WQ6X thoughts on POKING-Around for Pirates

One of the more obscure yet fascinating aspects of shortwave listening is listening for Pirate
stations: [usually] low power stations that while technically illegal operations, often present some amazingly good radio programming.

For over 60+ years, radio magazines have reported listeners reports of pirate station activity.  Because most pirate activity originates from the east/Northeast sector of the United States,
most log submissions originate from those areas of the USA.  Altho there are reports of pirate
activity on the West coast, reports are [relatively] quite rare.  With all that said, following the
listening recommendations over the years, until one month ago, I've yet to actually hear an actual
Pirate broadcast.

The [so-called] "rule-of-thumb" id that most pirate broadcasts originate on Friday / Saturday evenings in one of three (3) so-called "Pirate broadcast band segments".  Recently, one Sunday evening on 6.920 USB at 02:00z, I heard an ID playout for "Black Star Radio" with the callsign "WDOG" sent
in Morse code (CW) afterwards.

Just up the band (on 6.935 AM), various pieces of orchestral and chorale music played on for hours, but with no transmission ID.  LooKing up 6.935 on Shortwave.Info, produced no "official" listings for that frequency - PERIOD.

Later @05:20z back on 6.920 I heard music by Deadmau5 (again with no ID), transmitting in LSB with a medium-level carrier present.  Later still (@06:25z) on AM, music was being played, interspersed with "Radio PUSH con website"; whatever that means.  It was eventually drowned-out by machine gun radar operating on 6.910.

The 6.9-mhz area (42m) is a known hangout for pirate sightings.  Another area is the 7.4 to 7.5 Mhz area (39m).  Other areas likely to host pirate broadcasts are frequently documented in such publications as the Spectrum Monitor ([CLICK HERE]), one of my favorites.

There are also many pirate (i.e., unlicensed station operations) littered throughout the FM broadcast band.  The FCC has convinced Congress to give them even more (unenforceable) enforcement power with the Pirate act of 2020, which is as worthless as the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986.  I recently submitted an op-ed piece to Radio World magazine about this situation: "Pirate Hunting LooKs GooD on Paper" ([CLICK HERE] to read my submission.).

Do YOU ever go Pirate Hunting?

What nefarious stations have YOU heard?