Shortwave radio has always been a medium that has had its strange mysteries.
Being a worldwide medium, it has plenty of odd phenomena that one can hear on their radio... From strange transmissions like the Russian 'Buzzer' (which some believe is a 'dead man's switch' associated with Russian nuclear policy), to the mystery of the CB Sideband's "GI Joe" in the late 1980's; to Spy Numbers stations (where a woman with a robotic like voice counts out letters and numbers, in Spanish, monotonously, in between digital bursts), to strange, unlicensed and illegal, low powered 'beacon' transmitters that run off solar panels and put out varying dits and dahs... There are a lot of odd things that go on when one is tuning the bands.
Here is an article I wrote on the mysterious, late 1980's CB Sideband character "GI Joe", an American guy who was in Belize, and routinely talked to hundreds of US and Canadian CB'ers who all wanted to contact him. He was clearly audible all over the US, was heard by probably thousands of CB sidebanders, and just simply disappeared into the ether some time after 1990. Internet searches on the guy, including on radio forums, bring up absolutely nothing.:
Well, this is another one of those mysteries.
Early one morning in the Winter of 2002-2003, after I got home from work -- probably around 4 a.m., as I was working late night shift at that time -- I tuned my Realistic DX-440 around on the shortwave bands. At the time I had a 100 ft. / 30 meter wire antenna, that went from my bedroom window out to a poplar tree across my side yard. The antenna worked really well, and because 2002 was the peak of a Solar Cycle the Shortwave bands were also working really well.
I tuned to the 41 Meter SW broadcast band, and checked out what was on the airwaves there, looking to see if the RTM Malaysia SW stations were audible. Then I tuned down to the 40 Meter Ham band, which is just below the 41 Meter Broadcast band. The 40 Meter ham band is, and was, sort of a hodge podge at night -- you get some broadcasters in the band, a couple Russian Single Letter Beacons, and a smattering of hams talking, using sideband or Morse Code (CW), and there were some digital noises on the band, too.
At the time, the 6900-7300 kHz spectrum was my favorite prowling place for SWLing and DXing, as it was such a grab bag of various signals. In fact, the 6900-7300 kHz spectrum still is a lot that way.
Back in 2002 the 40 Meter ham band was a bit more active than it is now. I already knew that during the early mornings Asian stations -- both ham and broadcast -- would be coming in fairly well on SW, and it's always cool to hear signals from that part of the world because it's literally an ocean away -- SE Asia, for example, is around 12,000 miles from the NW US. This particular morning I heard some Japanese hams trying to talk to American hams, and I probably also listened to the CW / Morse Code sections of the band trying to see who was contacting who, some of them probably being Japanese as well. If I remember correctly, I probably heard the mysterious Russian Single Letter Beacons on 7039 kHz -- "M" and "K", the military 'marker' stations in Magadan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which just send out a long, unending sequence consisting of one letter ('M' for Magadan, 'K' for Kamchatka) in Morse Code, over and over again.
THEN, THE EERIE CHANTING.....
I tuned lower, hearing talk in SE Asian languages, in sideband (LSB) -- something I hadn't noticed before. The transmissions were apparently unlicensed, or otherwise illegal, as nowhere in the world can hams talk on sideband on or near 7000 kHz. The IARU states that only CW / Morse Code can be used between 7000-7030 kHz. So these transmissions were ham pirate transmissions.
Then I tuned even lower -- and that's when I first heard the chanting, somewhere around 6999 kHz. It sounded very eerie -- like some sort of primeval religious rite, and the phasing and fading quality of shortwave made it seem even more weird and exotic. Then it stopped. Then it started again. Then it stopped. Then there was just some talking in some SE Asian language between 4 or 5 guys.
The language I was hearing sounded like Tagalog or Malay -- I didn't know what language it was, but it definitely sounded SE Asian.
The stations never gave out call signs, and their frequencies were illegal for people to be talking on, as the 40 Meter ham band stops at 7000 kHz, and anything lower is "no-go territory", at least legally -- and this rule is worldwide.
That made these talkers and chanters "pirate hams", i.e., illegal ham stations.
I heard these 'pirate chanters' a few more times over the Winter of 2002-2003, but mostly I heard them talking instead of chanting. And the language intrigued me. I assumed they were fishermen, or possibly Malaysian, Philippine, or Indonesian mariners.
