how to find pirate radio stationshow to find pirate radio stations

Pirate radio guru Andrew Yoder started his own pirate blog last year, and has already began populating it with regular updates, QSLs, and recordings. Weve now covered the who, what, where, when, and how of pirate huntingbut what about why? It was the strongest pirate station I have ever witnessed. But the easiest way to file a complaint is go online. 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. 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. 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. . Though Channel Z was broadcasting in AM, as many do, its best to hunt pirates with an SSB-capable portable. Addeddate 2022-03-13 23:21:58 . They use either the internet or a wireless source to get the signal back to the transmitter. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. 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. Do you hear it any other time, you know, at night time? We hope you understand, and are grateful for your support. 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. 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. All you need is a location to host the antenna and access to electricity unless you've got batteries, then just the location.". While you can hear some on weekdays, your best bet is Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, local time. 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. He got the craft back and kept at pirate radio for nearly another quarter century. That's part of it, right, and you rely on some cooperation in some instances to get it done. So when the FCC licenses FM stations those stations are generally not going to interfere with aeronautical operations because we make sure that they are not. Oh, it happens a lot, especially in these urban areas like New York. Powerful, uncertified transmitters manufactured in foreign countries easily slip through customs at U.S. ports. These include Amateur Radio Newsline, a weekly audio news [] If you live in other parts of the world, pirate hunting can pose serious DX challenges. These pirate stations pose a host of problems for public safety, including interference with emergency alerts and air traffic control. I was glad to be here, it was a great opportunity. There was an operator named Stephen Dunifer. Last updated: December 2022 This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of The Spectrum Monitor Magazine. Its a simple technique, and although it takes some practice, will work on most any radio with a stable BFO (beat frequency oscillator). Created on. As soon as there were laws on the books, there were pirate radio stations on the air. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Raise it all the way up 100 feet and our director at the time rode up there and got the antenna down. The British government, though, didn't appreciate what Radio Caroline and other pirate broadcasters were doing. Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. 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. Other times though you might have reason to suspect that they are in on it, they are getting a kickback. They are not considered an operator by investing in that. They can call their State Broadcast Association to get our contact information. Airchecks from unauthorized broadcast radio stations throughout the years. But sometimes it is very difficult with those stations that have put more investment into the equipment. But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So all that good equipment just gets recycled. * Shows you how to find pirate stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online radios. 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. Well I want to, you know, just emphasize the importance of this issue. Be specific. Many of our links now function as affiliate links. Set up your Raspberry Pi You'll need to get Raspbian, the Linux-based operating system for the Raspberry Pi. They spent the fees to get the license. Total Views 29,203 (Older Stats) ITEMS. Do a little pirate radio hunting yourself. comment. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And obviously as a good citizen I have never to my knowledge listened to a pirate radio station. We want them to be as descriptive as possible. And what the pirate radio operators do is they don't obtain a license, they don't go through this process, and they try to find vacant spectrum between these stations. And then he had, you know, he was on the internet. So we have a team here in the Enforcement Bureau that does that, our Spectrum Enforcement Division. And so that impedes the investigation a little bit because it is difficult to find where that studio is located, but we do, we do a lot of interviews. There was a case that I worked back in Philly back in the day --. To track pirates, youll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. Not just Aussie and NZ pirates, but stations in places like The Phillipinesmaybe Japan, South Korea, or Thailand. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and. Pirate radio operators usually have day jobslike most of usthus only transmit while home from work. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes, so you have options. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Well at least you are recycling. So what is pirate radio? I have four offices, it includes Chicago, it includes Boston, New York, and Columbia, Maryland. I keep a copy handy as it helps me identify stations and better understand their format. 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. "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. 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. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So there are no doubt some good samaritans listening to this show that want nothing more than to help with the scourge of pirate radio. 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 --. And they could also --. MR. DOMBROWSKI: And let them know. The FCC argued that we were here to regulate the airwaves. Indeed, since pirates are operating at lower power, they get much more bang-for-the-watt out of SSB. They just twist the dial. Let's say they are listening, they think something is suspicious they get a tip, they see something weird in their building, what can they do to help you and the FCC tackle this problem? 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. 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. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. But most of the current American pirates are based on dry land, broadcasting from clandestine antennas on rooftops in places such as Brooklyn. Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. Sometimes we find stations that just access the rooftops without anybody knowing and put the transmitter kind of hidden in a wall somewhere or a crevice and the antenna on the roof and remain anonymous for months without anybody knowing that the station is there. "He created Radio Caroline operating in that way and the station was at once called a 'pirate,'" Moore says. 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. 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. 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. Back when KIWI was on the air regularly in the 90s, I assumed that pirate radio would explode in Oceania and Asia. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Got you. 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.". And I have had to make this clarifying point on other podcasts that I have done at the FCC. We do that with every pirate station. But if we sign it into law we would have some additional resources, first increasing the fines. . 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? MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Is that a point of pride for you from Philadelphia? 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. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station. No, not the Pirates of the Caribbean or East Africawe're talking about pirate radio. 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. Everyone should agree that pirate radio stations - by any definition - are completely illegal. So hopefully that's enough for them to get the station taken down and maybe share some information about who the real operator is. Bruce will host a new daily show for Bauer's station Greatest Hits Radio, taking his iconic PopMaster game with him. Additionally, we always try to include links to other retail options if they are available, as we support and freely advertise independent ham radio retailers. 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. There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. 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? I know that lots of pirates operate there, mostly on AM and FM, but no one is on SWand if they are, they arent sending QSLs, [or] operating in places where radio hobbyists would hear them. So I have -- In terms of population I manage 20 States in the Northeast area of the United States. Collection Info. MR. 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