That's part of it, right, and you rely on some cooperation in some instances to get it done. And that's a pretty big deterrent when you show up with police officers threatening to arrest somebody because they are operating a pirate radio station. Pirate radio operators usually have day jobslike most of usthus only transmit while home from work. You know, when they do that they get a ticket number when they file the ticket online so the broadcasters can call us and find out, let us know that they filed the complaint and follow up with us. "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. SWARZTRAUBER: Is that a point of pride for you from Philadelphia? Searching for an FM radio station on your car radio is quite easy. It might be illegal in terms of IRS about the taxes that aren't be collected off the exchange of funds in the business that's going on behind doors. URL Here: https://dkng.co/rogue-----For entertainment purposes only. And so, yes, we may -- We have a warrant for the property. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Oh, yes. We do let stations operate with low power transmitters but they have to comply with the technical requirements of Part 15 of our rules. Radio GDay came on from Australia occasionally, but no one else. Has it gotten worse, has it gotten better? David, thanks so much for joining. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes, and it's also I assume illegal for these advertisers to be advertising on pirate stations, they just might not know that they are pirates. 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. There was a case that I worked back in Philly back in the day --. Andrew Yoder, author and publisher of the 2012 Pirate Radio Annual, defines pirate radio as: [A]ny unlicensed hobby broadcast operation that is using more power than the legal limit.. Do you hear it on the weekends or is only a station that operates during the weekends? "Pirate Radio" is a period piece, set in a time when the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the Who's "My Generation" were still scandalous and controversial rather than nostalgic anthems for today's aging baby boomers. This book makes it easier for you to locate and tune in pirate stationsand tells you all about the unlicensed broadcasters who play David to broadcasting conglomerates Goliath. Not just Aussie and NZ pirates, but stations in places like The Phillipinesmaybe Japan, South Korea, or Thailand. The British government, though, didn't appreciate what Radio Caroline and other pirate broadcasters were doing. Director Richard Curtis' 2009 comedy-drama stars the late Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, a disc jockey for an unlicensed rock radio station that broadcast from a rusty, decrepit ship off the British coast in the mid-1960s, defying government authorities to spin the rock records that weren't allowed on the BBC at the time. South America was strong for a while in the 90s, but that has also fallen silent. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So we have fines that we could issue. 1. Has that happened? Now this is not just a focus of the FCC, Congress is also interested in this. 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 --. Last updated: December 2022 MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Just because it's easy to buy it doesn't mean it's legal. Wolves are looking to climb up the table (Picture: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images) This will be the fourth time this year the two . Weve now covered the who, what, where, when, and how of pirate huntingbut what about why? It would identify what are the legitimate stations and also identify what stations we sanctioned so they could better get an understanding, you know, is this a legitimate station I am hearing or not. Is this something that plays a role in alerting you to these stations that broadcasters themselves are identifying them and complaining about them? 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. We have language to kind of consider them an operator, so they could be liable for a fine and we do issue them a warning letter. 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. And, of course, just finding the antenna is not the end of the story, because it's not like when you find the antenna the DJ is standing right next to the antenna being like, uh, you got me. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, and some of these are in high crime areas where there is a lot of drugs. Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. So when we finally are able to pick up the signal in our car we then drive in the area in kind of a circle around the source and we plot lines, we call them lines of bearing on a map, and where they intersect is where this transmission source is originating. So we eventually went to the courts and fought. It has become more common for pirates to transmit images using SSTV.A few have experimented with FM or digital modes like RTTY, PSK31 . It will also help to have some sort of adjustable bandwidth filter (wide/narrow). MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Pirate radio. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: We're not using an FM spectrum for this podcast. Give me an address or an intersection in the town that you are picking it up on. For example, though Im a ham radio operator, I had never even attempted to decode the SSTV (slow-scan TV) mode until prompted to do so by Wolverine Radio: at the end (and sometimes in the middle) of their broadcasts, Wolverine is known to send electronic QSL cards via SSTV. We have had cases where we have gone in on in rem seizures and found drug paraphernalia inside the building and so that becomes now a law enforcement issue and they take care of that, they handle that situation. "Private radio was prohibited and only the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was part of the political establishment, sent radio to the British people with the remit to be morally uplifting, informative and educational," Moore says. Fortunately for the beginning pirate-hunter, there are now online message boards, free radio logs, and even publications (like Yoders excellent treatise on the subject) to help guide your tuning (see resource links below). Alan Roes Music Programmes on Shortwave, List of QRP General Coverage Amateur Radio Transceivers, List of VHF/UHF Multimode Amateur Radio Transceivers, How To Tune In Pirate Radio Broadcasts on Shortwave, https://swling.com/blog/category/pirate-radio/, LRA 36 (Arcangel San Gabriel, Antarctica) Test Broadcasts on March 1st and 4th, 2023, Radio Waves: AM Buzzkill, AM FEMA Push, AM Devitalization, and RFI-Blocking Chips, Bob Zanottis presentation to the Fairlawn Amateur Radio Club (Part 2), Radio Waves: The DLARC, NASA Citizen Science, PopShopRadio DRM to Europe, Hackers Disrupt Russian Radio, and Afghan Radio Closures, LRA 36 (Arcangel San Gabriel, Antarctica) Test Broadcast Today at 20:00 UTC. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Ten times as much, that's big, yes. ACTIVITY. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And that is obviously at the highest importance when we are talking about public safety. Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. It had a 20-mile range. Though Channel Z was broadcasting in AM, as many do, its best to hunt pirates with an SSB-capable portable. In 1967, Parliament enacted the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, which made offshore broadcasts from ships illegal, on the pretext that their broadcast interfered with marine weather radio and distress signals, as this contemporaneous New York Times account notes. Everyone should agree that pirate radio stations - by any definition - are completely illegal. 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. It would create chaos if we allowed them. 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 The important thing here is that you invest in a receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity. Euro pirates typically broadcast in the 48 meter band (6,200 6,450 kHz), but the HF Underground notes that you will also hear Euro pirates on the 75 meter band between 3,900-4,000 kHz, on the 19 meter band (15,000-15,100 kHz and 15,700-15,900 kHz), and even on the 13 meter band (21,000-25,000 kHz). The bulk of the pirate radio broadcasters I log transmit just below the 40-meter amateur radio band: anywhere from 6,850 kHz to 6,970 kHz and typically on a frequency spaced at 5 kHz. 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. Here's a test shot without the line or antenna attached. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, it may not start to cause interference as soon as you open up and out of the box and operate it, but over time with the heating up of the electronics inside it starts to malfunction and cause what we call spurius emissions where signals are operating outside your intended band and cause interference to other radio services. Additionally, you can always tune a remote receiver, via the Internet on the Global Tuners website, or via the University of Twentes SDR in the Netherlands. . Other times though you might have reason to suspect that they are in on it, they are getting a kickback. And so it ranges from Maine down to Virginia and all the States east of Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. April 8, 2015 - 10:43 am. 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. Pirate cards are among the most unusual of QSL cards, that often incorporate obscure or vintage imageryhumor, horror, or other graphic oddityor cast the pirate in a unique character representation. Pirate radio stations are unlicensed broadcasters. 19. r/HamRadio. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And obviously as a good citizen I have never to my knowledge listened to a pirate radio station. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Right. Again, they are not law enforcement, so we don't have weapons. So that is quite a large area. "He was waiting several months to come back on the air (and therefore was only willing to speak off the record to me). Even then, though, Radio Caroline wouldn't go away. These include Amateur Radio Newsline, a weekly audio news [] Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. Ragnar Daneskjold hosts an occasional podcast serving the shortwave pirate community; it includes pirate radio news, off-air recordings, and more. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well it depends what level we are at with the investigation. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, there was a case back in the 1990s, late 1990s. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It's kind of sad to see, but --. As soon as there were laws on the books, there were pirate radio stations on the air. Indeed, since pirates are operating at lower power, they get much more bang-for-the-watt out of SSB. We have had meetings with broadcast associations where we went a room with other broadcasters and that's a very big concern of them, the financial end of it. He got the craft back and kept at pirate radio for nearly another quarter century. If you have information about a pirate radio station, you can notify the FCC by calling 888-CALLFCC or filing a complaint online at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov. And so we need to make sure that we stop the importation of this equipment, we stop the marketing of these illegal transmitters. Though pirates can be located anywhere on the planet, and therefore can broadcast, hypothetically, anywhere on the radio dial, patterns are actually fairly predictable in order to draw a listening audience. MR. DOMBROWSKI: The majority of the people do not give us truthful information and so our agents have to be trained to do interviews to know when people are telling the truth or not and it may just require keep asking the right questions and keeping after it. So we get complaints from the FAA quite often, more than a few times a month in New York, and that the pilots are flying over the city and they are trying to communicate with air traffic control and all of a sudden they