Radio Free America: 1973

Radio Free America broadcast for about 10 hours in 1973 from this converted WWII minesweeper

Radio Free America was a religious pirate station that was on the air for a day on September 19th, 1973 from a converted WWII minesweeper located about 12 miles off Cape May, New Jersey. The founder and operator was Carl McIntire whose WXUR in Media, PA was shut down by the FCC.

As described in this article the broadcasts lasted only about 10 hours due to technical difficulties, but there was time enough for a number of listeners along the U.S. east coast to hear the station on 1160 khz mediumwave. And although this item isn’t technically about shortwave, there were reports that McIntire intended to re-start his station on shortwave, but a review of the historical record doesn’t turn up any mention of that happening..

A longer article in 2014 (upated in 2019) describes the history of Radio Free America and McIntire’s battles with the FCC and notes that he was a pioneer of pirate radio as well as a controversial religious figure. Wikipedia on McIntire has some other interesting history, including “in the 1970s when McIntire organized a half dozen pro-Vietnam War "Victory Marches" in Washington, D.C. The march of October 3, 1970 was supposed to have featured South Vietnamese vice-president Nguyen Cao Ky, but the Nixon administration ensured that Ky would not be present.”

It’s unknown how many other recordings of Radio Free America exist in the surviving radio listening community in 2020. My recording was made, as I recall, on a Hammarlund HQ-180A tube receiver which I used for years as my main DXing receiver and which also had a reputation as a superb mediumwave receiver.

It’s difficult to make out all of the details clearly, but McIntire can be heard with an opening ID at approximately 1 minute 42 into this recording as he says: “Radio Free America, out in the North Atlantic…goes on the air. It’s now 12:24, September 19th, 1973….at 1160 on the dial….this is Carl McIntire….” There is an even clearer ID at about the 3 minute 30 second mark when he goes on to talk about “the right to free speech” and “free radio” and says “this is Carl McIntire speaking to you from the North Atlantic, Radio Free America just on the air [for] two minutes..”

There is even more great stuff later, at around the 30 minute mark, when McIntire notes that “NBC Cameramen” are due on the ship, and talks about the ship being anchored “just outside the 12 mile limit…we’re going to cruise off Atlantic City, on up to Asbury Park, Ocean Grove in that area, and we will cruise back down along the Delaware coast, and the eastern shore, so we can get a big strong signal if it’s necessary into the Washington, DC area. If the FCC is listening I say to these men in that commission, gentlemen fear God. . . that is my pray to you….all we want is the kind of liberty that the Constitution gives us..”

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Dan Robinson, who shares the following recording

Neptune Radio (Pirate Radio): October 25, 2001

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Adam C. Smith, who shares the following recordings and notes:

Here is another little gem I dug up. Neptune Radio! Recorded off air on 10/25/2001, 0515 UTC, 6955kHz USB. It isn’t the best audio but it is intelligible and that was good enough for me!

Purple Nucleus of Creation (HF Pirate Radio Station): October 27, 2001

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Adam C. Smith, who shares the following recording and notes:

This recording was made on 10/27/2001, 0009UTC, 6928kHz USB with my Grundig 800 and 100’ wire. The Purple Nucleus of Creation was very strong and bizarre…. Maybe relayed by KIPM back in the day.

Adam also shared images of The Purple Nucleus of Creation’s amazing and intricate QSL card:

Radio Free Whatever (Pearl Harbor Tribute): December 15, 2013

USS SHAW exploding in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941

For your listening pleasure: one hour, seven minutes of the pirate radio station, Radio Free Whatever.

I recorded this broadcast on December 15 2013, starting around 2:40 UTC, on 6,925 kHz AM. This broadcast was a tribute to WWII and Pearl Harbor and contains news clips and music from the same time period. I believe my recording begins about five or so minutes into their broadcast.

Mediumwave Pirate "Batavier": February 06, 2017

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Jordan Heyburn, who shares the following recording of European MW pirate radio station, Batavier and the following notes:

Starting time: 2100 UTC

Frequency: 1.665 MHz

Reception location: Armagh, Northern Ireland

Receiver and antenna: Icom IC-R70 and Wellbrook ALA1530LN Active Loop Antenna

Canadian Shortwave Pirate TNFM: June 2, 1986.

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Scott Nelson, who shares this 1986 recording of the Canadian pirate radio station, TNFM and notes:

Date of recording: 6/2/1986

Starting time: 0520

Frequency: 7.415

Receiver location: Minot, North Dakota

Receiver: Sony ICF-6500W

Notes: Canadian pirate station TNFM recorded June 2, 1986 from my location in Minot, North Dakota. IDs, music, and talk - playing listener requests and dedications.