In 2002-2003 I didn't pay enough attention to the pirate hams because I was very busy tuning the Shortwave Broadcast bands -- hearing all sorts of cool stuff, from Vividh Bharati's Indian movie music, to RTM Malaysia's station in Kuching, Sarawak; to the BBC broadcasting out of Singapore; to Singapore's SBC station, broadcasting in English, Chinese and Tamil; to Bayern Rundfunk and all sorts of interesting broadcast stations. Unlike today, the 49, 41 and 31 meter bands were packed with signals to listen to and ID.
So the SE Asian language pirate hams were put on the back burner for a few years.
And after 2004 I took a break from SW DXing, and frankly, I didn't give the chanting pirate hams a thought for several years.
BACK TO THE RADIOS IN 2011, AND THE CHANTERS ARE STILL THERE!
When I got back into the hobby in 2011, I started hearing these pirate chanters nearly every morning, and even though I was using slightly different equipment (a Realistic DX-390 and DX-398, primarily -- along with my 25 ft. / 8 meter indoor wire), the pirate hams were quite audible, and sometimes I could hear them talking, chanting, and doing more talking, sometimes as late as 9-10 a.m.
Most of all, I found the chanting to be very bizarre and intriguing.
Here's the best video I could find of this 'pirate chanter' phenomenon, which I found in 2012. The DXer recorded it in 2009, and it sounds just like I heard it on my radios. He calls them the "Lima Pirates", because a) they are technically pirate hams -- illegal hams, and b) one of the louder chanters says "leee-mah! leee-mah!" a lot. I also heard "Leee-mah!" being chanted a lot during the early 2010's when I heard these folks doing their thing. Have a listen.:
The video was posted to YT by an Australian DXer, who used a Sangean ATS-505 (similar to my Radio Shack 200629). I am pretty sure this is the recording I found in 2012, when I did searches and some research on the "Lima Pirate" phenomenon.
Another Australian posted this video -- also around 2012, of some 'Lima Pirate' chanting.:
This DXer, who used a Kaito radio, also recorded a little bit of the banter in Indonesian in 2017, and a commenter gave some useful info on the way these Indonesian Pirate hams operate. He described it as a sort of radio based, bravado contest.:
This DXer, using a Philippine WebSDR, recorded some "Lima Pirate" chanters just a year ago.:
Indonesian "Bandracers" aka Lima Pirates aka Bizarre Chanting (7000kHz LSB, 1000+ UTC) (youtube.com)
So, obviously, this pirate ham phenomenon has been going on since at least the Winter of 2002-2003, when I first heard them.
And it seems that one of the monikers for these unique, illegal ham operators is "Lima Pirates".
VERY LITTLE INFORMATION, EVEN ON HAM FORUMS & WEBSITES
Anyway, in 2012 I set my mind to find out just who, and what, these chanting "pirate hams" or "Lima Pirates" are. After all, they were taking up at least 40 kHz of one of the most popular amateur radio bands, so one would think there would be plenty of information available.
And by 2012, the WorldWideWeb had pretty much became standard issue media -- nearly everyone had used it at least a few times by then, especially ham radio people. So you'd think there would be plenty of information on this illegal transmission phenomenon, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Mostly, I got dead ends. There was a ham radio operator in Australia who mentioned Indonesian ham pirates on the 40 meter band on his blog. I emailed him, asking what he knew about the phenomenon. I never got an answer.
I checked out the ham radio forums, and some websites for ham radio societies. I searched them for info on illegal, pirate ham activity on 7000 kHz and therabouts. I came up with nothing.
That was odd -- think about it: your ham band has illegal operators talking and chanting between 7000-7040 kHz, and it's clearly audible 12,000 miles away, and you aren't talking about it at all? I found that strange.
I found web pages put up by Indonesian and Malaysian hams. Still, I found no mention anywhere of the high numbers of illegal ham pirates talking from 6900-7040 kHz in their region. It was the usual pictures of ham gear, club stations, towers, etc.
I finally found one website operated by the International Amateur Radio Union, with reports by hams who monitor the ham bands for intruders, and -- after all -- technically, these "Lima Pirates" were intruders. In the IARU's reports I did find some information on the chanters in the listings: they were called "Asian, Village Radio", with the source of the pirates being 'INS', i.e. Indonesia. You can read one of the reports here.:
Most of these reports of the "Lima Pirate" activity were recorded by a couple Australian and NZ hams. There are other such reports here on the IARU site.:
The pages here are from 2012, because that's the page I found when I first did my research.
So now I had the pirate hams located in Indonesia. Somehow these Australian and NZ hams knew that the chanters and talkers were in Indonesia, even if their reports gave no further information about the phenomenon. That would make the language they were speaking the Indonesian form of Malay -- Bahasa Indonesia.