pick up a radio station. Enter a location to find a nearby pirate radio stations. This station was operated in Pennsauken, New Jersey, which is right across the river from Philadelphia, and it covered the entire Philadelphia area. Click here to view a list of all sponsors. bclc lotto app not working; signs your internship will turn into a job; mary suehr schmitz. You still have to go down on foot and go out onto maybe the rooftop where the antenna is to confirm that that is the source. It is portable, but can also be used as a permanent FM radio station. But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. The most popular frequency is arguably 6,925 kHz, but I often log pirates on 6,935 and 6,950 kHz. It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. It's a very calm, peaceful, that's what our agents are trained to do, because it works a lot more in getting the truth of what's going on rather than being threatening and forceful. * Shows you how to find pirate stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online radios. To prove my point, here are some MP3 recordings of some of my favorite recent pirate radio stations/broadcasts: Though pirates can be located anywhere on the planet, and therefore can broadcast, hypothetically, anywhere on the radio dial, patterns are actually fairly predictable in order to draw a listening audience. There were helicopters flying over and taking videos, so we got on a little TV, and that helps to go a long way when we get a little media coverage. Many of our links now function as affiliate links. Over the past few years, Ive found that one of my favorite listening activities has become searching for unique pirate radio stations, and readers of my blog appear to have followed suit. Is it when you are driving in, you know, to and from work? For consistencys sake, I will use the term pirate radio in this article. And did I mention the cool QSL cards? So if they don't meet the Part 15 requirements they need a license. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and listeners "flushed" their former stations as they. In addition to this 2019 BBC documentary, Goren also has created the Pirate Radio Map, which documents pirate radio stations in Brooklyn and even includes brief samples from their broadcasts. Dont believe me? Ive noticed increased pirate radio activity during the winter months, as well. As a self-proclaimed content DXer, what interests me in pirate radio is that the listener never knows what to expect, but you can guarantee that the content will be different from that of the major broadcasters. Now one thing I want to talk about is Part 15. Nothing. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. MR. DOMBROWSKI: That's not going to be my cell phone is it? We have pirate radio there, too, not as bad as we did in New York. 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. 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. For many of the people in those communities, who may not be able to afford a computer or a smartphone and a broadband connection, pirate radio is an affordable medium. That happens a lot. Pirate radio guru Andrew Yoder started his own pirate blog last year, and has already began populating it with regular updates, QSLs, and recordings. Marshals actually seize it. That was particularly true on the other side of the Atlantic, where the U.K. allowed only state-controlled radio from the 1920s through the mid-1960s. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: All right. Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. And those rules dictate a lot of restrictions and cover your wireless transmitters that we use every day, remote controls for you car, your headset, bluetooth sets. They use either the internet or a wireless source to get the signal back to the transmitter. Our agents are pretty smart on the tricks. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: My guest has been David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. Total . 1. I decoded this Wolverine Radio SSTV QSL on the SSTV iOS App. To the contrary, though, more than a half-century later, pirate radio is still a thing. 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. Most pirates transmit using SSB with modern ham radio equipment, others use AM utilizing vintage or homebrew equipment. Not all the illegal stations are pirate stations! If we can't get in touch with the property owner we try to use a locksmith and if we can't get the locksmith then the door comes breaking down and then we try to secure it before we leave. Thank you, too, for your support of these sites. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So don't bother looking for it. (Click to enlarge). Give us a sense of the universe of this problem given that it is such a priority for this FCC to crack down on it. That would be not a good practice. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So this equipment helps us track us down. Well media bureau was on there, they are the ones that license FM stations, and I kind of chose that as kind of my eighth choice. And I am glad you mentioned call signs because that could be a potential suspicious signal is that pirate radio stations, because they are illegitimate by their very nature, are not doing typical radio station things like announcing their call sign at the top of the hour or doing, you know, certain regular scheduled activities, so that could be something that might mean you are listening to a pirate station. I am Evan Swarztrauber. That would allow us to increase the fine to $100,000. Pirate radio broadcasting on shortwave radio in North America is mostly done in a frequency range just below the 40 meter amateur radio band, from about 6815 kHz to 6970 kHz. Well I want to, you know, just emphasize the importance of this issue. You have somebody that puts a station on the air and then what that person does is he leases air time for his station for other DJs and they come in and so he is getting a kickback from the DJs and he is getting advertising revenue. 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