Searching For Space Pirates On Old Military Satellites

Back in the 1970s the US launched a number of satellite radio repeaters to geostationary orbit. They neglected to put any kind of access control or security on these, so criminals, hackers, and random radio users have taken them over. If you have an SDR or even a handheld radio that can tune in ~250-270mhz, you can listen in as well!
The most common traffic you can hear on these "FLTSATCOM" satellites appears to be truck drivers in Central and South America. Supposedly they're also popular with loggers, drug smugglers, and others! I heard a few users speaking what I think is Portugese, but I'm not 100% sure.
Please note that I am not transmitting or sending anything to these satellites, and I would not recommend anyone else do so. It is still illegal to use these if you're not an authorized US government employee! I've omitted or obscured a few details about how people access these satellites.
I did find that a directional Yagi antenna tuned for ~255mhz worked pretty well for receiving signals from these satellites. I made it from scrap wood, scrap metal rods, and my existing antenna aiming mount made from an old security camera.
I noticed the most traffic in the ~260-264mhz range, but the use pattern and timing might vary. Maybe in the future I'll try looking for pirate SSTV signals!
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[@dagmarsuarez3033]

A magnificent accomplishment. Now, if only you'd been content to stop there. Building that much bigger Yagi antenna and suspending it from a big white balloon sure seemed like a good idea at the time.........

[@thadrobinson8343]

It's still a great way to loft a Yagi, but not everybody can afford a balloon. Using a giant box kite would be more cost-efficient for a non-state actor.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

Maybe a _LARGE KITE?_ 😊

[@la7dfa]

There is no point in having the antenna very high up. As long as you have line of sight to the satellite and not much local noise from electronics, it will be fine near ground level.

[@derrekvanee4567]

@@la7dfa atmospheric distortionand absorption? That said. This REALLY (yet again) makes me.wakna splurge my extra 35 bucks this month on a usb sdr dongle

[@danielsmith-kp3ce]

Don’t worry bro I got your joke 😂

[@thaedleinad]

The woman was speaking portuguese, she was giving instructions about dropping a load, probably to a truck driver. The men were also speaking truck stuff.

[@bumpergoed]

Portuguese from brazil that is.

[@tigerchills2079]

hmm.. suspicious! 👀

[@interstellarsurfer]

"truck driver" 😂

[@Arma77743]

Or about cocaine 😂

[@Pommezul]

That was straight up drug businesses

[@konatreck00]

Some of this pirate are Brazilian, they use this kind of communication on rainforest (a.k.a Amazonia) where cellular signal is inexistent, they call the satellite as "bolinha" and you can find a lot of users

[@CaptainApathetic]

Honestly it's hard to blame them if it's their sole form of communication.

[@jek__]

@@CaptainApathetic Yeah, people everywhere use stuff thats publicly available regardless of whether they own or earned it, its normal human behaviour. I mean it's not like we made the sand or trees or meat we are easily content to take from whats around us. It's human nature to take if you have a need and no one is there to stop you

[@tylerchiu7065]

@@jek__reject capitalism, return to communism

[@TheCoon1975]

​@@tylerchiu7065 No

[@adepressedcatwithabadnicot246]

@@TheCoon1975 but you don't own any capital, do ya LT dan?

[@tiago27272]

7:22 - eai será que chegou na cidade carregado? (i dont understand fully the rest) ou será que derramou no meio da estrada? tem um negocio de derramar na estrada (?) (Hey, did you arrived at the city with the cargo? or got lost in the road?) 7:28 - Amor conta (?) só fica ligado nessa com um ai (interrupts) qualquer coisa só te chamo ai vou ficar ouvindo ela e a outra ta (he respondes with ok) (Love tell me (?) just stay tuned with someone, anything I'll just call you there I'll listen to she and the other) 9:03 - Começa por ai ô, fala com nós, acabou de passar o trator agora (start by there, talk to us, the tractor just passed now) the last one is talking about where someone is going, and asking why prob he changed his route, and he tells why he changed

[@saveitforparts]

Cool, thank you! I'm sure I could have recorded more and caught longer conversations. I've heard that a lot of the users are truck drivers, so it makes sense to hear them talking about cargo and routes.

[@adrieljr]

It is Brazilian Portuguese the language.

[@ftm1981]

​@@saveitforpartsyes, truck drivers, farmers and illegal loggers in Amazon forest are the regular users in Brazil. But the Federal Police, with help of US govnmt, track and arrest then. FARC and a famous brazilian drug dealer called Fernandinho Beira Mar used this Sat, called here "Bolinha" (little ball), until his arrest in 2001. Other major criminal organizations (PCC) used until the arrests became recurrents by signal triangulation.

