Please leave us a review because it will help others find this show. Now this is not just a focus of the FCC, Congress is also interested in this. All you need is a location to host the antenna and access to electricity unless you've got batteries, then just the location.". Violators faced two years of imprisonment and fines. In the U.S. the most famous example of a Pirate Radio station was Mexico's XERF. 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. It could be computers, antennas, coaxial cables. VIEWS. 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. Last updated: December 2022 Many of our links now function as affiliate links. Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360 interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning . Pirate radio stations are unlicensed broadcasters. A new, raw, grassroots kind of pirate radio exploded from 1992 onwards. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.3 GB (in 25,377 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. Weve now covered the who, what, where, when, and how of pirate huntingbut what about why? That was right when the internet really started exploding so he was able to get his message out. Not just Aussie and NZ pirates, but stations in places like The Phillipinesmaybe Japan, South Korea, or Thailand. 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. 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. "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. Give us a little of your background. 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. I keep a copy handy as it helps me identify stations and better understand their format. 19. r/HamRadio. MR. DOMBROWSKI: That's not going to be my cell phone is it? Speaking for myself, Im passionate about pirate radio listening because it combines my listening/technical skills, my appetite for highly unique content, and for building a collection of quirky QSL cards. Revealing the. So what is the state of pirate radio in the U.S. and how is the FCC taking it on? More areas, more just the urban areas. 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. The important thing here is that you invest in a receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Ten times as much, that's big, yes. You know, is this a massive national problem, are there particular areas where it's a problem? The plot is based loosely on the saga of an actual former pirate station, Radio Caroline, that was founded by an offbeat Irish entrepreneur named Ronan O'Rahilly, the inspiration for the character portrayed by Bill Nighy. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It's not, you know, and we didn't talk about, there are other legal ways to go about it. It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. 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. 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. "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. 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. "While Radio Caroline is no longer 'illegal' the philosophy is unchanged," Moore says, noting that the station's staff has the motto "New Technology, Same Ideology.". "These transmissions can interfere with licensed radio signals including broadcasters' sharing of vital public safety information with their communities," FCC chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. While you can hear some on weekdays, your best bet is Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, local time. 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. We would also have to create a database for the public access. 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. Our agents are pretty smart on the tricks. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. These pirate stations pose a host of problems for public safety, including interference with emergency alerts and air traffic control. We want them to be as descriptive as possible. Recycling is good. Total . 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 was still a teenager. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: It's not working properly and that's why it's going into air traffic control. 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. Created on. Now when we talk about enforcement actions, you know, I'd like to kind of paint a picture for our listeners. It's something we have been doing as long as the equipment has been available we've always had pirate radio operators. Gimme Radio (for online listeners) Gimme Radio is one of the more modern American rock radio stations available today. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: My guest has been David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So we have fines that we could issue. Be careful to. That's part of it, right, and you rely on some cooperation in some instances to get it done. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And that is obviously at the highest importance when we are talking about public safety. "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. I started as a field agent doing inspections and doing pirate radio enforcement was one of my jobs and then I moved into a senior agent position and then eventually the District Director, which the manager of the Philadelphia office. But the FCC, Congress and the commercial broadcasting industry don't see the pirates as serving such a benign purpose. 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. 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 --. My most recent logging of a Euro pirate from North America was Radio Borderhunter on 15,500 kHz; his signal was quite amazing. 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. 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? Jason Scott Archivist. 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. 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. And you have tools to escalate the situation. Coffee helps fuel the SWLing Post! They also spent the regulatory fees that they have to, you know, spend I think yearly, and so they have an investment in their service and these unlicensed stations NP that. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Pirate radio. We'd like to contact you. 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: So all that good equipment just gets recycled. 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. 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? MR. DOMBROWSKI: You know, that's hard to say. ( Disclaimer) Transcript: MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Welcome to "More Than 7 Dirty Words," the official FCC podcast. Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. Set up your Raspberry Pi You'll need to get Raspbian, the Linux-based operating system for the Raspberry Pi. 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. Collection Info. comment. Jason Scott Archivist. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various watering holes.. The FCC argued that we were here to regulate the airwaves. Radio 510 International - European relay station broadcasting every weekend on short-wave to all of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East on 13840 kHz. Listening to Other Stations: Click on the tuning arrows ( TUNE >) to listen to stations up and down the dial. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So everyone can now breathe a deep a sigh of relief, you are not going to have to go out and get a license for your security camera and you garage door opener. There is always a building manager they call the supra and he has a shop down in the basement and a lot of times we find the equipment down in his shop. They have a bill circulating around called the PIRATE Act. And they also would be able to contact us and find out where the complaint is in the queue and, you know, what's going on with the complaint and have we investigated it yet. Most are run by hobbyists purely for fun, although some have political or other agendas. Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. Marshals actually seize it. And I have had to make this clarifying point on other podcasts that I have done at the FCC. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. I know out on the West Coast in California we have more significant numbers than other areas, so that probably would be one of the five markets identified, maybe the L.A. area would probably be another market that we would look at. Now one thing I want to talk about is Part 15. "He created Radio Caroline operating in that way and the station was at once called a 'pirate,'" Moore says. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So what is the current state of pirate radio? MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Because you don't know what you are running into. 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. Enter a location to find a nearby pirate radio stations. "Caroline now has two stations, one playing album music and one playing the original pop music for which the station is remembered," Moore explains. Yoder actually addresses this apparent restriction, to some degree, in the 2013 Pirate Radio Annual, which has only just been released. Not all the illegal stations are pirate stations! There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. For consistencys sake, I will use the term pirate radio in this article. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And those, and I think we mentioned New York, we mentioned Philadelphia, are there other hot spots in particular where this seems to just be a bigger problem than elsewhere in the country? This radio in a single case is also capable of re-broadcasting any audio source. So hopefully that's enough for them to get the station taken down and maybe share some information about who the real operator is. We do let stations operate with low power transmitters but they have to comply with the technical requirements of Part 15 of our rules. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. 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 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So some States have laws on the book that prohibit pirate radio operation, States like New Jersey and New York and Florida. 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. Unlike major broadcasters, many pirates dont stick to AM as a preferred mode. In the quieter winter months, stations seem to pop out of the ether. We also recommend that the complainant contact the station that they are getting interference to --. (Listen to one of Ronins broadcasts below.). We have a call center, it's 888-CALL-FCC where we have staff there during business hours to take your complaint. And as a bonus, Radio Caroline still exists though, ironically, it's gone legal. But O'Rahilly was undeterred, even after his ship was seized briefly by Dutch authorities. 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 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. 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. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes, so you have options. 2. These include Amateur Radio Newsline, a weekly audio news [] A lot of times you can tell by the audio quality. Winning a con. 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. Be specific. Where are you hearing this interference problem? 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 --. And so, yes, we may -- We have a warrant for the property. Its a simple technique, and although it takes some practice, will work on most any radio with a stable BFO (beat frequency oscillator). MR. DOMBROWSKI: It's kind of sad to see, but --. 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. I mean are there tell-tale signs or are some of these stations so sophisticated that it's really hard for the average person to distinguish? That's really helpful because then we can note when to send the agents out. It was a three bay antenna for any of the those tech-y's out there, so it was a high efficient antenna and a very high powered transmitter. "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. There is a studio somewhere. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: It doesn't say FCC pirate agent? The most popular frequency is arguably 6,925 kHz, but I often log pirates on 6,935 and 6,950 kHz. 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