Five months ago, a co-worker asked me if I had heard the new Hip Hop station on the radio, that was playing “old school” and if it was a new station. I told him I haven’t heard anything about it. So that on the way home I tuned in and realized, there’s a pirate radio station in Albany.
I listened in and got the call letters they were using and did a search for licensed radio station in Albany with those call letters, and found nothing. I checked a few other radio related sites and found nothing on it. I did some looking on Facebook and found a Facebook page for them, then even managed to get a messenger conversation with someone from the station and asked a few questions about them.
They are running a Chinese made transmitter at about 99 watts output and say they get a signal out as far as 20 miles from Albany. Unlicnesed FM is only legal a few dozen feet on FM, so these guys are pumping out the power. They are streaming the signal to the transmitter from an undisclosed location, which I didn’t ask where it was located because, it’s undisclosed!
The person on the other end of the chat said they have been doing this kind of stuff for 23 years in Philadelphia. And by the clean nature of the signal on the radio, I would say the person running it did their homework. They are also streaming online and as I checked back in on them today, I see they changed their cal letters to WHDB from WTRU, since there is a station down south with those letters.
