with a station if one dares to promote it or say they like it. i wouldn't worry about it, they aren't worth bothering about

Thanks dancemusicdj yeah there's always someone who loves dishing negativity on the forums. Please keep listening as we change our playlist often

radiodrake wrote:

teckniqs wrote:Sounds like it's a pirate version of Heart FM.

In a way we are but you won't hear "Happy" by Farell Williams 4 billion times a day!

Oh don't, I remember the now defunct station in this area Fox FM, Their only record was Bill Withers - Lovely Day. Anyway, good luck guys. Nice to have a bit of variety.

Nice to see a station on in Plymouth, been a while since the last which if I am not mistaken was Snappin. Email from OFCOM? That's a new one, be careful don't want them sniffing around, keep it no interference and clean output hopefully they won't bother you. How much of Plymouth have you successfully covered?

Yeah we remember Snapping. They were first called Angel FM and broadcast on 107.0 FM. I think the RAF tried to block their signal at times. We still have some of their tapes including an hilarious "shout" from a listener who wanted to take the mickey out of his mate who had just lost a testicle! I think they got raided and when they tried to get back on air their transmitter picked up the wrong signals and started broadcasting Radio Moscow!

Radio Drake covers roughly half of Plymouth. We keep power low and antenna height low to avoid OFCOM issues. Interference or harmonics are only evident up to about 10 metres away. Luckily our neighbours don't care lol.

We're fortunate that OFCOM have had their budget cut. I don't they come to Devon often anymore. We've been on air since May 2015.

Keep listening and we are happy to answer any questions providing it doesn't give away our location!!!!

I run 107.0 Plymouth long time a go I want some off the recordings please get back to me tec1. 1996 in plymoth

Hi Tec1. I will have a look at my cassette collection. Your station was brilliant. Your tunes were excellent. Snapping FM caused quite a stir back in the day. We were in our teens and we got a good signal in Roborough Plymouth. We used to drive around trying to find where the signal was coming from using a highly directional aerial. Were you in the Devonport area as the signal was very strong there.