( Disclaimer) Transcript: MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Welcome to "More Than 7 Dirty Words," the official FCC podcast. Jason Scott Archivist. One of the FCC's top enforcement priorities is cracking down on pirates. We have pirate radio there, too, not as bad as we did in New York. They also have potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel stations, you know, up above their frequency and below their frequency. "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. But O'Rahilly was undeterred, even after his ship was seized briefly by Dutch authorities. Are we talking about U.S. marshals with machine guns kicking in doors, are we talking about politely knocking on a door and saying, hey, guys, your time is up, we found you, you know, what's the image that essentially you see when this goes down in your experience or is there kind of a spectrum of different cases, some are a little bit more intense than others? If we get that information we have a vehicle, it's called a direction-finding vehicle and it has specialized equipment in it. Recycling is good. Answer (1 of 14): Why I am qualified to answer this question. Jason Scott Archivist. So hopefully that's enough for them to get the station taken down and maybe share some information about who the real operator is. Oh, it happens a lot, especially in these urban areas like New York. So they thought that was a way for them to avoid detection by hopping from building to building and frequency to frequency. 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. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various "watering holes." 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. There was an operator named Stephen Dunifer. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.7 GB (in 25,393 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So all that good equipment just gets recycled. 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. Pirate cards are among the most unusual of QSL cards, that often incorporate obscure or vintage imageryhumor, horror, or other graphic oddityor cast the pirate in a unique character representation. Give me an address or an intersection in the town that you are picking it up on. To the contrary, though, more than a half-century later, pirate radio is still a thing. Keep in mind that pirates are relatively low-power broadcasters. Our agency was delegated by Congress to allocate frequencies and allocate it in the public interest and it's a resource. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well there was a version of the bill that passed the House first and now there is a similar bill being considered by Senate. 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. The FCC argued that we were here to regulate the airwaves. 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. 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. "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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and. Nothing. The station is capable of running off of 13.8/28 volts DC battery, which can even be charged with solar power. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, just 20. And then he had, you know, he was on the internet. "To enforce the law and protect American radio listeners and lawful businesses, the Federal Communications Commission has made a concerted effort in recent years to step up our enforcement efforts against pirate radio stations.". Right now it is $10,000 per day per occurrence. That was right when the internet really started exploding so he was able to get his message out. 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? About Google Maps. I decoded this Wolverine Radio SSTV QSL on the SSTV iOS App. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, very creative on that, wasn't it? 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: Right. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Just because it's easy to buy it doesn't mean it's legal. 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 bulk of the pirate radio broadcasters I log transmit just below the 40-meter amateur radio band: anywhere from 6,850 kHz to 6,970 kHz and typically on a frequency spaced at 5 kHz. 1. We also get the other federal agencies involved, the Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office, where we can seek a warrant. 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. Now when we talk about enforcement actions, you know, I'd like to kind of paint a picture for our listeners. Meanwhile, the Ross Revenge was repaired and converted into a floating museum for tourists. 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. 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. 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. 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. These include Amateur Radio Newsline, a weekly audio news [] 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. 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. Please leave us a review because it will help others find this show. We are not trying to teach you to do something illegal, we are trying to prevent you from doing something illegal, so you can stop your Google search. Join. Note:Even though it is illegal to broadcast on the shortwave bands without a license, and those who do so are subject to hefty fines, it is not illegal to listen or to send and receive QSL cards from such operators. 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. Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. Revealing the. Be specific. MR. DOMBROWSKI: You know, that's hard to say. That would be inappropriate, particularly given my employer, but is it hard for the average listener, particularly in a dense metro area, you're dialing your car radio or your home radio to even know the difference? 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 --. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: We're not using an FM spectrum for this podcast. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Well at least you are recycling. Finding Shortwave Stations and Broadcasts. Enter the dawn of pirate radio. The important thing here is that you invest in a receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity. For his new show, Bruce promises "me and my musings and all the great . Carl McIntire, a fundamentalist preacher who briefly broadcast fire-and-brimstone sermons from a converted minesweeper off the coast of New Jersey, as this 2014 NJ.com article details. 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. 19. r/HamRadio. Back in the 1980s, before the Internet and its online bulletin boards, I thought finding pirates was truly a huntrandom and altogether unpredictable. 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. That would allow us to increase the fine to $100,000. 123. Airchecks from unauthorized broadcast radio stations throughout the years. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: We only waited 15 minutes into the episode to get to the fun part so I hope you are listening. Winning a con. ACTIVITY. 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. 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. 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. 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.. They can be highly entertaining or thought-provoking, and thus are, themselves, a unique art form. Why? 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. The antenna is not where the people are necessarily or where the rest of the equipment is. That doesn't prohibit somebody from filing an anonymous complaint, we still take those. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. But the FCC, Congress and the commercial broadcasting industry don't see the pirates as serving such a benign purpose. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.3 GB (in 25,377 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. You know, when they do that they get a ticket number when they file the ticket online so the broadcasters can call us and find out, let us know that they filed the complaint and follow up with us. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, to lease some air time off these legitimate stations. The BBC played catch-up launching Radio One and recruiting the same pirates for their roster. 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. It will also help to have some sort of adjustable bandwidth filter (wide/narrow). 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. 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. 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. Again, I turned to Andrew Yoder for insight about pirate radio activity in the rest of the world; his reply: Im always amazed at how few areas in the world have pirates that are connected to any scene. But what hast made the problem really expand is the equipment is readily available with the internet now. Searching for an FM radio station on your car radio is quite easy. North American Pirate Radio Frequencies By far the most active ranges in North America are 43 meters (6800-7000 kHz), 46 meters (6200-6400 kHz) and 73 meters (4000-4200 kHz), with some activity in the 60 meter band (4700-5300 kHz) as well. Additionally, you can always tune a remote receiver, via the Internet on the Global Tuners website, or via the University of Twentes SDR in the Netherlands. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station. Thought-Provoking, and have Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in,... In 25,393 files ) Title Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989 and... Also have potential to cause interference to the fun part so I hope you are recycling broadcast Radio throughout., Congress and the commercial broadcasting industry do n't see the pirates as serving such a benign.! 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In mind that pirates are relatively low-power broadcasters Dutch authorities frequencies and allocate it the., to lease some air time off these legitimate stations: just because it will help! Picking it up on though, more than a half-century later, Pirate stormed!, that 's enough for them to get the station is capable of running off 13.8/28. ; me and my musings and all the behind the scenes guy the... Very creative on that, was n't it we only waited 15 minutes into the episode to get the is... 14 ): Why I am qualified to answer this question 's hard to.... Know, that 's enough for them to get to the adjacent channel stations, you know, was... Down on pirates, I 'd like to kind of paint a picture for listeners!, even after his ship was seized briefly by Dutch authorities us increase. 'S easy to buy it does n't prohibit somebody from filing an anonymous,... Kqlz Pirate Radio Airchecks so he was on the internet searching for an FM spectrum for this.. 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how to find pirate radio stations