Neptune Radio ID: October 21, 2001

Many thanks to SRAA contributor Adam C. Smith who shares the following station ID of pirate radio station, Neptune Radio. This recording was made on October 21, 2001 at 05:15 UTC on 6,955 kHz USB:

Rizzo Radio station ID: January 31, 2001

Many thanks to SRAA contributor Adam C. Smith who shares the following Station ID of Rizzo Radio. This recording was made on January 31, 2001 at 02:29 UTC on 27,555 kHz USB:

Receiver location was Federal Way, WA, USA. Receiving equipment used was a Grundig Satellit 800 w/60' random wire.

Purple Nucleus Of Creation: October 27, 2001

Many thanks to SRAA contributor Adam C. Smith who shares the following recording of pirate radio station, Purple Nucleus Of Creation. This recording was made on October 27, 2001 at 00:09UTCon 6,928 USB:

Pirate Station ID: Seattle Free Radio--March 30, 2002

Many thanks to SRAA contributor Adam C. Smith who shares the following Station ID of Seattle Free Radio. This recording was made on March 30, 2002 at 04:20 UTC on 6950 kHz:

Radio Casablanca: April 19, 2016

Last night at about 00:10 UTC, I was pleased to hear the interval signal of one of my favorite pirate radio stations: Radio Casablanca.

“Rick Blaine” fired up his AM transmitter and pumped out some amazing WWII era music on 6,940 kHz for about one hour and a half. Radio Casablanca only pops up a few times a year, so I always feel fortunate to grab the broadcast (click here to listen to previous recordings).

Signal strength varied over the course of the broadcast and the bands were quite noisy–still, the Casablanca signal punched through quite well at times.

Close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like to hear the great bands of the era over the shortwaves…

Click here to download an MP3 of the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Note that the interval signal starts around 01:25:

RX4M - The Voice of Clipperton station ID: Circa Late 1970s

(Source: North American Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame)

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Colin Newell, who shares two recordings from the late 1970s of the pirate radio station RX4M The Voice of Clipperton. 

Colin recorded both of these station IDs from British Columbia, Canada, using his cassette recorder. Colin also notes that he may be the only person to have ever recorded RX4M off-air. RX4M was inducted into the North American Pirate Radio Hall Of Fame in 2011.  The following is an excerpt from an article written by Andrew Yoder on the NA Pirate Radio Hall of Fame site :

RX4M (Radio Experiment on 40 Meters) put in more time and hours to overcome obscurity, only to quickly fall back into obscurity, thanks to a pirate-unfriendly location in Washington State. Even by the mid-‘80s, few DXers or pirate listeners had heard RX4M, and few remembered it.

The first difficulty for RX4M to overcome was the poor communications of the late ‘70s. When the station began broadcasting in August 1979, there was no Internet and all DX news either was discovered via monthly bulletin or magazine, meaning a minimum delay of two months for information to be reported. 

The next problem was the Pacific Northwest. At the time, very few shortwave DXers and almost no pirate listeners were located in the region. Some young pirate listeners were networking in southern California, toward Los Angeles, but even that was a long haul from the Seattle area. 

Despite a nightly broadcast schedule and boasting two transmitters (20 and 100 watts), no DXers in either NASWA or the Newark News Radio Club (two of the largest shortwave clubs of the time, and two of the best for pirate news) reported RX4M until April 1980 on 7370 kHz.

The few listeners who remember RX4M know it as possibly the only North American pirate to operate with a regular shortwave station, like a licensed outlet. It was on nightly from *0550-0630* UTC with a variety of programs produced by different station staff: News with Tony Giles, Post Office Box 80 with Aaron Richardson, DX Forum with Mickey Anderson, Let’s Talk Technical with Larry Adams, and the Good Morning Show with Jerry Nelson. Other time slots were filled with old-time radio programs, such as Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee & Molly, Sherlock Holmes, Fred Harris & Alice Faye.

[...]RX4M, the Voice of Cliperton, was never heard again and no shortwave pirate since has adopted its style. At a time when many DXers were bitterly anti-pirate, many reporters said that RX4M programming sounded very professional. 

XFM: November 1, 2015

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Michael Fortner, who notes:

Pirate radio broadcaster Radio XFM on 6.975 MHz on Halloween Night, 2015, 0040 to 0317 UTC (Nov 1st, UTC) as received in Stockbridge, Georgia.  The equipment used was an Icom IC-7200 transceiver using a 60 foot end-fed horizontal antenna.   For the first minute of the recording I was switching back and forth between the horizontal antenna and a 25 foot vertical antenna, and trying out different audio bandwidths to improve reception.  I finally settled on the end-fed and a 8000kz bandwidth.  Conditions were interesting, with some fading and static from time to time.  

At 21:12 into the recording he talks about my emailed reception report, so that was cool.  Total time for this recording is 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 40 seconds (156:40).

