Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various "watering holes." Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. So hopefully that's enough for them to get the station taken down and maybe share some information about who the real operator is. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes, and it's also I assume illegal for these advertisers to be advertising on pirate stations, they just might not know that they are pirates. Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. So when they say, oh, I don't need a license to operate I'm a Part 15 transmitter, well we have to do studies and measurements to see if that's true. If you live in other parts of the world, pirate hunting can pose serious DX challenges. 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. So, the F. So those are some of the challenges that you all have to tackle in taking on this important enforcement function. We have a call center, it's 888-CALL-FCC where we have staff there during business hours to take your complaint. Euro pirates typically broadcast in the 48 meter band (6,200 6,450 kHz), but the HF Underground notes that you will also hear Euro pirates on the 75 meter band between 3,900-4,000 kHz, on the 19 meter band (15,000-15,100 kHz and 15,700-15,900 kHz), and even on the 13 meter band (21,000-25,000 kHz). 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. And when KIWI went silent, that was it. Has it evolved over the years? 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. 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 --. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, the legitimate one, the licensed station. "In Haiti during the Duvalier regime, people depended on radio to get news from independent sources off the island. That would allow us to increase the fine to $100,000. Well joining me to discuss this topic is David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. And so, yes, we may -- We have a warrant for the property. Want to buy me a cup of coffee? 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. I keep a copy handy as it helps me identify stations and better understand their format. Marshals went in with us and we seized the equipment. 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? 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. Has it gotten worse, has it gotten better? KQLZ Pirate Radio stormed the Southern California airwaves in 1989, and. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Well that's what I went up with. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: My guest has been David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. South America was strong for a while in the 90s, but that has also fallen silent. They also cover your wireless routers in your house. There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. So I have -- In terms of population I manage 20 States in the Northeast area of the United States. And as a bonus, Radio Caroline still exists though, ironically, it's gone legal. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, just 20. Wolves are looking to climb up the table (Picture: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images) This will be the fourth time this year the two . And did I mention the cool QSL cards? PROMAX designs several monitoring and spectrum surveillance systems. "Pirate Radio" is a period piece, set in a time when the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the Who's "My Generation" were still scandalous and controversial rather than nostalgic anthems for today's aging baby boomers. And one of the reasons that they are causing harmful interference, in particular to the FAA operations, is because they are not tested, right. Additionally, pirate broadcasters don't have to deal with all the legal complexities of setting up and running a streaming internet service, such as writing terms of service or meeting contractual obligations, he notes. We want them to be as descriptive as possible. It is portable, but can also be used as a permanent FM radio station. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It is. The BBC played catch-up launching Radio One and recruiting the same pirates for their roster. 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. It could be harmful if we let a pirate radio station operate because sometimes they cause interference to other services, like aeronautical communications. Yes, they come with weapons. Most are run by hobbyists purely for fun, although some have political or other agendas. Back when KIWI was on the air regularly in the 90s, I assumed that pirate radio would explode in Oceania and Asia. Marshal Service and seize all of the equipment that is associated with the operation of a radio station, really anything physically connected to the transmitter. A few of them broadcast from ships, such as Rev. I used a pneumatic spud gun to launch an arborist's bag to deploy my 50' end fed antenna 40' up into a tree. Friday March 17, 1989 5:00 am. 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 mean if you are familiar with telecom you know it's an illegal radio station, but what do we mean by pirate radio. 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. Before we talk about where to hunt pirates, however, we need to talk about the necessary equipmenti.e., your radio and antenna. 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. While the magic of shortwave radio can transport a small signal vast distances, to hear pirates regularly and clearly, some precision is required. Our agency was delegated by Congress to allocate frequencies and allocate it in the public interest and it's a resource. 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. We have had cases where we have gone in on in rem seizures and found drug paraphernalia inside the building and so that becomes now a law enforcement issue and they take care of that, they handle that situation. After that we just destroy it through an electronics recycler. And then they said to me well here is ten jobs that you potentially could have which one is your top choice? Searching for an FM radio station on your car radio is quite easy. Not all the illegal stations are pirate stations! They don't know how to reach us? If we get that information we have a vehicle, it's called a direction-finding vehicle and it has specialized equipment in it. But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. 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. I received this QSL from the amazing Radio Ronin Shortwave shortly before he received the knock from the FCC and stopped transmitting. 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. It will also help to have some sort of adjustable bandwidth filter (wide/narrow). 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. Ive noticed increased pirate radio activity during the winter months, as well. Compared to big-gun broadcasters, pirates are much more elusive game as very few announce their broadcasts in advance, and theres no telling where a pirates transmitter is located: it could be in their home, on a boat, or a portable one dropped in a remote location and later retrieved. 19. r/HamRadio. 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. But most of the current American pirates are based on dry land, broadcasting from clandestine antennas on rooftops in places such as Brooklyn. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. 2. 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. Note: This podcast was recorded on June 21st. 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