In January, President Donald Trump signed into law the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement (PIRATE) Act, which gives regulators the ability to hit pirate stations with fines of up to $2 million, according to this summary from Radio World. So we try to shut down, you know, that equipment coming in to the purchasers. Please leave us a review because it will help others find this show. VIEWS. So --. So we eventually went to the courts and fought. Radio Caroline. 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? 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? Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, if it's imported. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. 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. 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? They are very low power and the range of them are very small. Our agency was delegated by Congress to allocate frequencies and allocate it in the public interest and it's a resource. 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. For his new show, Bruce promises "me and my musings and all the great . 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. About Google Maps. 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. Weve now covered the who, what, where, when, and how of pirate huntingbut what about why? 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. Searching for an FM radio station on your car radio is quite easy. Back when KIWI was on the air regularly in the 90s, I assumed that pirate radio would explode in Oceania and Asia. Pirate radio operators usually have day jobslike most of usthus only transmit while home from work. The Radio Informer - The latest info on the world of radio including:world,shortwave . Marshals, Department of Justice, because we are a federal agency, but have we leveraged the resources and the knowledge of local law enforcement in working on this, are there, you know, different approaches from different States? We'd like to contact you. And I have had to make this clarifying point on other podcasts that I have done at the FCC. So I have -- In terms of population I manage 20 States in the Northeast area of the United States. Dont believe me? 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. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various watering holes.. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, just 20. And it was good media coverage, too. He was out of Berkeley, California, and his station was called Radio Free Berkeley. So hopefully that's enough for them to get the station taken down and maybe share some information about who the real operator is. Tribute to Pirate Radio, KQLZ 100.3 FM Los Angeles. If you just use an internet browser and search FCC complaint you will come to the link for filing a complaint. This means that by clicking on these links, a small percentage of the purchase price for goods you purchase from these sellers will help support our sites running costs. It's something we have been doing as long as the equipment has been available we've always had pirate radio operators. HowStuffWorks may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Bruce will host a new daily show for Bauer's station Greatest Hits Radio, taking his iconic PopMaster game with him. 2 talking about this. When do you hear the station? And one of the reasons that they are causing harmful interference, in particular to the FAA operations, is because they are not tested, right. 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. Even as many legacy international broadcasters are abandoning the shortwave bands, shortwave remains active and vibrant in another quadrant: namely, on shortwave pirate radio. Marshals went in with us and we seized the equipment. Buy me a coffee: https://www.paypal.me/ringwaymanchester Email: ringwaymanchester@mail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/m3hhyofficial Facebook:. Listening to Other Stations: Click on the tuning arrows ( TUNE >) to listen to stations up and down the dial. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, we have a lot of stations in New York, in particular. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. 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. That would allow us to increase the fine to $100,000. 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. Enter ZIP code or city, state as well. The FCC argued that we were here to regulate the airwaves. Very old school, and cheap enough for anyone's budget. 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. 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. A lot of times the studio is not co-located with the transmitter. Collection Info. 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. 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. It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. 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. 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. And so, yes, we may -- We have a warrant for the property. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, and some of these are in high crime areas where there is a lot of drugs. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Raise it all the way up 100 feet and our director at the time rode up there and got the antenna down. Some of those, you know, if you tune your dial and find some spaces where there is some dead air, well those are intentionally put there in order so that stations don't cause interference to each other. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: -- and you always try to go with the least destructive one. There were helicopters flying over and taking videos, so we got on a little TV, and that helps to go a long way when we get a little media coverage. The FRW is an email-only newsletter devoted to the hobby of pirate radio listening, and is distributed free to those who contribute. 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.. "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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, it's -- Pirate radio has been around for decades. Total . We do contact the property owner before we execute the warrant to let them know we are at the door and we don't want to break the door down but we need them there to open it. 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. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So this equipment helps us track us down. We do that with every pirate station. It's not. 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. But if we sign it into law we would have some additional resources, first increasing the fines. 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. Liverpool vs Wolves will kick-off on Wednesday, March 1 at 8pm. 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. We get them in Virginia, we get them out in Illinois, even just remote areas of West Virginia they pop up. 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: 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. It's covert surveillance equipment. 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.". "One is cost. 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. 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 --. 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. It could be computers, antennas, coaxial cables. (Listen to one of Ronins broadcasts below.). And then he had, you know, he was on the internet. 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. 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. 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? As this 2009 article from the Independent, a British newspaper, details, O'Rahilly obtained a 63-ton (57-metric ton), Danish passenger ferry, the MV Frederica, and renamed it Caroline, after the daughter of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Okay. Multiply the answer from #1 by the fraction of wavelength of your antenna's design (most antennas are 1/2 (.5) or 1/4 (.25) wave; the popular Comet is a 5/8 (.625) wave antenna). MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. URL Here: https://dkng.co/rogue-----For entertainment purposes only. That's really helpful because then we can note when to send the agents out. And you have tools to escalate the situation. 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. The Offshore Radio Museum website commemorates many of those pirates. And an overall limit of $2 million. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. 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. So not only interference, but we also have issues of interference to other radio services. But just as the British government's stiff penalties didn't deter Radio Caroline, at least so far, the U.S. government's crackdown doesn't seem to have deterred the pirates. I used a pneumatic spud gun to launch an arborist's bag to deploy my 50' end fed antenna 40' up into a tree. Keep in mind that pirates are relatively low-power broadcasters. So a transmitter that complies with the Part 15 requirements has a very small operating range, about 100 feet. 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. * Shows you how to find pirate stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online radios. Be specific. I am Evan Swarztrauber. 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. If you live in other parts of the world, pirate hunting can pose serious DX challenges. Now you usually get one of your top, you know, first or second choice. Has it gotten worse, has it gotten better? 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. Finding Shortwave Stations and Broadcasts. For consistencys sake, I will use the term pirate radio in this article. Click here to view a list of all sponsors. 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? 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. 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