They called it "Village Radio". That begged the question: what's Village Radio?
I did searches on Village Radio. I came up with nothing, aside from just one mention on some missionary's blog, where he mentioned that some villages in the remote areas of Kalimantan (Borneo) had ham radio transceivers at one main building in the village, and those radios were used by villagers to talk to the outside world, because at the time, there was no internet there, little if any cell or phone service -- ham radio (illegal ham radio) was IT.
I wish I would have kept that missionary's website's address, because I can't find it now. It's ten years later, and a lot of blogs have disappeared. Searches today, using the three main search engines, of course, bring up nothing.
Meanwhile, I kept listening to these fascinating transmissions in 2012, and one morning the 40 Meter ham band was open late, until around 9-10 a.m., and I heard several guys on my DX-398 -- all talking in Bahasa Indonesian. They were chatting up a young sounding woman, who said she was in the Philippines. The propagation to SE Asia was crisp and clear that a.m., with the conversation sounding like CB radio did during its heyday.
One of the guys said he was in Kalimantan, Indonesia -- Indonesian Borneo. The guy and the Filipina seemed to be having fun talking -- if I remember it was a combination of Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, and perhaps some English thrown in.
Eventually, I determined, through the little information that was available anywhere, that Kalimantan indeed has a lot of these ham pirates, because Kalimantan is sort of the Wild West of Indonesia. There is a lot of lumbering going on, and it's not quite as populated as the other parts of Indonesia. I also was able to determine, from the guy saying he was in Kalimantan, that the language was indeed Bahasa Indonesia. So that helped.
ENTER HF UNDERGROUND... A FORUM DEALING WITH SW MYSTERIES
Some time before August, 2012, I joined the SW website HF Underground, which covers nearly all subjects SW, MW, FM, and DXing, and even covers some ham radio, too. The site caters mainly to the aficionados of pirate radio activity, especially SW radio pirate stations.
But the forums on HFU have a lot of loggings and talk about nearly every unusual signal you'll come across on the Shortwave spectrum -- from unlicensed mini-beacons that put out dits and dahs in the 4 MHz spectrum, to strange military transmissions, to the illegal transmissions of the "Peskies" -- fishermen who use HF tranceivers illegally to talk, joke, laugh, swear, and whatever, often just below the 40 meter ham band.
On the East Coast of the US most of these "Peskies" (short for Pescadores -- "fishermen") talk in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. But on the West Coast we hear them in Japanese, Korean, some Chinese, and -- yes -- Indonesian.
I found a thread on HFUnderground where a guy had been talking about these "chanting Peskies", and he wasn't sure of the language. He posted a sound clip. It sounded like the Bahasa Indonesia pirate hams I had been hearing. I told him about my experiences in hearing the Indonesians chanting in Bahasa Indonesian. Another forum poster mentioned that some of the words heard in one of the sound files posted was "ganti" -- Bahasa Indonesian for "over". That forum poster, a DXer in Norway, also may have led me to the IARU reports mentioned previously.
Then I started hearing these pirate ham guys using the word "ganti" when they were just talking to each other -- they'd use the word the same way we English speakers say "over".
THE CHANTING IS A SORT OF RADIO GAME
It was then that I also determined that the chanting is a game. I noticed a pattern: one guy would be talking with a few others. Then he'd say "Go!" Then a bunch of the others would all be chanting a single word or phrase, over and over again. Then they'd stop. Then the main guy would say a few words. Then I'd hear a click. Then I'd hear the same exact chanting I just heard previously, the same exact words. The tonal aspects of the sound, of course, was slightly different, but the chanting was an exact replica.
In other words, it was a recording.
After listening further, I noticed the same pattern, being repeated. One main guy would say a few words. Then he'd say "Go!". Then there would be a ton of chanting. Then they'd stop. Then the main guy would say a few words. Then the replica of the chanting would be played over the main guy's radio. A recording. They were recording the shouts and chants -- as if it was some sort of game, to determine who's radio gets out better.
On the HFU forum that August, some of the others agreed that it sounded like a call and response, recording and playback sort of thing.
You can read the entire HFU thread here.:
And while you're there, check out the rest of HFUnderground. It's fascinating reading. A lot of the posters there are quite knowledgeable about nearly ANYTHING you'll hear on the SW/HF spectrum, and a lot of them are knowledgeable about radios and antennas, too.
