Hobby Broadcasting Blog: http://hobbybroadcasting.blogspot.com/. All you need is a location to host the antenna and access to electricity unless you've got batteries, then just the location.". ( Disclaimer) Transcript: MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Welcome to "More Than 7 Dirty Words," the official FCC podcast. 16 days ago. So they thought that was a way for them to avoid detection by hopping from building to building and frequency to frequency. We want them to be as descriptive as possible. It could be computers, antennas, coaxial cables. Now that maybe gets us down to the building, you know, where it might be operating. Now all those things have one thing in common. MR. DOMBROWSKI: And let them know. It helps to show that -- That's a deterrent in itself right there when you get media coverage. Addeddate 2022-03-13 23:21:58 . To track pirates, you'll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. But the FCC, Congress and the commercial broadcasting industry don't see the pirates as serving such a benign purpose. I mean you got to give it to Congress for the bill naming that they do. To have a radio station here helps to establish the station's operator as an important source of information and influence in the community.". As Yoder goes on to explain in his introduction of the 2012 Pirate Radio Annual, pirates are often confused with radio bootleggers (who conduct unlicensed two-way conversations), clandestine stations (usually political stations), and jammers (who intentionally try to block broadcasts). Winning a con. Marshals went in with us and we seized the equipment. Nothing. The Radio Informer - The latest info on the world of radio including:world,shortwave . It's about $200,000 worth of equipment. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. Across the country FCC officials are working to identify and take action against illegal unlicensed radio operators using frequencies allocated for legitimate radio operators that are causing interference and other issues. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So there are no doubt some good samaritans listening to this show that want nothing more than to help with the scourge of pirate radio. 10. tyson jost dad; sean penn parkinson's disease; mockingbirds attacking my cat So for that period of time they lose communications and they have to try to find another available channel to keep that communication line open. Thank you! It had a 20-mile range. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.7 GB (in 25,393 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. "He convinced me to not stay on as Bond I'd be in danger of becoming part of the Establishment," Lazenby wrote on in an Instagram tribute after O'Rahilly's death in April 2020, noting that he had no regrets about taking that advice. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, very creative on that, wasn't it? Not all the illegal stations are pirate stations! North American Pirate Radio Frequencies By far the most active ranges in North America are 43 meters (6800-7000 kHz), 46 meters (6200-6400 kHz) and 73 meters (4000-4200 kHz), with some activity in the 60 meter band (4700-5300 kHz) as well. Collection Info. The antenna is not where the people are necessarily or where the rest of the equipment is. Be careful to. But if you are buying something off of the dark web or whatever and it's coming into the U.S. you don't know, and when we talked before the show you mentioned that a lot of times with these FAA complaints it's a malfunctioning transmitter. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Got you. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well that's what I went up with. Loggings are in real time and there are very fewif anyoff-topic posts. In fact, it's possibly more widespread than it was in the 1960s, even in an age when streaming internet services such as Spotify and Pandora put the equivalent of a jukebox in the pocket of everyone with a smartphone. Yoder actually addresses this apparent restriction, to some degree, in the 2013 Pirate Radio Annual, which has only just been released. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: Patrick J. Kiger Oh, it happens a lot, especially in these urban areas like New York. If you are given ten choices make sure the one you actually one is your eighth choice because that's going to be the one that you get. I decoded this Wolverine Radio SSTV QSL on the SSTV iOS App. "The government decided that radio was too influential as a means of mass communication to be in private hands," Peter Moore explains in an email. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And it's important to clarify that FCC enforcement agents are not law enforcement agents, but I was struck by how some of the work that goes into identifying and shutting down a station is like good old-fashioned police work, like knocking on doors saying, hey, have you seen anything weird, have you seen people carrying around transmitters or antennas. The most popular frequency used by U.S. and Canadian pirate radio stations is 6925 kHz, transmitting in the AM or upper sideband (USB) modes. It was the strongest pirate station I have ever witnessed. They just twist the dial. A lot of times the studio is not co-located with the transmitter. As this 2009 article from the Independent, a British newspaper, details, O'Rahilly obtained a 63-ton (57-metric ton), Danish passenger ferry, the MV Frederica, and renamed it Caroline, after the daughter of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy. And so he kind of gets shielded, right, you know the operators who are operating the station because they advertise their phone numbers in social media and so we can easily identify them, but you always have somebody that's the money guy that's safely hiding behind all these other staff and --. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: There is not a sign on the box that says illegal pirate radio transmitters. To track pirates, youll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. Now some folks might be asking themselves this is all great, I totally agree that pirate radio is bad, and I think that you should absolutely go after it, but what about the First Amendment? MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, we have a lot of stations in New York, in particular. Our agents are pretty smart on the tricks. Unlike the rock 'n' roll hipsters of 1960s British pirate radio, who aimed at a mass audience, most of Brooklyn's unlicensed broadcasters seem to be immigrants and members of ethnic and religious minorities trying to reach their own groups and neighborhoods. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Pirate radio. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: All right. We do that with every pirate station. Our agency was delegated by Congress to allocate frequencies and allocate it in the public interest and it's a resource. It's not. He's the station manager for today's legal, land-based version of Radio Caroline, which obtained a license to broadcast at 648 Khz on the AM band in 2017, but still strives to preserve the rebellious spirit of the original operation. PIRATES RADIO NETWORK AFFILIATES Pennsylvania PITTSBURGH: KDKA-FM 93.7 Altoona: WVAM-AM 1430 Ambridge: WMBA-AM 1460 Beaver Falls: WBVP-AM 1230 Bradford: WESB-AM 1490 Butler: WISR-AM 680 Indeed, since pirates are operating at lower power, they get much more bang-for-the-watt out of SSB. Friday March 17, 1989 5:00 am. But so when we say Region One I think even most people in the FCC are not necessarily aware of how the country is carved up when it comes to enforcement and the field offices, et cetera, so can you give the listeners a brief sense of what do we mean by Region One, what areas do you cover? (Disclaimer). "By playing nonstop current pop music in a situation where this had never before been available, Caroline had within months a larger audience than all the BBC stations combined," Moore explains. Additionally, we always try to include links to other retail options if they are available, as we support and freely advertise independent ham radio retailers. It will also help to have some sort of adjustable bandwidth filter (wide/narrow). So somebody that hasn't invested a lot of money in equipment and the single processing to make it sound richer you could tell if you have an ear to it, our agents can do that. It takes a lot of time to process just one complaint and so it is distracting our agents of getting into the database and populating all the fields and calling the complainant. Many of our links now function as affiliate links. Why? So when the FCC licenses FM stations those stations are generally not going to interfere with aeronautical operations because we make sure that they are not. Open up the transmitter Locate the seam on the transmitter's case and pry it open with a putty knife (if your transmitter is screwed shut, you'll need a screwdriver to open it). While the magic of shortwave radio can transport a small signal vast distances, to hear pirates regularly and clearly, some precision is required. They are very low power and the range of them are very small. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. If we are out there just gathering evidence for the first time our agents will go to the door, they will identify themselves with their badge. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Oh, that's probably why they are complaining, right? So that's been great because now we can work with the local authorities, such as the police or the district attorney's office, and get them involved in the investigation, and they have the power to arrest and fine people. A lot of times you can tell by the audio quality. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. MR. DOMBROWSKI: You know, that's hard to say. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. And what the pirate radio operators do is they don't obtain a license, they don't go through this process, and they try to find vacant spectrum between these stations. More areas, more just the urban areas. comment. So when we license stations, you know, I used to work in the FM branch so I am very knowledgeable about the process, but there is a whole legal and engineering study that has to be done before you get a license and it takes resources to do that, financial resources. David, thanks so much for joining. The government authorities in charge of the surveillance of the radio-electric spectrum can use the PROWATCH instruments to detect and locate the pirate and irregular broadcast stations of radio and TV. 2. Now this is not just a focus of the FCC, Congress is also interested in this. Total Views 29,203 (Older Stats) ITEMS. Broadcasting at 250,000 watts, XERF was five times as powerful as the most high-powered Top 40 AM stations on the West Coast. It would create chaos if we allowed them. It lasted three years there and then I had an opportunity to get to the Philadelphia Office Enforcement Bureau with the field work and that's been -- I was there for 20 years. Do you hear it any other time, you know, at night time? Well we did go to the courts, we got the warrant, and the U.S. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It is. Let's say they are listening, they think something is suspicious they get a tip, they see something weird in their building, what can they do to help you and the FCC tackle this problem? Marshal Service and seize all of the equipment that is associated with the operation of a radio station, really anything physically connected to the transmitter. That would be inappropriate, particularly given my employer, but is it hard for the average listener, particularly in a dense metro area, you're dialing your car radio or your home radio to even know the difference? So it's not just that a pirate radio station might be harming other radio stations, which is bad in and of itself and could pose a public safety risk with emergency communications, but we're talking serious stuff when we talk about FAA and air traffic control. Click here to view a list of all sponsors. 