there's a college in MN that used to use a wire radio. Basically it transmitted through the electrical wires. They acted as the transmitter, so that only radios VERY close to the wires could pick it up. If you went even 15 feet off campus, you'd lose the signal. That let them get a much less expensive radio license since their effective range was something like 6.5 feet. Only trouble is that the grounds crew decided they needed to install these big tall metal lamps all over campus for safety reasons. Lamps acted as a big antenna. Suddenly their range was much higher, and they wound up being forced to upgrade their license, at which point they upgraded their transmitter to a real one.
Nothing to do with pirate radio, but I always thought it was kind of a neat story.
Oh, and if you wanna run pirate radio my best advice is to get two CD players with backtime (counts down to 0 instead of counting up for it's time display) and cue capability (this will let you play songs without big pauses in the middle of it.)
Wouldn't hurt you to get a minidisc player or two as well. With these, you can preproduce bits such as sweepers, or even hour long radio shows so you can run a show without having to be there.
Disassemble one of those old swing-arm desk lamps (the ones with the springs). Take the lamp itself off, and use gaffers tape to tape a mic holder onto the end. Then clip your mic onto that. You now have a very cheap movable microphone. To get better sound, avoiding big thunks when you make "p" sounds, get a small embroidery hoop and stretch a pair of pantyhose over the hoop. Clip that in front of the microphone. Instant pop filter.
You will also need some sort of mixer. I'd recommend a live mixer rather than a production mixer. This will be set up to make it easy to turn audio sources on and off. It'll also auto-mute your monitor speaker when you turn the mic on.
Then you'll need a transmitter. Good luck finding one. Make sure you find out what its rated wattage is and do not even think of exceeding it or you'll wreck things.
Make sure your transmitter antenna can't ice up, either by wrapping deicing coils around it or by living in Florida. If it ices up it increases the SWR (signal-to-wave-ratio). In layman's terms it starts feeding a lot the transmitter's power back into the transmitter. This is a good way to wreck a transmitter. And since it's a pirate radio, find somewhere to effectively hide the antenna, because broadcast antennas are pretty easy to spot, and you don't need to be giving your location away that easilly.
If you're not gonna apply for a noncom FCC license, do NOT run the station too often or at regular times, because I guarantee you will get people (legit radio stations) complaining to the FCC. I've even heard of some cases where station engineers get pissed off enough at the pirate who's screwing up their systems that they went out and triangulated his position themselves, then showed up at his door for a beat-down party.
Keep the range to a low roar. If it gets outside your neighborhood, you only increase the likelihood that it will be noticed by someone you would prefer not to have noticed.
never identify yourself by your real name (hey, it's happened. Duh).
It would not hurt to read up on the FCC requirements for on-air performance. If you break the requirements and you're caught running the station, you can not only be nailed for running it, but you can be nailed for all the stuff you did wrong while you ran it.
BTW, yes, it's true, you can say "fuck" on the air now, provided it's not a noun or a verb. i.e. "fuck you" is illegal, as is "he's a fuckhead." "Nice fuckin' car" is OK however. (yes, the FCC is royally fu . . . well you get the picture
btw, don't do what the pump up the volume guy did - if you give out a phone number, then the fcc knows where to look for you