[@rodricbr]

pegou certinho, eu não peguei algumas partes mas o seu ficou show! na 7:28 na parte que interrompe, tem um homem falando "positivo, positivo"

[@tiago27272]

@@rodricbr nem ouvi esse kkkk, foram 15 min de eu pausando e voltando para conseguir todos

[@ryanfrogz]

That is unspeakably cool! Never would’ve expected pirate radio to exist in space.

[@markcallahan4086]

HI, I used to work FLTSAT for the USAF in the late 1980s. I think you should look into "circular Polarization" for your receive antenna. I believe you want LEFT-HAND-cirlc-polarization (LHCP) for receive (RHCP for TX) . Also, the biggest problem the Pirates make is each one takes power from the tansmitter on the satellite. The battery can only kick out a certain power per day....now it's DECADES later so the battery is about 50% what it used to be.....Each Pirate takes a chunk of satellite power.....and these satties are what we call "bent-pipe" repeaters....the more power you pump in, the more power it pumps out...further draining the battery. ( I worked with the agency that was always highly concerned with "power balancing" across users.).......OK, now for my illegal satty story story.....I once called CQ over a Top Secret Gov't satellite network.....I was told to never do it again. SO....I love your channel...let me know if I can help in any way with my satty experience.....Ka1igc

[@saveitforparts]

Very cool, and good info thanks! I'd like to do a follow-up video when I have time and attention for it (LOTs of projects on the pile), so those would be some cool details to include.

[@awwschmitten]

Working in N6 for the Navy I could never figure out why SATOPS was always so frustratingly anal about power balancing. I had no idea they just wanted to keep us from draining the sats batteries, that's hilarious. Thank you for this!

[@KlodFather]

Did you end up off freq by accident? Or did they put that hidden sat system in the ham band? That is funny. When I used to work for the radio systems companies I would find the unused antennas on the tower and take a suitcase radio with me. Plug in the ant analyzer and figure out what band they were in on the ant's on top the tower. I would find one I could use and operate during lunch. This one tower was 350 free standing over hilltop. Perfect. It was always amazing what you could get into on 1/4 or one watt power. I did a lot of QSO from places like that.

[@harveywallbanger3123]

"I once called CQ over a Top Secret Gov't satellite network" Ah, no harm no foul. My uncle worked at a remote station for the Air Force and used to do a trick where he'd call the next station over and ask nicely for a patch into the next one from there, and so on, until he'd circled the continent and gotten back to where he started, at which point the duty desk would call over the PA that he had an incoming call, only to be connected to himself.

[@Skinflaps_Meatslapper]

@@harveywallbanger3123 Early experiments in ping testing for the latency curious

[@FrancoDX]

I’ve been tracking these for a few years in the U.K. with mostly rabbit ears and a Tri band UV-5R or Yupiteru. A 1/4 wave ground plane antenna works well too. The common frequencies seem to be between 255 and 262, usually Brazilian Portuguese language or Russian. Comedy Radio from Russia is sometimes very clear, I’ve also heard Mosque broadcasts and even Karaoke microphones! It’s an interesting section of the radio spectrum. Thanks for the video 👍🏼

[@py2rpjrubens450]

Brasileiros!!

[@ChoppingtonOtter]

I've always wanted to have some fun getting into a microphone or shop P.A circuit 😂

[@tikkiu7345]

It's so interesting, I've never known anything like it, would love to get into it

[@reapthewhirlwind6915]

Mosques? Disgusting

[@juliogonzo2718]

Some drunk singing karaoke unaware they are being broadcasted over a vast area 🤣

[@wes11bravo]

A good friend of mine was in 1/505th 82nd ABN back in the 80s. They were all out in the field at Ft Bragg and got together with the commo guys who were able to use their satcom uplink to get into the PSTN, whereby they proceeded to order a huge stack of pizzas from Domino's. They gave the delivery guy instructions like, "Take the Post Road hardball until it disappears in the sand and we'll meet you there..." The guy shows up and all these grunts with green faces, foliage in their helmets, and M16s emerge from the darkness to pay for the pizza and carry it back to the Assembly Area. I thought this was a pretty cool use of resources.

[@Davidrcobb]

Best use of tax dollars in a long time.

[@agranero6]

In Brazil those satellites are nicknamed "bolinha" (little ball) and they were heavily used, today because of Internet and cell phones I think they were not much used. But I saw news on TV a few years ago about Federal Police apprehend the equipment of some of those pirates.

[@KlodFather]

If they confiscated all their radio gear no matter the band, it would deter them for a while. The punishment should be much more severe.