123. The history of pirate radio stations is inextricably linked with the development of countless genres, including hip-hop, garage, punk, and grime. But O'Rahilly was undeterred, even after his ship was seized briefly by Dutch authorities. So how do you escalate the situation, you know, what tools do you have to say, okay, we're not getting cooperation let's take this up a notch? The important thing here is that you invest in a receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity. "In Haiti during the Duvalier regime, people depended on radio to get news from independent sources off the island. This radio in a single case is also capable of re-broadcasting any audio source. April 8, 2015 - 10:43 am. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes, in those dense urban areas because the FM band is already pretty clogged up with legitimate stations that might be one of the reasons that people throw up their hands and say, well, I guess I'm just do an illegal station because I am frustrated by the legal process for getting a station, but that is not a justification in any sense of the word. I have four offices, it includes Chicago, it includes Boston, New York, and Columbia, Maryland. I was hired into an engineering training program down in Norfolk, Virginia, where we got classroom orientation on all the different radio services and the bureaus and offices for the FCC. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and listeners "flushed" their former stations as they. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes, so you have options. "He was waiting several months to come back on the air (and therefore was only willing to speak off the record to me). Keep in mind that pirates are relatively low-power broadcasters. After the reorganization and modernization of the field I then became the Regional Director and manage several offices now. Set up your Raspberry Pi You'll need to get Raspbian, the Linux-based operating system for the Raspberry Pi. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: No. I mean they have a significant financial investment in their stations, they have gone through proper FCC process, and now they are competing for listeners with stations that did not go through that process, did not necessarily bear the same financial burden to get up and running, and they are not maybe just competing with listeners, as we have mentioned we've been competing with, they are competing with advertisers as well. You might need that sensitivity and an outdoor antenna to pull these relatively low-powered signals from the ether. Additionally, youll find contact information for QSL requests and mail-drop addresses as well. Of course, the chaos of the radio spectrum was one of the reasons this agency was created in the first place, including our predecessor agency The Federal Radio Commission, but there are other issues that broadcasters in particular complain about. Among the most popular queries made by readers is, How can I find and hear pirate radio stations? To help answer this question, Im writing this primer. Are we talking about U.S. marshals with machine guns kicking in doors, are we talking about politely knocking on a door and saying, hey, guys, your time is up, we found you, you know, what's the image that essentially you see when this goes down in your experience or is there kind of a spectrum of different cases, some are a little bit more intense than others? MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And then just out of those four offices you then have to dispatch agents to 20 different States, so it's quite a big chunk of the country in terms of population. Radio and electronics were my hobbies. Select a station from the list and it will play on the tuner. Many are confused by the term pirate radio, otherwise known as free radio. Either term is sufficient, and some stations prefer one designation or the other. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. They were also changing frequency. A lot of stations conceal their antennas, they hide behind things, they take the antennas down during they day, so they try avoid detection. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, well just in the FM band particularly, if we just let everybody operate where they want it just creates chaos, and that's always been our argument that it creates chaos it the spectrum. * Shows you how to find pirate stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online radios. But they secure the property for us so that we feel safe going in there and then we help them identify what equipment we need to seize. I used a pneumatic spud gun to launch an arborist's bag to deploy my 50' end fed antenna 40' up into a tree. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. But sometimes it is very difficult with those stations that have put more investment into the equipment. My most recent logging of a Euro pirate from North America was Radio Borderhunter on 15,500 kHz; his signal was quite amazing. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Do the pilots only complain if it's a song that they don't like? There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. You know, is this a massive national problem, are there particular areas where it's a problem? I believe this is why authorities like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) place shortwave pirates comparatively lower on their enforcement priority list. They also have potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel stations, you know, up above their frequency and below their frequency. In January, President Donald Trump signed into law the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement (PIRATE) Act, which gives regulators the ability to hit pirate stations with fines of up to $2 million, according to this summary from Radio World. I asked him why he would still take the risk to go back on air and he said he wanted to reach the homeless, the shut-ins, the elderly who couldn't access the internet.". Whether youre a QSL collector, a content DXer, or the casual SWLer, I find theres something in pirate radio listening for everyone. In the late 1980s, unlicensed operators tried broadcasting from a Honduran-flag freighter in the waters off Long Island, according to The New York Times. Listening to Other Stations: Click on the tuning arrows ( TUNE >) to listen to stations up and down the dial. 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