Everyone should agree that pirate radio stations - by any definition - are completely illegal. So we have a team here in the Enforcement Bureau that does that, our Spectrum Enforcement Division. 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. Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. 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. 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? 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: All right. 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? If you click on "radio" you'll come to a page where you can input your address and your phone number and email and a description of like what, you know, what you are experiencing. 10. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Yes. For consistencys sake, I will use the term pirate radio in this article. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Ragnar Daneskjold hosts an occasional podcast serving the shortwave pirate community; it includes pirate radio news, off-air recordings, and more. It might be illegal in terms of IRS about the taxes that aren't be collected off the exchange of funds in the business that's going on behind doors. Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. Ads are what helps us bring you premium content! You know, is this a massive national problem, are there particular areas where it's a problem? And while pirate radio stations can be found across the radio spectrum, especially on AM and FM in urban areas, in this primer Ill be focusing on those that inhabit the shortwaves. 2 talking about this. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And obviously as a good citizen I have never to my knowledge listened to a pirate radio station. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So we have two ways to file a complaint. And you have tools to escalate the situation. It's about $200,000 worth of equipment. 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: So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station. Select a station from the list and it will play on the tuner. So a transmitter that complies with the Part 15 requirements has a very small operating range, about 100 feet. They can be just talk radio stations, they could be religious broadcasters, or they could be full-fledged stations that have a staffing of 20 people that make commercials, that create the jingles for their station ID, and the ones that have more money and the money advertisers are the ones that are very hard to distinguish. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It's not, you know, and we didn't talk about, there are other legal ways to go about it. Listening to pirate radio is perfectly legaland frequently an ear-opening experience. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. 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. Our agency was delegated by Congress to allocate frequencies and allocate it in the public interest and it's a resource. The Offshore Radio Museum website commemorates many of those pirates. Be careful to. Just browse the pirate radio category: https://swling.com/blog/category/pirate-radio/. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. (Disclaimer). MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, we have a lot of stations in New York, in particular. The library's newest additions include deep historical resources and contemporary reporting about the world of radio. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various "watering holes." More areas, more just the urban areas. But they also encroach on those legitimate stations that made significant investments and secured the necessary regulatory approvals to obtain a license. 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. Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. Please leave us a review because it will help others find this show. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Welcome to "More Than 7 Dirty Words," the official FCC podcast. So what is the state of pirate radio in the U.S. and how is the FCC taking it on? But it worked out great, it was a great career in the media bureau. So I have -- In terms of population I manage 20 States in the Northeast area of the United States. "He convinced me to not stay on as Bond I'd be in danger of becoming part of the Establishment," Lazenby wrote on in an Instagram tribute after O'Rahilly's death in April 2020, noting that he had no regrets about taking that advice. Our agents typically work in a certain area so they become familiar with all the pirate radio operators and they kind of started to notice the pattern and so we were able to gather all of the evidence and go to the U.S. Attorney's Office and seize all that equipment and get the station off the air. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. MR. DOMBROWSKI: And so that's not practical for somebody that wants to operate a radio station to cover an entire community. There is a lot of misconception about what a low power transmitter is. This metal-focused platform is available entirely online, so you can access the music from a lot of different locations, even though the station is based in San Francisco. Powerful, uncertified transmitters manufactured in foreign countries easily slip through customs at U.S. ports. 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. I am Evan Swarztrauber. Some stations think that it's best to flood the FCC with complaints. MR. DOMBROWSKI: That's not going to be my cell phone is it? Give us a little of your background. And so he brought this argument up when we tried to get his station off the air by using the court proceedings and he fought that we were violating his First Amendment rights. 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. SWARZTRAUBER: All right. Liverpool vs Wolves will kick-off on Wednesday, March 1 at 8pm. It's covert surveillance equipment. Now if you go that menu there are several options of different radio services. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, just 20. So for that period of time they lose communications and they have to try to find another available channel to keep that communication line open. 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. Most are run by hobbyists purely for fun, although some have political or other agendas. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, it's -- Pirate radio has been around for decades. In the U.S. the most famous example of a Pirate Radio station was Mexico's XERF. 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. Yes, so it's kind of like a cascade of options --. I was still a teenager. After that we just destroy it through an electronics recycler. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right, he's no the public face of it. tyson jost dad; sean penn parkinson's disease; mockingbirds attacking my cat . Additionally, youll find contact information for QSL requests and mail-drop addresses as well. Alan Roes Music Programmes on Shortwave, List of QRP General Coverage Amateur Radio Transceivers, List of VHF/UHF Multimode Amateur Radio Transceivers, How To Tune In Pirate Radio Broadcasts on Shortwave, https://swling.com/blog/category/pirate-radio/, LRA 36 (Arcangel San Gabriel, Antarctica) Test Broadcasts on March 1st and 4th, 2023, Radio Waves: AM Buzzkill, AM FEMA Push, AM Devitalization, and RFI-Blocking Chips, Bob Zanottis presentation to the Fairlawn Amateur Radio Club (Part 2), Radio Waves: The DLARC, NASA Citizen Science, PopShopRadio DRM to Europe, Hackers Disrupt Russian Radio, and Afghan Radio Closures, LRA 36 (Arcangel San Gabriel, Antarctica) Test Broadcast Today at 20:00 UTC. Jason Scott Archivist. Airchecks from unauthorized broadcast radio stations throughout the years. 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. Before we talk about where to hunt pirates, however, we need to talk about the necessary equipmenti.e., your radio and antenna. I used a pneumatic spud gun to launch an arborist's bag to deploy my 50' end fed antenna 40' up into a tree. David, thanks so much for joining. Well joining me to discuss this topic is David Dombrowski, Regional Director for Region One in the FCC Enforcement Bureau. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, everyone's dream job. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: They could stream it just like this podcast we're doing. It has become more common for pirates to transmit images using SSTV.A few have experimented with FM or digital modes like RTTY, PSK31 . 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? They have a bill circulating around called the PIRATE Act. 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. . 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. An excellent and active pirate radio forum hosted by Chris Smolinski. comment. 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. 1. It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. So what is pirate radio? But most of the current American pirates are based on dry land, broadcasting from clandestine antennas on rooftops in places such as Brooklyn. About Google Maps. I believe this is why authorities like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) place shortwave pirates comparatively lower on their enforcement priority list. 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. 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. Are there particular areas where it 's -- pirate radio forum hosted by Smolinski. 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