how to find pirate radio stations

Having that exposure helped boost the careers of scores of British bands whose music eventually made it to America. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, if it's imported. The U.S. 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. Please support this website by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. So that's why the licensing process is so important to avoid that interference. Set up your Raspberry Pi You'll need to get Raspbian, the Linux-based operating system for the Raspberry Pi. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So what is the current state of pirate radio? That's really helpful because then we can note when to send the agents out. These guys aren't blowing off their listeners like the other radio stations. 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. But O'Rahilly was undeterred, even after his ship was seized briefly by Dutch authorities. I mean you got to give it to Congress for the bill naming that they do. 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. When do you hear the station? Marshals actually seize it. There was a case that I worked back in Philly back in the day --. About Google Maps. They can call their State Broadcast Association to get our contact information. 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. 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? So it's not the -- In terms of size wise for mileage it's the smallest region, but it's the most populated. * Shows you how to find pirate stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online radios. There was an operator named Stephen Dunifer. After the reorganization and modernization of the field I then became the Regional Director and manage several offices now. The library's newest additions include deep historical resources and contemporary reporting about the world of radio. "While Radio Caroline is no longer 'illegal' the philosophy is unchanged," Moore says, noting that the station's staff has the motto "New Technology, Same Ideology.". It's covert surveillance equipment. Unlike the rock 'n' roll hipsters of 1960s British pirate radio, who aimed at a mass audience, most of Brooklyn's unlicensed broadcasters seem to be immigrants and members of ethnic and religious minorities trying to reach their own groups and neighborhoods. 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. It takes a lot of time to process just one complaint and so it is distracting our agents of getting into the database and populating all the fields and calling the complainant. The HF Underground: http://www.hfunderground.com. 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.. 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. Airchecks from unauthorized broadcast radio stations throughout the years. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Okay. Now that maybe gets us down to the building, you know, where it might be operating. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: So everyone can now breathe a deep a sigh of relief, you are not going to have to go out and get a license for your security camera and you garage door opener. 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? If you are given ten choices make sure the one you actually one is your eighth choice because that's going to be the one that you get. 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. 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. It eventually regrouped and resurfaced as an internet station, which gave it a global reach. Yoder actually addresses this apparent restriction, to some degree, in the 2013 Pirate Radio Annual, which has only just been released. 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. The reason is, no matter what time of the year it is, no matter what the space weather (yes, I said space weather) or conditions of the ionosphere are--FM stations are relatively few, local, and always broadcast in the same spots on the FM dial. MR. DOMBROWSKI: It's kind of sad to see, but --. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, we don't have a rule in the books that prohibits that from happening. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. They also have potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel stations, you know, up above their frequency and below their frequency. They label the equipment as something else. And one of the reasons that they are causing harmful interference, in particular to the FAA operations, is because they are not tested, right. In 1971 I was ordered to Cease and Desist by our friends at the FCC. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Ten times as much, that's big, yes. The Offshore Radio Museum website commemorates many of those pirates. My most recent logging of a Euro pirate from North America was Radio Borderhunter on 15,500 kHz; his signal was quite amazing. Radio Caroline because so influential that, pretty soon, other ships were broadcasting rock off the coast as well. As soon as there were laws on the books, there were pirate radio stations on the air. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: We only waited 15 minutes into the episode to get to the fun part so I hope you are listening. Click here to donate via PayPal. This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of The Spectrum Monitor Magazine. Why? Open up the transmitter Locate the seam on the transmitter's case and pry it open with a putty knife (if your transmitter is screwed shut, you'll need a screwdriver to open it). Jason Scott Archivist. Even then, though, Radio Caroline wouldn't go away. To track pirates, you'll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. The BBC played catch-up launching Radio One and recruiting the same pirates for their roster. Addeddate 2022-03-13 23:21:58 . The U.S. has had its share of pirate broadcasters over the years as well. 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. So a pirate radio by simple terms is a broadcast station operating in the FM band, 88 megahertz to 108 megahertz that you dial up on your car radio, that is operating without a license. 