[@agranero6]

@@KlodFather 1. there is a fine 2. putting people in jail for doing that would benefit no one 3. Brazilian Federal Police has more to do than to protect unused obsolete USA military unencoded bad designed satellites that could even be used by the enemy. Satellites from the 60's that are not decommissioned because it would cost more to do so than to let they rotten in space.

[@TastiLead]

@@KlodFather why?

[@GVALNIER]

Policia federal is like gestapo or stazi in Brazil

[@KlodFather]

@@GVALNIER - They should be more harsh with them. Confiscate the radios or better yet whatever has the radio in it. House or vehicle. Make it hard. Problems go away when they take your stuff and throw it all out in the street and board the place up or burn it down. These guys are causing international defence problems with their disregard for the law.

[@redhen2123]

Ah yes, the 1970's , no encryption, no firewalls, no security, just techies trying to help other techies. /sigh I miss those days.

[@Neo_Chen]

8:09 You are picking up local FM stations because RTL-SDRs have bad image rejection capability, I would recommend adding a FM broadcast bandstop filter to attenuate these signals

[@pileofstuff]

That or a harmonic of the original frequency. Or possibly the result of 2 frequencies mixing in an imperfect RF system. After a few decades of working on antenna systems, I can confidently say RF can be pretty "black magic" outside of the mathematical theory world sometimes.

[@edlizard]

@@pileofstuff Likely 3rd harmonic of ~90.* MHz, where most NPR stations live.

[@KlodFather]

@@pileofstuff - We engineers used to say, 50% science and 50% witchcraft. Its really true. You should have seen some of the shit we saw and lived through LOL STuff from science fiction movies LOL

[@killaship]

@@pileofstuff Oh, hey, I watch your videos! Never would've thought to see you here, lol.

[@Neo_Chen]

@@pileofstuff For something that only have about 48dB of in-band dynamic range, it's more likely to be image frequency / aliasing (especially because RTL-SDRs use direct conversion & doesn't have a great IF filter)

[@golf25radioman]

Back some 65 years ago I used to sit in front of the family radio and turn the band to try and listen to whatever I could pick up. I would sit there for hours trying to hear something from someone somewhere on Earth. I don't remember specifics, but the mind of a 10-year-old can create many things that could happen and hope to find one of them. It was quite fun. Not sure what my parents thought of me with my ear to the speaker while turning the dial. BTW, this was before TV in our house...and many other houses too.

[@saveitforparts]

I used to listen to shortwave radio at night when you could hear faint signals better. It's always interesting what's out there!

[@guerrillaradio9953]

I used to do it with my crystal radio built on my Radio Shack 30-in-1 electronic project kit...so cool. Plus, I could listen on my little earphone all night if I wanted to!

[@Jreb1865]

I used to do the same. Simple things were the best things...

[@Strakin]

as a kid i had an old radio from my grandma (one of these big boxes). I changed the radio bulbs (vacuum tubes) with some i found on scrap-radios and one time i even could hear the police radio lol)

[@MostlyPennyCat]

On my childhood FM radio you could puuuuuush the dial off the bottom end you could pick up a strange pulsing transmission, some kind of data transmission I guess.

[@TiagoSeiler]

The voices at around 7:38 are in Portuguese. The lady is saying "stay tuned ok, stay on this ??" "If you need anything call me on this, or I'll be listening in on the other one too" (I would imagine they're talking about frequencies). At 9:06, again Brazilian portuguese saying: "How is it over there? Talk to us. We just loaded the truck now". The next transmission I can't make out other than the word "carga" (cargo, or load in English).

[@Logic44]

Yeah, I was gonna mention that sometimes Portuguese is mistaken for Russian, but clearly you beat me to it lol I've been guilty of it before, tbh

[@FixTechStuff]

10,000 points to you. A lesson for anyone overthinking anything when you can reuse, repurpose and reinvent useful things out of an antenna you already had, a $1 adapter and scrap.

[@flymypg]

This was mentioned in Tom Scott's latest newsletter. Very cool!

[@saveitforparts]

That's cool!

[@nullFoo]

I found it from there too

[@Vinicius_Schneider]

Oh my! The first pirate transmission was a short dialogue about a trucker asking if the other one is already loaded

[@pavorealstudios]

Loaded with drug

[@ilesbird]

I'm an absolute turnip - I don't know anything about this very interesting topic - but you had me at space pirates, and I really enjoyed your attitude and presentation - ty!

[@koghs]

If you question why they didn't put any kind of access control on those early repeater satellites Consider that prototype repeater satellites became unusable less than a month after launch because clock-based access codes got out of sync

[@Name-nw9uj]

did they not take time dilation into account?

