by geoff m. stereo » Mar 21st, '09, 19:25
Hi guys, it's great to be here!
Andy, we've never met unless of course, you were one of the crowd of Superstation types crammed into that small room in Good Hope Mill in 1993. It's possible we've talked though, as I was a G1 in the 80's. I'll have to dig out the log and have a look. Obviously we won't have been talking about any of this stuff - I once mentioned pirate radio and was told by a prominent member of the repeater group that listening to KFM had been "worse than CB"!
Gary, there was plenty of rivalry amongst the Manchester pirates. In the mid 80's, there were fallings out between the Stockport lot. The late 80's saw the ethnics in town at it and in the 90's, the Stockport boys were at it again - mostly a new crop of pirates this time (apart from one of the originals) but still Stockport and it's suburbs, and still at each other's throats. Even the Superstation (allegedly) had their studio in Ashton broken into through the loft and things taken.
During the time when my station was active in the mid-1990s, I'd scan the FM band for pirates and when one appeared, the "dodgy red Cavalier" would roll into action. The local pirates with small coverage areas were dead easy to find with just a scanner and a rubber duck - we're talking Bramhall, Woodley, Stockport, Cheadle, Gatley, Heald Green... I'm sure you've an idea which ones I'm talking about. Some covered huge areas and weren't so easy. I was stumped by The Superstation when it moved up Bury way around 94/95. The biggest one of the lot was Carousel. I was briefly involved with the Carousel people but before this time, I'd traced their link (easy) on around 176MHz. The main signal on Band II wasn't so easy... estimated at 2.4KW ERP, end-stop all the way across the Cheshire plain and Liverpool! Obviously it was up the high peak somewhere, but exactly where was anyone's guess. Through word of mouth however everyone got to know where it was and this resulted in their TX getting stolen one weekend and the police involved. The bloke who owned the gear had assumed, rightly, that the Old Bill would be more interested that something had been nicked, than what it actually was. Still, it must have taken some balls to call them in...
That's all for now! I will be sending some audio in soon!