Here's the link to the basic forum. The HFU site also has a Wiki on all sorts of radio subjects. It's a great site for DX'ers.:
SO WHO AND WHAT IS 'LIMA', ANYWAY?
So, now that we've figured it's a game -- similar to the bravado one would hear on the CB band in the US, during the heyday of CB in the 70's-90's ("You don't get out, ha ha" / "I get out better than you!" / "you've got a 10-9 station, ha ha") -- there's one obvious question left: Who's "Lima"?
Although I don't have a concrete answer to that question, I do think the answer is fairly obvious: If you're running some sort of competition over the airwaves, to see which station gets out the most, there has GOT to be identifiers for the stations. Otherwise, the contest really is of no use.
My guess is that "Lima" is, or was, the name, or nickname of a guy who had one of the unlicensed ham stations in Kalimantan. If you listen closely you hear these various names, or words, repeated -- usually two or three syllables at most. They've got to be the names, or "handles", of the operators -- maybe the name of the guy who owns or runs the station, or, if the "Village Radio" concept actually is a thing -- maybe it's the name of a village or location.
I've heard "Lima!" and -- more recently --"Wa-Cha-Pi!", and a bunch of other words and short phrases repeated during these chants over the years. In 2012 I noted that I heard a guy repeating loudly "Da-Nam! Da-Nam! Da-Nam!". Another guy was shouting "Nga! Nga! Nga!"
Some on the internet speculated it was chanting the Koran, or perhaps some other religious phrase or text, but this is nothing like the Koran chants one sometimes hears on Saudi Arabian and other official SW radio stations, where verses from the Surahs are sung. And these aren't really phrases they're shouting into the mic. This is nicknames or handles, obviously.
It would seem more probable that they're very similar to the CB "handles" used in the CB band.
There's no other viable conclusion to be made.
THE 'LIMA PIRATES' ARE STILL ON THE AIR, DOING THEIR THING
Amazingly enough, it's 12 years later and these 'Lima Pirates' -- Indonesian ham pirate stations -- are still on the air, talking, chatting, and chanting. I heard some chanting a few mornings ago, and this previous a.m. (May 28th) I heard a lot of talking, and even some chanting on 6975 kHz (see the pic of my Radio Shack 200629 just above -- I took it when I was hearing the 'Lima Pirates' chanting). It still seems to be the fun thing for them to do, I guess.
On the 26th, I heard some chanting on 6925 kHz, with the loudest guy chanting "Wah-Cha-Pi! Wah-Cha-Pi!" on my Panasonic RF-B45 (+wire antenna). That was around 1250 UTC (5:50 a.m. Pacific Time). I also heard some talk in Malay or Bahasa Indonesia, where the guys were saying "ganti" (over) during their convo.
During that same morning, I heard what sounded like Malay or Bahasa Indonesia on 10145 kHz, 10155 kHz, and possibly some Bahasa Indonesian speech on 7040 kHz (all around 1230 UTC). So they may talk on other frequencies, but the chanting seems to remain around 7000 kHz or just below.
It's still odd that there is so very little info on these Indonesian ham pirates. Not that their activity being unlicensed or illegal is very shocking or off-putting, but one would think that their activity would be mentioned more often in ham radio and DX circles, especially when the Indonesian ham pirates often take up 40 kHz of prime, 40 Meter ham band territory. But it isn't.
So, for those of you who are in the Pacific or Indian Ocean regions -- anywhere from India to Australia and NZ, to the West Coast of North or South America, and probably eastern Asia as well -- tune your SW radio to the 6900-7040 kHz spectrum, switch on the SSB (LSB, mostly), and tune around. You may hear the chanting of the Indonesian "Lima Pirates". If I can hear them on my Radio Shack 200629 and 25 ft. / 8 meters of wire, you can, too.
And even if you're not in the areas I mentioned, you still may hear them. In 2012 a DXer in Texas seems to have heard them, and a DXer in Northeast Florida heard them back then. With the Solar Cycle picking up, it's worth a try, to be able to hear these fascinating SW transmissions.
Until next time, my friends,
Peace.
C.C. May 28th, 2024.
May 29th: I added a section "Who Is Lima?" and also changed the top pic, as the first one was a bit dark and drab. I moved that pic down to the bottom half of the article. The replacement pic, of course, is dark, because I DX in the dark (easier to concentrate on what I'm hearing); but the new pic of the Panasonic looks a bit better. And I was listening to these chanters and unlicensed operators when I took it. I also made a couple small edits here and there... typos, etc.
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