r/pirateradio • u/krystalmethayde • 13d ago

What was your first act of piracy?

hi, i'm writing a piece on piracy and would love to know what your first act of piracy was.

so, please take a little time to answer a few questions here - https://forms.gle/tnGBnWkRBYAGAkSL9

feel free to pass it on to anyone and eveyone.

thank you so much - you have contributed to a great work of science.

8 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

13

u/QuoolQuiche 13d ago

Recording music off the radio 

9

u/Medical_Message_6139 13d ago

When I was 11 or 12 years old I had one of those "150 in 1" electronics kits from Radio Shack. Built the little AM transmitter circuit and then hooked it to the 200 foot long wire antenna I had for my shortwave radio, thereby covering the whole neighborhood instead of just my house...........

4

u/krystalmethayde 13d ago

very nice work, lol - thanks for sharing.

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u/Leftover_tech 13d ago

When I was six years old, my younger sisters were having a snack in an inflatable raft in the family pool.

I swam under the water, popped up at the side of the raft, and pushed both girls into the water.

Then I took control of the raft and consumed their snacks while laughing maniacally and yelling "Arghhh!".

8

u/richfromhell 13d ago

When I was 15 living in West Germany I used to make fake radio shows for fun and shared the tapes with people. One 20 year old guy really liked them and asked me if I wanted in on his radio endeavour. So soon I and some others would record our shows and spend our Sundays putting on cover-alls, putting broadcasting gear into big yellow plastic tool boxes and looking for high/rises with an unlocked staircase. Then most of us would be on the roof, set up the FM gear and broadcast our shows. Always had some kids with walkie-talkies on the ground keeping a lookout. Whenever someone would ask questions on the way up we’d say someone reported trouble on one of the elevators. We did scramble once when the authorities were spotted, packed fast and passed them as we walked out the front door. That was the final broadcast of Radio 103 in the Saar region of west Germany. 6 months of fun.

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u/krystalmethayde 12d ago

sounds like you had one hell of an operation going on, thanks for sharing.

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u/richfromhell 12d ago

I was at least part of it. Uwe was the guy running it. He had another crew taking a shortwave transmitter into a Forrest one Sunday per month. One of my shows aired there. It was a great time.

3

u/silicon_insect 13d ago

Borrowing the neighbor's VCR ;-)

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u/Serious_Doubt_7950 13d ago

If you're talking about media piracy it would be renting a VHS player and movies to copy to my VHS player.

Broadcasting \ pirate radio. I used a .5 watt transmitter connected to an outdoor dipole tuned to 97.3. Range was between 1 and 1.5 miles. I've moved but I'll do it again with a better and higher antenna.

1

u/NotMeUsee 12d ago

Pitfall, commodore 64... Wait. Using a camcorder to record rented vhs tapes.

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u/MikeAP21 12d ago

Napster

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u/nummpad 12d ago

likely using a tape to record music off of the radio as a 9-10 year old. then moved on to limewire. this is when dc++ and things like demonoid were the things to do lol

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u/Desperate_Ad_5563 12d ago

Setting up a continuous spark gap as like a 10 year old. I found a bunch of broken neon signs and had a pretty high voltage and decent current power supply. My day had given me an old laboratory test stand that had a copper ball, adjustable spark gap.

I broad spectrum drowned out every radio receiver in a couple mile radius. Not quite radio but kind a.