Radio Spaceshuttle International: September 20, 2015

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Richard Langley, who notes:

Live hour-long recording of the "last" Radio Spaceshuttle International broadcast on 20 September 2015 beginning at 19:00 UTC on a frequency of 13600 kHz. The broadcast was from the Kostinbrod (near Sofia), Bulgaria, transmitter site. The transmitter power announced during the broadcast was 100 kW. This is consistent with the HFCC (High Frequency Coordination Conference) registration of the 13600 kHz frequency by Spaceline, Ltd., the airtime broker for shortwave transmissions from Kostinbrod, between 10:00 and 20:00 UTC. The registered antenna beam direction is 195 degrees.

Reception was poor to fair with some interference from Radio Martí on 13605 kHz and the Cuban jammer aimed at it. The broadcast, compered by "Dick Spacewalker" and originating in Finland, consisted of pop music and acknowledgements of listeners' reports. The language used is mostly English with some Finnish and Japanese announcements. The broadcast begins anomalously at 19:00:11 UTC with a sign-on announcement from the Overcomer Ministry (also a user of the Kostinbrod facility) and a wrong announced frequency. The Radio Spaceshuttle International program begins about 1m:20s later. 

The broadcast was received on a Tecsun PL-880 receiver with a Tecsun AN-03L 7-metre wire antenna outdoors in Hanwell (just outside Fredericton), New Brunswick, Canada, in AM mode with 3.5 kHz RF filtering. 

Radio Spaceshuttle International: September 20, 2015

SRAA contributor, Jim Clary (ND9M/VQ9JC), recorded the following final broadcast of Radio Spaceshuttle International while on board a US Navy ship off the coast of Spain. Jim notes:

I was packing up to leave my ship and return to the USA this week when the latest SWLing Post e-mail showed up with info about SSR's final broadcast literally seven minutes before he was to come on the air. I'd already broken down the receiving gear, but it came back together in record time, and I was able to get the recorder going with a minute before the transmission started.
 
SSR's signal was a solid S9, which wasn't all that surprising since he's only a few hundred miles from here. 

Radio Casablanca: April 17, 2015

For your listening pleasure: the pirate radio station Radio Casablanca. 

This recording was made on April 17, 2015 starting around 00:00 UTC on 6490 kHz AM. I made this recording using my WinRadio Excalibur and horizontal delta loop antenna in North Carolina, USA.

Generation Wild 100: July 26, 2014

For your listening pleasure: one hour, eleven minutes of the pirate radio station, Generation Wild 100.

Generation Wild 100 started broadcasting around 2:00 UTC this morning on 6,925 kHz in the upper sideband. As you’ll hear in the recording, their signal here in eastern North America was verystrong, even drowning out most of the ever-present summer static crashes.

I had never heard Generation Wild 100 before; this was a new pirate logging for me. After hearing their intro, I expected they’d play trance, techno, or punk rock…Not so. GW100 played a mix of, um,lounge music. I chuckled to hear their high-energy bumpers segue into smooth jazz.

Proves yet again that with pirates, you’ll never know what to expect. I love it!

Click here to download the full recording of Generation Wild 100, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Wolverine Radio: June 22, 2014

Wolverine Radio  SSTV QSL from October 13, 3013

Many thanks to SWAA contributor, Greg Shoom, for this recording of the pirate radio station, Wolverine Radio.. Greg comments:

"This is the last part of a broadcast of shortwave radio pirate station Wolverine Radio. 6950 kHz, June 22, 2014 at 0205 UTC."

Greg recorded this broadcast in Harrowsmith, Ontario, Canada; he used a Kaito KA1103 receiver with its built-in telescopic antenna.

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Please subscribe to our podcast to receive future recordings automatically.

Bogusman Radio: May 26, 2014

For your listening pleasure: European pirate radio station, Bogusman Radio.

This recording was submitted by UK-based SRAA contributor, London Shortwave who writes:

"[This is] something I caught on my Lowe HF-150 on May 26 while scanning the 49 meter band. It sounds like a local pirate radio station and it appears that the program was pre-recorded and then left on repeat for that evening (speech and music).

My recording starts at 20:05 UTC on the frequency of 6,305 kHz. I used DX Engineering's NCC-1 Phaser and two Wellbrook antennas to cope with local QRM."

Many thanks to London Shortwave for this contribution to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. Subscribe to our podcast to download new recordings automatically.

Tip & Elvis Show: May 31, 2014

For your listening pleasure: over two hours of theTip and Elvis Show. This Euro pirate  broadcast was recorded by Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Frank.

Tip and Elvis was broadcasting on 6,220 kHz in AM–you’ll hear some adjacent digital interference, but signal strength is pretty good for (most likely low power) pirate radio. This recording starts around 20:30 GMT on May 31, 2014.

Click here to download the recording as an MP3 or simply listen via the embedded player below: