45 years ago I was active on 3 meter FM radio as a pirate station called Radio Arcadia. Nothing special, only 1-3 Watt, just enough to chat with school friends. And just enough to create a bit of interference on the radio of our neighbours if positioned my mid frequency on top of Hilversum 3.
We were active on 100+ MHz. Radio’s were already equipped with the 87-108 MHz band, but in those days Dutch legal stations were only broadcasting up to 100 MHz, later 104 MHz. So there was 4-8 MHz of bandwith available.
I thought FM radio pirates were sort of dead. A memory form the past. But here on my new location in Drenthe the FM pirates are alive and kicking. Not only in the 100+ MHz band, but apparently also below 87.5 MHz. In my youth that’s where you listened to police traffic (which wasn’t scrambled in those days). And so when screening the lower end of the FM band for Sporadic E DX I suddenly saw the very strong signal from Radio Blitz popping up on 86.9 MHz.
(e)QSLs are difficult to obtain, as are email contact addresses. But often a telephone number is mentioned on air or as RDS information, inviting you to send a Whatsapp. Now and then I just like to drop a message. Usually you get a friendly thank you like the one Radio Blitz sent me. Including a pretty interesting picture of their antenna configuration 😉.