[@yoeyyoey8937]

How did they get out of sync?

[@ssnerd583]

@@yoeyyoey8937 ....have you ever tried to keep 2 clocks sync'd??? this is why they came up with the atomic clocks that are small enough to orbit.....that is the ONLY way.....there are a gagillion factors but...when you consider that there are as many nano seconds in one second as there are seconds in 32 years and you are trying to sync to LESS that THAT......yeah....

[@ssnerd583]

@@Name-nw9uj ...they didnt have accurate and small enough atomic clocks.....the new quantum technology will make all that look like sticks and stones....

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@ssnerd583 I didn’t know they needed that much precision and also I didn’t know they couldn’t equip them with atomic clocks

[@Boojum137]

I wonder if the age of the components has caused any frequency drift in the repeaters. Regardless, I love that these 40+ year old satellites are still functioning and still getting used, even if for unauthorized purposes. A testament to engineers who designed and built the originals, glad they're not just space junk.

[@tigerchills2079]

As it appeared in the video, the sats were actually still in service, so even without the pirates, they would not be space junk yet. But with increasing user count and decreasing battery life, they may end up as junk sooner. But surely is more fun to see this tech used by a broader audience than intended.

[@arnoldgrubbs2005]

Well, its not all that hard, AO-7 is a ham radio satellite that was launched in 1974, and remained working until a battery failure in 1981 when it went quiet. It was heard again in 2002, when the batteries finally went "open ckt" and the equipment started operation again using only solar power. It would reset when in darkness and restart when it was getting enough light. Other than the batteries, the thing is about ready for its 50'th birthday next year, and was built by amateur (ham) radio operators on a very thin budget.

[@NinoJoel]

​@@arnoldgrubbs2005that's really cool to hear

[@MrSchorschschorsch]

5:04 it is recommended to get the antenna off the ground for proper swr/resonance measurement. all the stray capacitance of the floor will detune your antenna by quite a bit. although it's not that critical for rx only, i would suggest you redo the measurement while the antenna is on its tripod.

[@workshop94]

This is cool! I need a crash course on frequencies and radio satellites though. Older analog communication would be a pretty useful skill at times I bet

[@cobraspottedwolf8791]

So cool. Reminded me of telephone Phreaks from the 80s and 90s

[@winterburan]

I listening to many Brazilians and Russians, but there is also a small group of Italians, not all of them in Italy who have been making themselves heard for over 15 years, sometimes more, sometimes less, but Brazilians and Russians are on the increase, thanks also to Chinese portable and vehicular radios that have invaded the market, capable of transmitting on the rising frequency, pleasant contacts from Europe have been felt with the Russians in English, always kind and helpful, however there is no way with the Brazilians who insult immediately heavily for no reason.Ciao

[@glauber9924]

as a brazilian i couldn't help but wheeze here, man, that just pictures us so well

[@ianmangham4570]

Violent bunch the Brazilians ,still smashing heads in with rocks 😮

[@robertoedwarda9123]

😂

[@ericblenner-hassett3945]

It has been a few decades from my Electronics Technician Training. That said, Check the length of the directors ( preceding the antenna ) and distance apart as well as the reflector ( after the antenna ) for the correct parts of the frequencies. They looked to not be like Yagi where the reflector is larger and the preceding ( you have 3 so front looking over half the length, next two almost the same, but shorter ). You may also want to get some more wood and cut them in half, get some wire to connect the antenna to the middle directors in a cross pattern ( when held so the antenna is pointing right, bars up, top to bottom to top antenna segments and opposite for the pointing down antenna ). Good luck hunting down the Space Pirates.

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

I just finished an ELE 111 course as an elective in my welding program. Had a great teacher and it was a lot of fun.

[@paulosborne6517]

I think the female voice was saying "Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope...", but in Portuguese.

[@waylonk2453]

This video was amazing! Thanks for doing this intro to satellite pirate radio. The history of it is something I had never heard of.

[@enaldoleite5214]

They are speaking in Brazilian Portuguese, the woman tells him: "hide the cargo and stay alert. She will be monitoring this one and "the another one". I'll let you know if anything happens. The man just responds something that means "Ok, thank you"." She is probably referring to the frequencies of the police, military, etc. and she will let he know if she hears anything. In the second transmission, he calls someone and says he has just loaded the tractor

[@user-gq7kg4pc1u]

The U.S. Govt legit SATcom stuff in the 250s these days are mostly secure data links. There's definitely still some secure & plain-voice USG Tacsat comms in the 260s -- some of it important stuff, But a lot of the USG Tacsat has migrated to MUOS CDMA with downlinks in the upper 300MHz area. Really annoying to hear the pirates for those of us that used to have to submit requests for UHf SATCOM transponder access back in the day & get in trouble if we used to much uplink power, etc.