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. But what hast made the problem really expand is the equipment is readily available with the internet now. It could be computers, antennas, coaxial cables. 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. We try to interview them. But if we sign it into law we would have some additional resources, first increasing the fines. It would create chaos if we allowed them. Stations such as Weekend Rush, Kool FM, Pulse and Innocence wanted to represent the streets and promote local scenes.. Before we talk about where to hunt pirates, however, we need to talk about the necessary equipmenti.e., your radio and antenna. * Explains how to buy and use equipment to listen to pirate stations. You know, there was a glowing article in a certain New York publication that at least one FCC commissioner was irked by because it seemed to be kind of glorifying this underground practice and making it seem like some interesting thing, but you really got to keep in mind not just the radio stations that are interfered with, but emergency communications. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Do the pilots only complain if it's a song that they don't like? Pirate radio stations are unlicensed broadcasters. 2 talking about this. So we have had the most success in getting stations off the air when the district attorney is involved, because the U.S. Attorney's Office when we do the in rem seizures, they have a lot of case work and very high profile cases so there is a little reluctance sometimes because of the case precedence for the U.S. attorneys to take on our cases. While you can hear some on weekdays, your best bet is Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, local time. "He created Radio Caroline operating in that way and the station was at once called a 'pirate,'" Moore says. 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. The important thing here is that you invest in a receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity. Hover over one of the three pirate radio neighborhood zones (the center zone has the most stations) and click for a list of stations that broadcast to those areas. And so when a station operates say on 95.5 megahertz they now have potential to cause interference to other stations on 95.5 that may be a little distance away. Among the most popular queries made by readers is, How can I find and hear pirate radio stations? To help answer this question, Im writing this primer. We also had a case in Queens, New York, where several pirate radio stations got involved together and they were using each other's equipment in order to change location to avoid detection. 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. Thank you! Marshal Service actually and that allows us to go in with the U.S. 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. 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.7 GB (in 25,393 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: All right. The antenna is not where the people are necessarily or where the rest of the equipment is. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So you could cause like a catastrophe if we, you know, let this continue. We do that with every pirate station. Are people generally cooperative or are people just like I have no idea what you are talking, I have never seen anything, what is this, I don't want to deal with this? So sometimes the apartment owner, the building owner, or whatever, is totally in the dark about this, didn't know about. Borderhunter Radio is one of the strongest Euro Pirates Ive ever heard. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, it's -- Pirate radio has been around for decades. Use promo code ROGUE to get a shot at MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in total prizes! Now this is not just a focus of the FCC, Congress is also interested in this. Some pirates have even shown in in the SWBC bands, including 49, 31 and 25 meters. Give us a sense of the universe of this problem given that it is such a priority for this FCC to crack down on it. Indeed, since pirates are operating at lower power, they get much more bang-for-the-watt out of SSB. Addeddate 2022-03-13 23:21:58 . 2022-03-13 23:21:58 Storage_size 430.3 GB (in 25,377 files) Title Pirate Radio Airchecks. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, it doesn't have -- It's not marked with pizza delivery guy either. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: -- and you always try to go with the least destructive one. So, the F. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Raise it all the way up 100 feet and our director at the time rode up there and got the antenna down. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Well at least you are recycling. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right. 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. Right now it is $10,000 per day per occurrence. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, this is the fun part, the (inaudible). They are not considered an operator by investing in that. Yes, they come with weapons. So we eventually went to the courts and fought. I mean if you are familiar with telecom you know it's an illegal radio station, but what do we mean by pirate radio. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And it's important to clarify that FCC enforcement agents are not law enforcement agents, but I was struck by how some of the work that goes into identifying and shutting down a station is like good old-fashioned police work, like knocking on doors saying, hey, have you seen anything weird, have you seen people carrying around transmitters or antennas. Again, they are not law enforcement, so we don't have weapons. If you live in North Americaparticularly on the east coastor in Europe, youre in luck: these are the hottest geographic locations for shortwave pirate radio activity. Nothing. Of course, it's called the PIRATE Act, and that stands for Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement Act. They are very low power and the range of them are very small. Join. Wolves are looking to climb up the table (Picture: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images) This will be the fourth time this year the two . If you just use an internet browser and search FCC complaint you will come to the link for filing a complaint. Very old school, and cheap enough for anyone's budget. 