One of the FCC's top enforcement priorities is cracking down on pirates. And it was good media coverage, too. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. So a pirate radio by simple terms is a broadcast station operating in the FM band, 88 megahertz to 108 megahertz that you dial up on your car radio, that is operating without a license. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And we talked a little bit about why this is a problem. On Easter Sunday in 1964, the station went on the air, playing the Rolling Stones' single "It's All Over Now" as its first song. But with customs and border patrol seeing so much equipment coming in through the ports it's hard to identify. Finding Shortwave Stations and Broadcasts. I am a Philadelphia native, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I graduated Temple University and my first job was the FCC right out of college and interestingly --. What would that bill do differently? This station was operated in Pennsauken, New Jersey, which is right across the river from Philadelphia, and it covered the entire Philadelphia area. We get them in Virginia, we get them out in Illinois, even just remote areas of West Virginia they pop up. Has it gotten worse, has it gotten better? But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. Dont believe me? Recycling is good. Some pirates simply key down their mike and begin talking, sharing their political or social views; others offer near-professional music productions, complete with listener feedback, and often acknowledge listener reports with QSLs (radio postcards). 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. So the avenues of working with the district attorneys is a great way to get the injunctions, the court orders, for the pirate station to cease operating permanently. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. Created on. 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. They spent the fees to get the license. 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. A lot of times you can tell by the audio quality. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So we have two ways to file a complaint. And so it ranges from Maine down to Virginia and all the States east of Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. 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. Listening to pirate radio is perfectly legaland frequently an ear-opening experience. bclc lotto app not working; signs your internship will turn into a job; mary suehr schmitz. Not all the illegal stations are pirate stations! And as a bonus, Radio Caroline still exists though, ironically, it's gone legal. I will put in the show notes a link to the FCC complaint page and the phone number if you would like to get involved. Be careful to. The Pirates flagship radio station, SportsRadio 93.7 THE FAN, will air extended local pre-game and post-game coverage before and after every broadcast. The most popular frequency is arguably 6,925 kHz, but I often log pirates on 6,935 and 6,950 kHz. Total Views 29,573 (Older Stats) ITEMS. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Ten times as much, that's big, yes. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. 10. The British government, though, didn't appreciate what Radio Caroline and other pirate broadcasters were doing. 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: Probably just workload is another challenge in addition to folks moving the antennas around or taking them down during the day or only operating on weeknights and weekends, as you have said, which forces agents to work overtime. Pirates are always active during holidays, too, most especially on Halloween (31st of October), which seems to be pirates favorite holiday. Give us a little of your background. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It is. The reason is, no matter what time of the year it is, no matter what the space weather (yes, I said space weather) or conditions of the ionosphere are--FM stations are relatively few, local, and always broadcast in the same spots on the FM dial. 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. And then they said to me well here is ten jobs that you potentially could have which one is your top choice? And so he brought this argument up when we tried to get his station off the air by using the court proceedings and he fought that we were violating his First Amendment rights. 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. Do you hear it any other time, you know, at night time? "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. Thank you! Additionally, pirate broadcasters don't have to deal with all the legal complexities of setting up and running a streaming internet service, such as writing terms of service or meeting contractual obligations, he notes. Each issue also contains a CD of sound clips from various pirates, several articles about the state of pirate radio, and other relevant info. They can call their State Broadcast Association to get our contact information. They label the equipment as something else. Once you get a license it restricts you where you can operate, how much power you can use, what antenna you can use, and how high your antenna is. 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. Pirates broadcast a wide variety of content, but are usually motivated by sharing their messageor favorite musicon the air. Pirate radio stations are unlicensed broadcasters. And that's it, we will catch you next time. To track pirates, youll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. We Owe It All to Radio: The Inside Story of CES, Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Pictures, Special Offer on Antivirus Software From HowStuffWorks and TotalAV Security, Radio Caroline: The True Story of the Ship That Rocked. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Because you don't know what you are running into. But merely the act of purchasing this equipment is illegal and partly that's because it comes from overseas and it's not been tested by the FCC, correct? Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. The library's newest additions include deep historical resources and contemporary reporting about the world of radio. And he had some good backing, financial backing, by the ACLU who were fighting for him, and he was a microbroadcaster and he tried to encourage others to follow in his footsteps and protect our First Amendment rights, so he was --. 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. 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.. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. Total Views 29,203 (Older Stats) ITEMS. 3. The price of the equipment is $2,960.51. Some of those, you know, if you tune your dial and find some spaces where there is some dead air, well those are intentionally put there in order so that stations don't cause interference to each other. 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. If you live in a geographic hotbed of pirate activity (again, eastern/central North America and Europe) you might find a portable radio ample for hearing a number of pirates. He has taken, you know, money from under the table to allow the station to operate from the rooftop without the property owner's knowledge. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: All right. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So all that good equipment just gets recycled. This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of The Spectrum Monitor Magazine. Liverpool vs Wolves will kick-off on Wednesday, March 1 at 8pm. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, and some of these are in high crime areas where there is a lot of drugs. They inventory it all and then they sign it over to the FCC to hold and then we finally get the courts to order that it's released to the federal government and it's our property. After that we just destroy it through an electronics recycler. 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. Pirate radio stations are a crucial part of British music culture. Do you hear it on the weekends or is only a station that operates during the weekends? And so these transmitters that they are purchasing and pirate stations are using do not go through the equipment process, the equipment authorization process, and that is a problem. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: There is not a sign on the box that says illegal pirate radio transmitters. Please leave us a review because it will help others find this show. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.3 GB (in 25,377 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. March 13 2022 . MR. DOMBROWSKI: Raise it all the way up 100 feet and our director at the time rode up there and got the antenna down. In the United States, the term pirate radio implies the unlicensed broadcasting use of any part of the radio spectrum that is reserved for use by governmental, public or commercial licensees by the Federal Communications Commission. Total . And that is where we ask for the public's help. You know, is this a massive national problem, are there particular areas where it's a problem? It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. Thanks to e-commerce, it's also easier than ever for a would-be pirate to find the necessary equipment and have it delivered to his or her door, as FCC enforcement official David Dombrowski described in this 2019 podcast. ACTIVITY. They also have potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel stations, you know, up above their frequency and below their frequency. They lose advertisers because of it, they lose coverage area because of it, and it all comes down to dollars and cents. (Click to enlarge). Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. It's about $200,000 worth of equipment. tyson jost dad; sean penn parkinson's disease; mockingbirds attacking my cat Our agents typically work in a certain area so they become familiar with all the pirate radio operators and they kind of started to notice the pattern and so we were able to gather all of the evidence and go to the U.S. Attorney's Office and seize all that equipment and get the station off the air. Weve now covered the who, what, where, when, and how of pirate huntingbut what about why? "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. 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. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well that's what I went up with. This includes the FM, AM and shortwave radio bands. The warrant is issued to the U.S. MR. DOMBROWSKI: There is a variety of pirate radio stations out there. March 13 2022 . David Goren, a veteran radio producer who's created programming for National Public Radio, has spent years studying pirate broadcasters. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. 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. Ragnar Daneskjold hosts an occasional podcast serving the shortwave pirate community; it includes pirate radio news, off-air recordings, and more. And I have had to make this clarifying point on other podcasts that I have done at the FCC. Now you usually get one of your top, you know, first or second choice. Do a little pirate radio hunting yourself. It's covert surveillance equipment. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Well let that be a lesson to the youngsters listening. Back in the 1980s, before the Internet and its online bulletin boards, I thought finding pirates was truly a huntrandom and altogether unpredictable. 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. Click here to view a list of all sponsors. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Well at least you are recycling. Collection Info. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, everyone's dream job. I mean if you are familiar with telecom you know it's an illegal radio station, but what do we mean by pirate radio. MR. DOMBROWSKI: And so that's not practical for somebody that wants to operate a radio station to cover an entire community. VIEWS. comment. But sometimes it is very difficult with those stations that have put more investment into the equipment. Just browse the pirate radio category: https://swling.com/blog/category/pirate-radio/. The original converted ferry sank in 1980, but the five DJs on board and the ship's canary, Wilson, named after British Prime Minister Harold Wilson all were rescued, according to O'Rahilly's New York Times obituary. But O'Rahilly was undeterred, even after his ship was seized briefly by Dutch authorities. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various "watering holes." Some stations think that it's best to flood the FCC with complaints. Given other responsibilities and obligations, however, the Commission's resources are stretched, and it seems that stopping pirate radio is not at the top of the priority list. 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. Unauthorized stations are particularly prolific in the New York City area, where a 2016 study by the New York State Broadcasters Association (NYSBA) found that there actually were more pirates then on the FM band than legal licensed stations. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So, David, you are uniquely qualified to talk about this topic and to help listeners to understand just how qualified you are how did you get to this current position at the FCC. A lot of times the studio is not co-located with the transmitter. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Do the pilots only complain if it's a song that they don't like? MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, very creative on that, wasn't it? I believe this is why authorities like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) place shortwave pirates comparatively lower on their enforcement priority list. Has it evolved over the years? Revealing the history of pirate radio from 1925 to today, author Andrew Yoder, pirate radio aficionado and long-time writer on radio, electronics, and audio subjects:. They are not considered an operator by investing in that. Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So let's say that either a broadcaster or a listener files a complaint, what happens then, what tools do you, your colleagues in the FCC, have to go about finding a station, shutting it down, bringing people to justice? Now if you go that menu there are several options of different radio services. Stations such as Weekend Rush, Kool FM, Pulse and Innocence wanted to represent the streets and promote local scenes.. Very old school, and cheap enough for anyone's budget. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: It doesn't say FCC pirate agent? It had a 20-mile range. Why? Unlicensed radio broadcasters have been around practically since governments started trying to control and regulate the airwaves. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. The important thing here is that you invest in a receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity. To have a radio station here helps to establish the station's operator as an important source of information and influence in the community.". Searching for an FM radio station on your car radio is quite easy. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well they had their antenna up really high. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. So we would rather take one single complaint from a broadcast licensee saying, hey, I've gotten 50 listener complaints in this area, here is where we are hearing it, do a little leg work yourself and verify that it's an unlicensed station, and then we can work with them in getting the station off the air. Be specific. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, if it's imported. That doesn't prohibit somebody from filing an anonymous complaint, we still take those. This is likely due to the early sunsets and cold winter nights of the northern hemisphere that tend to keep people indoors, which in turn encourages pirates to hit the air. A new, raw, grassroots kind of pirate radio exploded from 1992 onwards. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: It's not working properly and that's why it's going into air traffic control. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.7 GB (in 25,393 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. In the quieter winter months, stations seem to pop out of the ether. Compared to big-gun broadcasters, pirates are much more elusive game as very few announce their broadcasts in advance, and theres no telling where a pirates transmitter is located: it could be in their home, on a boat, or a portable one dropped in a remote location and later retrieved. If we get that information we have a vehicle, it's called a direction-finding vehicle and it has specialized equipment in it. Total . "He created Radio Caroline operating in that way and the station was at once called a 'pirate,'" Moore says. Though Channel Z was broadcasting in AM, as many do, its best to hunt pirates with an SSB-capable portable. MR. DOMBROWSKI: And so they said well because we were here before it was colonized our federal laws don't apply to us. He got the craft back and kept at pirate radio for nearly another quarter century. Has that happened? VIEWS. MR. DOMBROWSKI: You know, that's hard to say. So we have had the most success in getting stations off the air when the district attorney is involved, because the U.S. Attorney's Office when we do the in rem seizures, they have a lot of case work and very high profile cases so there is a little reluctance sometimes because of the case precedence for the U.S. attorneys to take on our cases. Pirate Radio goes on the air in Los Angeles by "taking over" K-Lite 100 (KIQQ). They don't know how to reach us? Where are you hearing this interference problem? Enter ZIP code or city, state as well. That was right when the internet really started exploding so he was able to get his message out. No, not the Pirates of the Caribbean or East Africawe're talking about pirate radio. Loggings are in real time and there are very fewif anyoff-topic posts. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. David, thanks so much for joining. Thank you, too, for your support of these sites. Do we have a right under the first amendment to speak via a radio station even if it is unlicensed by the FCC and is there potentially a case that can kind of exemplify why pirate radio is not protected under the First Amendment? To the contrary, though, more than a half-century later, pirate radio is still a thing. If you've been binge-watching movies lately, you may have come across "Pirate Radio." If you live outside of North America and Europe, that doesnt mean there arent pirate radio stations to be found. Now this is not just a focus of the FCC, Congress is also interested in this. An excellent and active pirate radio forum hosted by Chris Smolinski. It is portable, but can also be used as a permanent FM radio station. We usually go with the police just for our protection and also for the protection of the occupants inside the residence. More areas, more just the urban areas. My most recent logging of a Euro pirate from North America was Radio Borderhunter on 15,500 kHz; his signal was quite amazing. Marshals went in with us and we seized the equipment. And you have tools to escalate the situation. 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. 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. For his new show, Bruce promises "me and my musings and all the great . It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360 interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning . Before we talk about where to hunt pirates, however, we need to talk about the necessary equipmenti.e., your radio and antenna. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. Ive also been encouraged by pirates to hone my weak-signal DXing using exalted carrier reception (ECR)zero-beating an AM signal in SSBin an attempt to hear weak AM pirate stations. 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. Enter the dawn of pirate radio. "One reason I've found as to why people are still using pirate radio is that these communities have very strong cultural and historic connections to radio," Goren explains. 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. Jason Scott Archivist. "How Pirate Radio Rocked the 1960s Airwaves and Still Exists Today" Buy me a coffee: https://www.paypal.me/ringwaymanchester Email: ringwaymanchester@mail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/m3hhyofficial Facebook:. That would be not a good practice. URL Here: https://dkng.co/rogue-----For entertainment purposes only. "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. Airchecks from unauthorized broadcast radio stations throughout the years. But what hast made the problem really expand is the equipment is readily available with the internet now. Marshal Service actually and that allows us to go in with the U.S. If you just use an internet browser and search FCC complaint you will come to the link for filing a complaint. Click here to donate via PayPal. To determine the wavelength of your signal in inches, divide 11811 by your transmitter's frequency in megahertz (MHz). So that's why the licensing process is so important to avoid that interference. So, the F. . They are not advertising. 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. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, there was a case back in the 1990s, late 1990s.