[@KlodFather]

WHy did it matter if you used a little too much power on uplink? I realize that you don't need a kw to access it, but enough juice to make a solid entry into the system. What kind of karens run that system anyway?

[@MuckSpreader99]

@@KlodFather As available power is shared across users, normally you uplink enough power so that the downlink power is enough to be received. If you uplink more power, the other downlinks will suffer, dependant on sat power budget. A major sat system I worked with some 40 years ago, had automatic individual and total uplink power adjustment. All users of the system had their uplinks controlled in this way.

[@deansimono7057]

I have been watching sporadically for a couple days now, very entertaining, thanks for sharing that inquisitive spirit.

[@jedharding3492]

"Help me Obi-Gabe....you're my only hope....."

[@paulpalinkas]

I'm definitely hearing some traffic on 255.550 today, even with a ground plane antenna that's not tuned for the band.

[@saveitforparts]

I heard almost nothing on that frequency all day when I was messing with this. I had read it was one of the more popular ones, but I guess I just picked a quiet day to listen!

[@TheShutterNinja]

KZbin recommends yet another great channel. Need to dust off my SDR and do some listening between applying for jobs while I’m outta work right now.

[@indianmongoose]

extremely underrated channel, I hope you don't run out of these ideas.

[@gonzo_the_great1675]

If you find any AM signals in those transponders, they are military ATC in the uplink bands (~300MHz) that are probably asigned without knowledge of the frequencies also being allocated for satellite uplinks. We do hear them from time to time.

[@jplacido9999]

You are right. Some input frequencies coincide with sat input (specially non US mil users)

[@cinfdef]

I'm very familiar with Space Pirates (otherwise known as SPRT) Honestly it's pretty easy handling their planetary bases and cargo ships, just need to pummel their pre-warfare weaponry with autocannons & Artillery, disable their AI, and then boom! You've got some new components and such. (If you are curious, this is referencing Space Engineers. That is the joke)

[@HazyWrites]

I hate the damn space pirate scrapper ships. I’m just trying to test out the blocks from the latest update stop destroying my things.

[@My_initials_are_O.G.cuz_I_am]

Clang bless you, fellow engineer.

[@Meskalin_]

that is so cool! i am so happy i came across this channel, please never stop mate.

[@manderson147]

This is wild. Dude do more of these.

[@Travelinmatt1976]

I think next time I take some vacation days I'm going to spend the entire 2 weeks just scanning, satellites, ham radio, dmr, p25 phase 2, and antenna building

[@SnareX]

Not sure if you are still going to do a part 2, but I for one would love it

[@daveys]

I might have to give listening to those space pirates a go! I’m in the UK and the coverage into the US and Europe on your map looks pretty good.

[@user-ih5yb6zj2y]

7:25 WOW! is Brazilian Portuguese hahaha, recently discoverd this channel and it's amazing, Keep up the great work buddy!! shout out from Brazil!

[@RingwayManchester]

Great stuff man

[@weirdsciencetv4999]

By the way, I thoroughly love the channel! I also picked up satellite signals at these frequencies shown in your video, but with my biconical antenna, it was too faint for the descriminator. Just heard extremely spotty voice. Going to build a directional.

[@curly_fries]

I had no idea this was even a thing and that so many people rely on these decades old satellites for communication! How nice of the US military!

[@the_inquisitive_inquisitor]

I honestly had no clue what to expect when I clicked on this video. Pleasant surprise, this is actually really interesting!

[@cucumberbroccoli5502]

This is something I have been trying do with similar tech, quite a few Zombie Sats out there with no encryption on them some still with power at times (depending what and where). This content if fantastic, Love the back stories on the history of the tech the most. Thanks for the content :)

[@waylonk2453]

Wow, I can't imagine trying to hunt for these zombie sats. Hat's off to you for listening to them.

[@jafinch78]

I've not tested the metrics in any real comparative detail or to any standards other than the nanovna, though I'm still amazed how well my 450MHz yagi worked and works only using wooden rod with aluminum duct tape wrapping for the reflecting and directing elements. I invested in a 3D printer pen to make the mounts more adjustable for finer tuning. I never got around to making with the plastic knurled thumb screws or 3D printing, though did order and have most the parts I need if not all.

[@adricklynn8882]

Dude I love this video very much! Thank you for this! Very cool stuff!

[@SupraTompan]

Your channel is so much of what I want do do, but haven't got the time or skills to do. Best channel for my morning coffee.

[@moosehead4497]

NPR on 271 MHz is very common you will pick up FM local transmissions on 271 Mhz and even sometimes you will pickup shortwave transmissions, it is just a harmonic frequency. That is why you typically want to use an FM bandpass filter. IDEALLY you want to use a band pass filter that filters out everything except the band you are interested in, in this case 270mhz

[@gannas42]

Dude... that is so dang cool! Nice antenna too. 😁 Here's hoping another viewer can decipher some of those non-english speakers.

[@saveitforparts]

Every now and then I get a Portuguese commenter, but I think one of them didn't believe in satellites so who knows 😂

[@MidlifeRenaissanceMan]

There’s a translation in the top comment

[@KlodFather]

@@saveitforparts - Some people believe the earth is flat like their head. Its a result of having a family bush instead of a family tree LOL

[@scramble7673]

Stumbled on your channel looking for new content, am genuinely interested and now subscribed.

[@HDCairnsAviation]

I actually believe that this guy should be hired by a government agency or something because his knowledge is next level

[@MintyLime703]

Intelligence and/or knowledge doesn't often appear to be a requirement for working a state job. Just pretend you know what you're doing and you can go far.

[@HDCairnsAviation]

@@MintyLime703 Aight then

[@jplacido9999]

😂😂😂😂😂😂 not even close😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@KlodFather]

@@jplacido9999 - Apparently you have not worked in the industry... because the amount of dumb ones infesting the group these days because mommy told them they were special is gaining ground. Its scary how devoid of thought some people are coming into the field. Scary shit. We have had some debate about ideas and in some cases have had to make up a simple test on the bench to show them that their assertions do not work. After that things settle down and people get serious. When engineers make mistakes in products, people get hurt. Common sense is not out there and the guy with the most papers on the wall is rarely the brightest bulb in the room. Facts.

[@63snampook]

Hi there, the main "users" on the military Fleetcom VHF frequencies around 250 ... 260 MHz will be stations from Brazil. Here in the Netherlands they are easy to monitor, with a Discone antenna, or even a "vertical" for 2m//70cm.

[@scottwood1143]

Nice Yagi antenna you whipped-up there! You can also cut up a tape measure to make flexible elements for the same.

[@gorillaau]

Ha. The chopped up tape measure segments are also used for direction finders when fox hunting for transmitters. You can go rung through the undergrowth without the risk of being impaled by a ridgid element. Lighter also.

[@AnthonyAdrianAcker]

Your stuff is really interesting man. This is cool stuff.

[@LordSmuggington]

This is incredible... A very strangely coincidental, but resourceful use of these sats lack of security. I need to get back into radios...

[@ramjet4025]

A log periodic or yagi log periodic would give you the wider band. Your yagi is really on the low side gain wise. Down in the equator area, they will not need such high gain antennas. The voice you heard sounded like Portuguese which while closer to Spanish can sound a bit like Russian if you are not familiar with the two languages.

[@KlodFather]

And I would have recognized Russian as I worked with a bunch of Russian engineers and started to learn the language from them. Its complex as hell but full of nuance and surprises. These clowns on that channel sound like a bunch of CB trash and should be eliminated. Shutting off the satelite for a year or two should clear the board. THe radios would fall out of use quickly when the system goes dark.

[@briansouth9325]

ABSOLUTE best channel I've recently found!

[@321CatboxWA]

For an Amish dude you know alot about tec !

[@John-en4gs]

found your channel and I find these things very interesting.

[@W8RIT1]

If I may suggest, @7:30, when you located a pirate station, it will help the intelligibilty if you narrow your IF bandwidth, to cover the signal only. The reason your audio was "fuzzy" was that your BW is too wide.

[@jonathankime3195]

came to this channel originally for the boat content, but this stuff is cool to me even if i have no clue how it works. neat to see a channel out of the city i live in.

[@saveitforparts]

There's more boat stuff on the to-do pile, but the pile is buried under snow at the moment :-)

[@TheSpaceBrosShow]

Yeah pretty sure I also came across this channel from the river boat series

[@jonathankime3195]

@@saveitforparts my boat also, waist deep in snow!