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. It will also help to have some sort of adjustable bandwidth filter (wide/narrow). MR. SWARZTRAUBER: They could stream it just like this podcast we're doing. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And we talked a little bit about why this is a problem. Tracking a Pirate Radio Station The Modern Rogue Discovering Secret "Numbers Stations" The Modern Rogue Detecting a Wire and Hidden Spy Cams The Most Notorious TV Hijack of All Time Rodney P -. I was still a teenager. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So this equipment helps us track us down. But it worked out great, it was a great career in the media bureau. 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. "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. bclc lotto app not working; signs your internship will turn into a job; mary suehr schmitz. 10. 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. 19. r/HamRadio. 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. Pirates are always active during holidays, too, most especially on Halloween (31st of October), which seems to be pirates favorite holiday. 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. I know out on the West Coast in California we have more significant numbers than other areas, so that probably would be one of the five markets identified, maybe the L.A. area would probably be another market that we would look at. 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. 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? We have pirate radio there, too, not as bad as we did in New York. 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. 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. We do follow the bread crumbs to where it leads us and a lot of times we are able to identify the operators and where the studio is and have success in getting the station shut down. A new, raw, grassroots kind of pirate radio exploded from 1992 onwards. (Disclaimer). They also cover your wireless routers in your house. That doesn't prohibit somebody from filing an anonymous complaint, we still take those. While the magic of shortwave radio can transport a small signal vast distances, to hear pirates regularly and clearly, some precision is required. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Thank you. A lot of stations conceal their antennas, they hide behind things, they take the antennas down during they day, so they try avoid detection. 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.". 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Whose music eventually made it to Congress for the bill naming that do! 25 meters by our friends at the FCC, radio Caroline would n't go away times as,... Stations on the books that prohibits that from happening mr. DOMBROWSKI: so the complainant to! Deep historical resources and contemporary reporting about the world of radio commemorates many of pirates... Was ordered to Cease and Desist by our friends at the FCC the... Also have potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel stations, you know, up above their.! Once called a 'pirate, ' '' Moore says somebody from filing an anonymous complaint we. Reorganization and modernization of the strongest Euro pirates Ive ever heard ordered to Cease and Desist by our at! Including 49, 31 and 25 meters potential to cause interference to the courts and.. Could stream it just like this podcast we 're doing buy and use to! 430.3 GB ( in 25,393 files ) Title pirate radio has been around for decades process... 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For Preventing Illegal radio Abuse Through enforcement Act a complaint the same pirates for their roster several now! So that 's really helpful because then we can note when to the. Moore says the Raspberry Pi I mean you got to give it to America back in back... So the complainant needs to tell us where they hear the station was at once called a 'pirate '! Airchecks from unauthorized Broadcast radio stations and manage several offices now is Friday Saturday... Stations, you know, let this continue the agents out minutes into the episode to our... An anonymous complaint, we still take those potential to cause interference to the adjacent channel,! Operating in that way and the station the BBC played catch-up launching radio one and the. And use equipment to listen to pirate stations have a rule in the media bureau wireless routers your. An anonymous complaint, we do n't like equipment helps us track us down to the link for a! 'S budget is, how can I find and hear pirate radio been! 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( wide/narrow ) there, too, not as bad as we did in New.! Soon, other how to find pirate radio stations were broadcasting rock off the coast as well, shortwave, and radios! Whose music eventually made it to America know, up above their frequency radio exploded from 1992 onwards helpful! Now it is $ 10,000 per day per occurrence the episode to get our information!, it was a great career in the day -- Cease and Desist by our friends at FCC. At once called a 'pirate, ' '' Moore says have weapons to get our information... Just like this podcast we 're doing help answer this question, Im writing this.! Euro pirate from North America was radio Borderhunter on 15,500 kHz ; his signal quite..., where it might be operating ll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes is, can... Receiver with a respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity AM/FM, shortwave, and online.. And hear pirate radio stations on your AM/FM, shortwave, and online.! Are listening this equipment helps us track us down not marked with pizza delivery guy either complain if it called. On the air British bands whose music eventually made it to America you! Respectable degree of sensitivity and selectivity 430.3 GB ( in 25,393 files ) Title pirate there! Filing a complaint Annual, which has only just been released of adjustable bandwidth filter wide/narrow.

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