MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. 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? And while pirate radio stations can be found across the radio spectrum, especially on AM and FM in urban areas, in this primer Ill be focusing on those that inhabit the shortwaves. With that said (and for reasons I dont fully understand) depending on where you live in the world, you will either find it very easy to locate piratesor extremely difficult. I keep a copy handy as it helps me identify stations and better understand their format. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various watering holes.. "I spoke with a pastor of a church in the community which had a station and the antenna was taken down by the FCC," Goren says. Each issue also contains a CD of sound clips from various pirates, several articles about the state of pirate radio, and other relevant info. Ask your local radio club or search the Internet for local/regional pirate stations. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Hometown. That doesn't prohibit somebody from filing an anonymous complaint, we still take those. The SWLing Post now participates in two affiliate advertising programs with two large retailers that still sell shortwave radios, the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the eBay Partnership, designed to provide a means for sites like ours to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to these retailers of radio products. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, it doesn't have -- It's not marked with pizza delivery guy either. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: My guest has been David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. 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. "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. 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. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. Well joining me to discuss this topic is David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. Be careful to. 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: It is. One of the FCC's top enforcement priorities is cracking down on pirates, and, no, not the Pirates of the Caribbean or the Pirates of East Africa, we're talking about pirate radio. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. I have four offices, it includes Chicago, it includes Boston, New York, and Columbia, Maryland. Total Views 29,203 (Older Stats) ITEMS. They can call their State Broadcast Association to get our contact information. 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. Collection Info. But the FCC, Congress and the commercial broadcasting industry don't see the pirates as serving such a benign purpose. Enter the dawn of pirate radio. And an overall limit of $2 million. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. 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. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and listeners "flushed" their former stations as they. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It's not, you know, and we didn't talk about, there are other legal ways to go about it. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right, he's no the public face of it. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well that's what I went up with. We have a call center, it's 888-CALL-FCC where we have staff there during business hours to take your complaint. Some stations think that it's best to flood the FCC with complaints. 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. There was a case that I worked back in Philly back in the day --. Pirates broadcast a wide variety of content, but are usually motivated by sharing their messageor favorite musicon the air. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Is that a point of pride for you from Philadelphia? "One is cost. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And that is obviously at the highest importance when we are talking about public safety. This station was operated in Pennsauken, New Jersey, which is right across the river from Philadelphia, and it covered the entire Philadelphia area. The antenna is not where the people are necessarily or where the rest of the equipment is. MR. DOMBROWSKI: We do make them aware that they are contributing to this illegal activity. But with customs and border patrol seeing so much equipment coming in through the ports it's hard to identify. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, the legitimate one, the licensed station. Coffee helps fuel the SWLing Post! Hobby Broadcasting Blog: http://hobbybroadcasting.blogspot.com/. I used a pneumatic spud gun to launch an arborist's bag to deploy my 50' end fed antenna 40' up into a tree. 3. The original 60s pirate station, playing fresh pop / rock music to Britain's young masses from a boat in the North Sea, floating in international waters four and a half miles off the Essex coastline. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. Do you hear it on the weekends or is only a station that operates during the weekends? Across the country, FCC officials are working to identify and take action against unlicensed radio operators that illegally use the frequencies allocated for legitimate radio operators. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Ten times as much, that's big, yes. Pirate radio stations are a crucial part of British music culture. We take it all. 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. 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. A new, raw, grassroots kind of pirate radio exploded from 1992 onwards. 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. 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? Thank you! Now I know that finding pirates is reasonably achievable; at least, it is possible to know roughly where, and generally when, to find them. 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. 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. 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. "In Haiti during the Duvalier regime, people depended on radio to get news from independent sources off the island. Created on. Back when KIWI was on the air regularly in the 90s, I assumed that pirate radio would explode in Oceania and Asia. URL Here: https://dkng.co/rogue-----For entertainment purposes only. 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. You can sign up for the newsletter by emailing any of their edittors: John Brewer ([emailprotected]), Ragnar Danskjold ([emailprotected]), Harold Frodge ([emailprotected]), Dave Turnick ([emailprotected]) or Larry Will ([emailprotected]), OK, I suppose I must also mention my own humble blog, where I continue to amass numerous pirate radio loggings and off-air recordings. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: A lot of these stations are streaming at the same time so it really boggles my mind why an FM station that's unlicensed, you know, has its stream content and then also it's broadcasting over the airwaves. If they are getting interference to a station they would like to listen what station is that, give the call sign. 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. 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. 19. r/HamRadio. It helps to show that -- That's a deterrent in itself right there when you get media coverage. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So this equipment helps us track us down. 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. We want them to be as descriptive as possible. 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. Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. Jason Scott Archivist. Other times though you might have reason to suspect that they are in on it, they are getting a kickback. 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 -. 10. More areas, more just the urban areas. 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. . 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. 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. So we have a lot of those stations operating, so it's big revenue for them. The frequency spectrum is a natural resource and so all of our decisions that we make when we allocate spectrum is for the public interest. 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. "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. Pirates Week: http://shortwavepirate.info. Friday March 17, 1989 5:00 am. VIEWS. Is this something that plays a role in alerting you to these stations that broadcasters themselves are identifying them and complaining about them? 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. They label the equipment as something else. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. Hover over one of the three pirate radio neighborhood zones (the center zone has the most stations) and click for a list of stations that broadcast to those areas. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360 interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning . Not just Aussie and NZ pirates, but stations in places like The Phillipinesmaybe Japan, South Korea, or Thailand. Are people generally cooperative or are people just like I have no idea what you are talking, I have never seen anything, what is this, I don't want to deal with this? Addeddate 2022-03-13 23:21:58 . 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. They have a bill circulating around called the PIRATE Act. When do you hear the station? To track pirates, you'll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. 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. 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. A few of them broadcast from ships, such as Rev. While the magic of shortwave radio can transport a small signal vast distances, to hear pirates regularly and clearly, some precision is required. 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. To determine the wavelength of your signal in inches, divide 11811 by your transmitter's frequency in megahertz (MHz). MR. SWARZTRAUBER: That's some great local cooperation right there. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content! Set up your Raspberry Pi You'll need to get Raspbian, the Linux-based operating system for the Raspberry Pi. If you've been binge-watching movies lately, you may have come across "Pirate Radio." Having that exposure helped boost the careers of scores of British bands whose music eventually made it to America. 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. 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. If you just use an internet browser and search FCC complaint you will come to the link for filing a complaint. But are usually motivated by sharing their messageor favorite musicon the air regularly in the,. Circulating around called the pirate Act, and Columbia, Maryland offices, it includes Boston, New York and... Worked back in Philly back in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and 40-meter!, and some stations think that it 's hard to identify that a point pride! Boston, New York, and Columbia, Maryland are in on it, they are getting a.! 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