[@drewby4563]

Thanks Wolverine 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾

[@ka8syv203]

I think the lady says "My dog has no nose!" Then the guys is like, "How does he smell?!" The lady says "Terrible." Good channel, OM, 73

[@KumaBean]

I heard the female say ‘obrigado’, which is Portuguese for ‘thank you’. Cool video and concept, cheers for sharing! PS, your man-cave looks like a sweet shop to me, lol 👌

[@Vazzible_gaming]

Hahahahaaaa your neighbor just freaking out watching you like, “ohh shit here he goes again” keeps watching as the equipment in your yard starts moving ”what the hell is that thing. Honey come look at this shit, our neighbors setting up some experiment.” 😂

[@AlterumVeniet]

Sat comms were my favorite back in my marine days. We didn't have a geosyncronus satelite over head for the man portable kits I used. Instead I had to kinda guess where tf it was in the sky, aim the antenna at it, and see if it would transmit. Kind of a pain, but I liked them bc the voice comms were always crystal clear. But for reliability it was hard to beat the old HF radio with a field expedient antenna.

[@saveitforparts]

Cool! It would be fun to learn more about military radios and systems. I assume most of them are encrypted these days.

[@AlterumVeniet]

@@saveitforparts Encryption is a whole other thing. Stock they are unencrypted til you load crypto. We would use unenceypted chanells to talk to civilian run range control to let them know when we were going live, when we were done shooting, how many marines were on range, etc. Since you are a radio guy, you prob already know, but if u don't I suggest looking into omnidirectional field expedient antennas. All you need is some copper wire cut to the right length for the frequency, a means of holding that copper wire off the ground. You can get comms with anyone using that same freq within 350 mile radius. Field expedients were only workable with HF radios due to the length ratios required to cut the copper wire. (The length of the cut has a certain ratio to go with the freq, but I have long forgotten the tables for that) Not all info I'm giving u here is gonna be 100% spot on (I've been out for ten years) so I'm just goin off of memories. Hope this will maybe give u an idea for a video you can do.

[@cdoublejj]

this is awesome! subbed

[@charliem5254]

This is so badass bro!

[@mntmst]

Former US Navy Radioman here. I went to school for this system in 1977 and used it at sea on a system called NAVMACS. It's amazing those transponders are still operational. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Satellite_Communications_System

[@oprimeirodenorth]

I've heard so many portuguese on those transmission, just truck drivers from brazil communication, that's actually pretty common here

[@Gabriel031]

Most of those transmissions in portuguese that you've presented I assume they were made by truckers, they use some frequencies as a "team speak". And maybe... Sometimes Portuguese can be a little tricky and sound a bit Russian, phonetics are kinda similar

[@neonalon]

Hey man great video, really enjoyed this, found it by coincidence 😎

[@kerimgueney]

This is such fantastic content.

[@flafmg.]

7:42 it looks like portuguese for me they're saying something like: "sera que ele chegou na cidade carregado ou (dont undertand the rest)?" translation is "did he arrive in the city loaded or (i cant undertand the rest)?" probaly a truck driver from brazil (my country yay) and the woman said: "(dont undertand) so fica ligado ta? fica nessa rua ai" "stay alert ok? stay in this road" and the guy said: "positivo, positivo" its something like "ok, ok" in english and the girl said: "ok qualquer coisa so me chama aqui nelson, vou ficar ouvindo ela e a outra, ta?" translation: "ok anything just call me here nelson, Ill be listening to her and the other one, ok?" and the guy said: "beleza, joia" translation: "ok, thankyou" (not literal translation, but he means something like this)

[@youtubeaccount931]

I've been able to receive these with an rtl-sdr and an omni directional scanner antenna on my roof here in central california, surprisingly strong signal. Usually Brazilians? using these repeaters from what I can tell

[@philswift791]

Very cool nice work with stuff laying around. The show at 4:05 is a gem Flash Gordon filmed in Berlin.

[@jplacido9999]

In the 70's nobody used 250 MHz for anything, except all the military in the all world....

[@jarvideoproductions]

It's crazy... I built a rabbit ear yagi almost the same way about 6 years ago. only thing I did different was use copper wire for the other elements. worked like a dream on 2 meters.

[@ALaughingMan]

Oh my god this is so cool. Im gonna get into this. I remembered my god father was into radios and had a stack wired up in his velvet, suede gentlemanly lounge, on a few shelves. God he was a bloke and a half, cool dude. All went over my head, but intensely fascinating.

[@TundraWanderer]

Very cool video! Thanks

[@davek88]

Cool video! You have a new subscriber!👍🏻

[@polyesterdreamboat]

Damn that was actually a really good pirate accent

[@ShinyTechThings]

It'll be interesting if you get a better antenna and if or how much of a difference it'll make.

[@Herz_eL]

I don't know how I ended up here, but the video is awesome!

[@SarahC2]

A brilliant accomplishment! It amazes me what we can receive from up in orbit. =)

[@Rouverius]

271.11 MHz would be a third harmonic of 90.37 MHz ... So, maybe KCCD in Moorhead?

[@jellyphant104]

Thank you tom scott for finding this.

