Eén prima website over etherpiraten / an excellent website about radio pirates

Etherpiraten Klompenboer info en impressie site

It is in mostly in Dutch but some of the info here is in English (mostly instruction manuals for old FM transmitters that get sold off cheaply second hand when stations close down) and circuit diagrams use internationally recognised symbols 😉

Many of the circuit diagrams also have some English info

there is also a really good article about soundprocessing (I might translate it at some point) as well as settings for various Behringer processors (there is one of those at ICR-FM). NL stations all put a lot of effort into this, yet often manage not to overdo the compression, I’ve heard this on stations as diverse as pirates, Radio Maria and the nationwide broadcasters at Hilversum….

Al deze schema

here are some pictures of transmitters the “jongens” bult (I suspect a few of them are some years oldler than me, the Dutch refer to any chap who is a pirate broadcaster as “een jongen” (a young lad) even if they are 60/70+ : this might be because licensed radio operators are traditionally known as “OM” (old man) even if they are 19).

The designs are from the 1970s to late 1980s (I recognise one of the transistor based designs, it was what me and my friend ended up cutting across the buses radios with, I vaguely remember the construction plan being in “some strange language that was neither English nor German, but halfway between the two”

Even in the 1980s valves were still commonly used in the final stages (eindtrap) of FM transmitters, especially in coastal areas of NL where VHF ships radios that used valves were being replaced with more reliable transistor based equipment. Some of the designs combine a PLL IC with valves (Philips still made and sold components in NL back then and young people there were actively encouraged by them to build electronic devices as a hobby). Provided the pirates didn’t take the piss (like using 20 kW) and/or send interference to aircraft and ships it seemed that until recently the PTT / RCD / Agentschap Telecom left them alone, but the licensed broadcasters are kicking up more of a fuss these days. (though having listened to a fair bit of radio from Hilversum this week I fully understand why the pirates are still popular….)

Een oude bekende uut Grunn