We do follow the bread crumbs to where it leads us and a lot of times we are able to identify the operators and where the studio is and have success in getting the station shut down. "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. Its a simple technique, and although it takes some practice, will work on most any radio with a stable BFO (beat frequency oscillator). We take it all. There is a reason that those devices operate in an unlicensed manner because they are not transmitting very far. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, very creative on that, wasn't it? A lot of times the studio is not co-located with the transmitter. I used a pneumatic spud gun to launch an arborist's bag to deploy my 50' end fed antenna 40' up into a tree. Pirates broadcast a wide variety of content, but are usually motivated by sharing their messageor favorite musicon the air. Now when we talk about enforcement actions, you know, I'd like to kind of paint a picture for our listeners. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, the legitimate one, the licensed station. Ragnar Daneskjold hosts an occasional podcast serving the shortwave pirate community; it includes pirate radio news, off-air recordings, and more. MR. DOMBROWSKI: You know, that's hard to say. Powerful, uncertified transmitters manufactured in foreign countries easily slip through customs at U.S. ports. The FCC argued that we were here to regulate the airwaves. 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. A lot of times you can tell by the audio quality. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: No. 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. (Disclaimer). Marshal Service actually and that allows us to go in with the U.S. Thank you! Since FM radio is broadcast as a mono signal, with a left-minus-right signal sent alongside, they can make a two-channel stereo station by recreating the stereo pilot carrier and then adding in. Has it evolved over the years? Is this something that plays a role in alerting you to these stations that broadcasters themselves are identifying them and complaining about them? 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. * Shows you how to find pirate stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online radios. The FRW is an email-only newsletter devoted to the hobby of pirate radio listening, and is distributed free to those who contribute. And they come -- I've worked with them when they have bulletproof vests on and automatic weapons. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. Well joining me to discuss this topic is David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. Jason Scott Archivist. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. 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. Right now it is $10,000 per day per occurrence. Pirates Week: http://shortwavepirate.info. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And obviously as a good citizen I have never to my knowledge listened to a pirate radio station. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content! They label the equipment as something else. 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? Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various watering holes.. 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. Jason Scott Archivist. Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. 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. Pirate radio stations are unlicensed broadcasters. Pirate Radio goes on the air in Los Angeles by "taking over" K-Lite 100 (KIQQ). MR. DOMBROWSKI: We do make them aware that they are contributing to this illegal activity. The antenna is not where the people are necessarily or where the rest of the equipment is. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Oh, that's probably why they are complaining, right? 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? In the U.S. the most famous example of a Pirate Radio station was Mexico's XERF. Interestingly, the antenna was so high up on the tower we had to bring a bucket truck in from a fire station and raise it --. He anchored the ship in international waters in the North Sea, just off Frinton, Essex, and hired a crew of DJs to play music around the clock at the time, a revolutionary concept. They were also changing frequency. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And we're talking about air traffic control? March 13 2022 . Additionally, youll find contact information for QSL requests and mail-drop addresses as well. My most recent logging of a Euro pirate from North America was Radio Borderhunter on 15,500 kHz; his signal was quite amazing. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: There is a variety of pirate radio stations out there. We have been at in rem seizures we call them where the U.S. marshals come with the local law enforcement and there is 20 of them and they have to secure the whole block off, the have to secure the building for our protection. And those parameters, you know, restrict your operation and the coverage of your station because we have a whole engineering study that needs to be done so you don't cause interference to other stations. 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 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 Who actually paid homage to Radio Caroline and other offshore broadcasters by parodying them on their 1967 concept album "The Who Sell Out," as music historian John Atkins has written. Evan is joined by David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. Finding Shortwave Stations and Broadcasts. That's really helpful because then we can note when to send the agents out. Hobby Broadcasting Blog: http://hobbybroadcasting.blogspot.com/. It could be harmful if we let a pirate radio station operate because sometimes they cause interference to other services, like aeronautical communications. But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. 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. And so we need to make sure that we stop the importation of this equipment, we stop the marketing of these illegal transmitters. But the FCC, Congress and the commercial broadcasting industry don't see the pirates as serving such a benign purpose. The warrant is issued to the U.S. Unlicensed radio broadcasters have been around practically since governments started trying to control and regulate the airwaves. Where the "modern" history of pirate radio seems to begin, though, is in the 1960s when pirate radio operators would get on the air to spread their music to a wider audience. 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. It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. 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. All you need is a location to host the antenna and access to electricity unless you've got batteries, then just the location.". Launched just five months ago, Internet Archive's Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications has expanded to more than 61,000 items related to amateur radio, shortwave listening, and related communications. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and listeners "flushed" their former stations as they. Of course, it's called the PIRATE Act, and that stands for Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement Act. They are not considered an operator by investing in that. Even as many legacy international broadcasters are abandoning the shortwave bands, shortwave remains active and vibrant in another quadrant: namely, on shortwave pirate radio. It helps to show that -- That's a deterrent in itself right there when you get media coverage. So just keep in mind next time you read some nice hipster article about how great pirate radio is in your community, that there are serious issues at play and what the FCC is doing is really important and that's why it's so great to have you on here to share your perspective and some of your history working on this and we really just want to thank you for your service. Collection Info. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. To track pirates, youll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, well, you know, they operate in the AM band so it sounds really distorted when you are trying to listen to FM radio on an AM radio. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: That's some great local cooperation right there. Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. So we typed up this -- They showed me a license and it was something typed up on the computer that said we're licensed by their statutes of the Moors people and so they felt that they have a right to operate. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. 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. And an overall limit of $2 million. Yoder actually addresses this apparent restriction, to some degree, in the 2013 Pirate Radio Annual, which has only just been released. 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:. Total . There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. If they are getting interference to a station they would like to listen what station is that, give the call sign. So a transmitter that complies with the Part 15 requirements has a very small operating range, about 100 feet. While debunking myths about pirates, I can say that in my years of pirate radio listening Ive never heard a pirate intentionally jam a legal broadcaster. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are receivedespecially when the signals cross a national boundary. They can call their State Broadcast Association to get our contact information. Its much better, of course, if you have a table-top receiver, software-defined radio, or ham radio transceiver with a general coverage receiver hooked up to a resonant outdoor antennaespecially if you live outside Europe and North America. That would allow us to increase the fine to $100,000. Shortwave DX Blog - A blog with loggings and information relating to shortwave pirate radio in Europe. Radio Caroline. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: There is not a sign on the box that says illegal pirate radio transmitters. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So we have fines that we could issue. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. 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. Radio Caroline founder Ronan O'Rahilly had another claim to fame, in that he influenced actor George Lazenby to give up the role of James Bond after playing in just one film, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," in 1969. They also have potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel stations, you know, up above their frequency and below their frequency. While the magic of shortwave radio can transport a small signal vast distances, to hear pirates regularly and clearly, some precision is required. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: It's not working properly and that's why it's going into air traffic control. Here's a 12-minute recording of Radio Caroline DJ Tony Blackburn's show in 1965, which includes both a breakfast cereal commercial and the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" and "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds: Because the station had to fill so much airtime DJs had to come up with 2,500 tracks to play each week Radio Caroline helped foster what Moore calls "an explosion of new artists and bands who may have started recording conventional pop music, but who then expanded their musical abilities. 2. 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. 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. And then he had, you know, he was on the internet. (Click to enlarge). When do you hear the station? And did I mention the cool QSL cards? 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. So over the last ten years people get online and purchase a transmitter and get it delivered to their door and so that makes, you know, everybody a hobbiest now and to have an interest to start a pirate radio station because it's so available. This metal-focused platform is available entirely online, so you can access the music from a lot of different locations, even though the station is based in San Francisco. We also would be required to file a report to Congress annually on our enforcement activities in pirate radio. So not only interference, but we also have issues of interference to other radio services. I am Evan Swarztrauber. 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. Do a little pirate radio hunting yourself. Goren, who's been monitoring the airwaves since the law was passed, notes that on a typical day, he picks up about 26 pirate stations in Brooklyn alone. So we have a team here in the Enforcement Bureau that does that, our Spectrum Enforcement Division. And as a bonus, Radio Caroline still exists though, ironically, it's gone legal. Now that maybe gets us down to the building, you know, where it might be operating. Unlike major broadcasters, many pirates dont stick to AM as a preferred mode. And that is where we ask for the public's help. 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. 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. There is a studio somewhere. He was going around the country and stirring the pot and getting a lot of people excited about microbroadcasting, so that's really where it started to really proliferate. Now one thing I want to talk about is Part 15. Addeddate 2022-03-13 23:21:58 . It had a 20-mile range. Now many listeners as you know have the experience of tuning their dial and there appear to be vacant channels you have said that one of the reasons for that is to guard against interference, but someone listening might say well why do we care, right. Tracking a Pirate Radio Station The Modern Rogue Discovering Secret "Numbers Stations" The Modern Rogue Detecting a Wire and Hidden Spy Cams The Most Notorious TV Hijack of All Time Rodney P -. Chasing pirates has also increased my technical know-how. "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. Even then, though, Radio Caroline wouldn't go away. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. Created on. A few of them broadcast from ships, such as Rev. Stations such as Weekend Rush, Kool FM, Pulse and Innocence wanted to represent the streets and promote local scenes.. Be specific. Now this is not just a focus of the FCC, Congress is also interested in this. We would also have to create a database for the public access. Do you hear it on the weekends or is only a station that operates during the weekends? (Listen to one of Ronins broadcasts below.). Now, of course, my favorite thing that I want to ask you is what are some fun examples, maybe not fun, but interesting examples of cases that you have closed where maybe the circumstances were a bit bizarre or interesting that might help a listener understand just how weird some of this stuff can get and just how interesting some of these operations can be. Searching for an FM radio station on your car radio is quite easy. 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). MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, we have a lot of stations in New York, in particular. . Like if a pirate, you know, gets his station up and running, he finds that no one is in a channel, and he says, oh, I guess I'll set myself here, other than the law, which is obviously important to some people, most people it should be, but why should we care that they are using vacant spectrum? 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. 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: 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. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. 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. We want them to be as descriptive as possible. It's eminently cheaper to purchase or build an unlicensed radio station than it is to set up a robust streaming channel online, especially if you're looking to cover a local area. One of the FCC's top enforcement priorities is cracking down on pirates. Ex-Beatle George Harrison was sufficiently appreciative of Radio Caroline's mission that he even wrote a sizable check in the early 1970s to help keep the ship in operation, according to Ray Clark's book "Radio Caroline: The True Story of the Ship That Rocked.". 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. Let's say you don't get cooperation from a building owner, you don't get cooperation from the eventual studio, maybe it's in their apartment and they're not opening the door, obviously, because they don't want to get caught. Here's a test shot without the line or antenna attached. He then obtained another ship, a German trawler called the Ross Revenge, which continued to host the station until it ran aground along the British coast in 1991. Keep in mind that pirates are relatively low-power broadcasters. In the U.S., pirate stations have popped up in recent years all over the country, from West Virginia to Washington state, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which plays a continual game of whack-a-mole in an effort to keep them off the airwaves used by licensed broadcasters. But the interesting thing about this was that it was operated by a group of people who considered themselves Moors, which are indigenous people of the United States who were here before the United States was colonized. So hopefully that's enough for them to get the station taken down and maybe share some information about who the real operator is. It has become more common for pirates to transmit images using SSTV.A few have experimented with FM or digital modes like RTTY, PSK31 . That doesn't prohibit somebody from filing an anonymous complaint, we still take those. Where are you hearing this interference problem? MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Ten times as much, that's big, yes. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station. If you live outside of North America and Europe, that doesnt mean there arent pirate radio stations to be found. And so it ranges from Maine down to Virginia and all the States east of Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. Marshals went in with us and we seized the equipment. To the contrary, though, more than a half-century later, pirate radio is still a thing. 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. ACTIVITY. We were able to prove that it wasn't a violation of the First Amendment rights and so that set the precedence for any future case for that argument. And that's it, we will catch you next time. Please leave us a review because it will help others find this show. Moreover, summer conditions in the North American 43 meter band are often much noisier, thus pirates know theyll be fighting static crashes to be heard during the summer months. Why? Very old school, and cheap enough for anyone's budget. Yes, so it's kind of like a cascade of options --. Pirate radio stations are a crucial part of British music culture. And they could also --. You know, is this a massive national problem, are there particular areas where it's a problem? They also cover your wireless routers in your house. PIRATE RADIO Once you remove the idea of pirate radio from its mythology, you. 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, 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 is illegal for companies to market equipment that hasn't gone through what we call a certification process, equipment authorization process, where they get a company to look at their transmitter to make sure it complies with our technical rules and doesn't have potential to cause interference to other radio services. MR. DOMBROWSKI: And so they said well because we were here before it was colonized our federal laws don't apply to us. But with customs and border patrol seeing so much equipment coming in through the ports it's hard to identify. Our agents will contact you. Back when KIWI was on the air regularly in the 90s, I assumed that pirate radio would explode in Oceania and Asia. Before we talk about where to hunt pirates, however, we need to talk about the necessary equipmenti.e., your radio and antenna. Our agency was delegated by Congress to allocate frequencies and allocate it in the public interest and it's a resource. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. Indeed, this past November, I listened to the pirate Channel Z while sitting in my truck; I was only using a Tecsun PL-660 with the antenna extended out of my opened drivers-side window. 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. 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. That happens a lot. 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