pirates

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Last week I caught a bunch of pirate activity from a station in Colombia who was testing on various satcom frequencies. Interestingly the station was actually doing most of transmissions in English and had a very good signal. Here are a few of the intercepts of this traffic. It will be interesting to see if more of them start to pop up.


263.675 MHz – A pirate station from Colombia is testing military satellite communications on UFO-7 in both Spanish and English. Another pirate from Brazil responds, telling him to get off the radio and go take care of the cocaine plantation 😂😂😂. He also makes a few more vulgar comments toward the Colombian station. What a clown show!


269.950 MHz – The same person is testing in English and reciting a METAR report: “Automatic weather observation Papa, time 2300 Zulu, wind 350 at 10, visibility 10 miles, scattered 7,500, broken 1,200, overcast 300, temperature 24, dewpoint 15, altimeter setting 3002.” I also logged the same operator on other downlinks, including 263.925, 265.250, 266.750, and others. Quite odd, to say the least.

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Logged a satcom pirate station from Brazil speaking some English. He was calling another station asking if anyone could hear them.

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Caught an English speaking satcom pirate “November Alpha” on 263.925 MHz. They were doing 12345 test counts, sending DTMF tones and said to be calling from the United States of America. Interesting…

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I recently heard some ham traffic being relayed by pirates on UHF SATCOM (263.675) – Someone was rebroadcasting: “CQ CQ CQ Parks on the Air KE8WLW in K-6803” which sounded like it was coming from HF SSB. A quick Google Search found that Parks on the Air (POTA) is a program that encourages amateur radio operators to get outdoors and operate from state and national parks. The park identifier “K-6803” is Vestaburg State Game Land according to the POTA website. Obviously these hams probably don’t realize pirates are rebroadcasting their traffic across US military satellites. As to why they would retransmit ham radio comms is a total mystery to me and quite strange. In addition, there was a lot of the other usual shenanigans, whistling and inappropriate noises being transmitted on the frequency. Here is a recording of the intercept. Caution: Use headphones if in public setting otherwise you might get strange looks from those around you. The ham stuff starts around the 1:55 marker.

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Logged some Russian satcom pirates last month on 262.275. This seems to be one of their favorite frequencies to use lately.

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LOL! Some guy just let out a “Dirka Dirka” to the Brazilian satcom pirates on 262.125 MHz.

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Logged a couple stations using voice inversion on 258.650. Here is the recovered audio. If anyone is able to provide translation please post in the comments. Thanks!

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US military station radio check was answered by a satcom pirate.

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Lately I have been hearing some Russian language comms around 262.275.

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Caught this today on 260.625. US Military station giving a stern warning to those pesky Brazilian satcom pirates to stay off the channel. They gave message in English and Spanish. As expected, the pirate stations did not comply to the request.

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