[@yiman1196]

Wow this is so cool! I'm an electrical engineering student and would love to do some project like this in my spare time as well!

[@henriquelausch6999]

Most of the interlocutors are Brazilians, most of the things they speak are about the cargo they are managing, the word "carga" (cargo) is often. Why do I know this? Because I'm a Brazilian 🤭🤗 and I didn't know this exists, and I'm really impressed that there are so many people taking advantage of pirate transmissions. That's incredible! (I could translate most of the chats in Portuguese to you! Just ask me if you want that 😉)

[@DioneBatista]

Aqui no MT e no MS é muito comum, os fazendeiro e caminhoneiro tudo usa Rádio Amador.

[@henriquelausch6999]

@@DioneBatista legal! Eu não imaginava que os fazendeiros também usavam o rádio! Poderia me contar um pouco mais? Tipo, por que os fazendeiros usam rádio amador? Para se comunicar em caso de ataque de bandidos?

[@comofaco9270]

@@henriquelausch6999 Hoje não ABIN ;-)

[@ThisDJ808]

@@comofaco9270 cocaina??

[@JxH]

Best not to fine tune antennas while they're resting on the floor. You might get away with it, but still... Best to have them at least a little bit further away from things.

[@JaykPuten]

8:02 "Space pirates, I'm your host of void of space with lemon particles,Terry Gross, you're listening to NPR" Or whatever the space equivalent of fresh air would be

[@comradebob1647]

Came for the thumbnail, stayed for the sick radio wizardry.

[@Dusty_Ham]

Welp, this is awesome and has encouraged me to try to make a yagi.

[@saveitforparts]

It seems pretty easy to make a basic one! for better performance I could improve the active element a little more, there seem to be multiple ways to do it.

[@Superkuh2]

In the twin cities there's MPR News at 91.1.The third harmonic of this would be on 273 MHz.... And there's KFAI on 90.3 MHz which would have it's third harmonic at 271 MHz but that's not MPR or NPR. Probably one of these signal is loud enough for you that the filtering after the mixer in the R820T tuner of the rtlsdr dongle can't knock it down below your noise floor at ~270 MHz. And then there's just some local clock error in freq that shifts it there.

[@saveitforparts]

Interesting, I wouldn't have expected a side harmonic to come in that strongly. I'll have to check if other FM stations do that too!

[@YayAkiba]

Interesting...as I am local. I know KQRS you can pick up darn near anywhere with the wattage they put out.

[@stevesweb]

Just a question, if he was picking up the third harmonic of an FM station, wouldn't the signal stay somewhat constant if he changed the direction of the antenna? Wouldn't the harmonic be coming into the antenna/system from the side and not from the direction the yagi is pointed? I hope I asked that correctly. Thank you.

[@alisharifian535]

I was always wondering why i pick up FM radio signals with my analog 90's TV 😁(i use it for gaming).So it is a kind of unwanted FM transmission artifact.

[@theminer49erz]

Lol man I could uae some friends like you! I have always been the "oddball maker"/"horder of electronics etc" one of my groups. The biggest problem with being interested in so many different things that require a good bit of experience and research to understand, is that you are lucky to meet anyone in person that is into even just one of those many things. It's ts a damn miracle to meet someone that is into more than one of them....at least where I have lived. Finding the time to do all the stuff you want to is another big problem with it😁 Anyway, fun times! Keep it up man!

[@innercityprepper]

This is too cool, I had no idea about this!

[@gonzo_the_great1675]

All these transponders are still in government use. But using wide band modems that you will struggle to detect or even see in the waterfall display. The majority of pirates are south american and portugese. As there is little or no enforcement of the law there by their PTT's. The last batch of crackdowns we heard about, those foung guilty were fined ~$50 and allowed to keep their equipment.

[@jplacido9999]

Where...?

[@gonzo_the_great1675]

@@jplacido9999 Brazil I think it was.

[@jplacido9999]

@@gonzo_the_great1675 Brazil, no doubt. There were portuguese users too, but they were taken down by a joint operation by portuguese branch of NATO, portuguese National Guard, and Judiciary Police. Brazil also made several operations against pirate users of Mil Sats. There are still a few out there in the midle of nowhere....

[@FixTechStuff]

You'd think people should definitely start using their Baofeng to transmit on those, if your equipment got confiscated it would be cheap to replace.

[@KlodFather]

From North America you would need good power to reach those satelites without a serious yag. Only a mobile rig with 50 watts and a directional antenna in the north will work... and be spotty at best in FL.