I have four offices, it includes Chicago, it includes Boston, New York, and Columbia, Maryland. 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. MR. DOMBROWSKI: So this equipment helps us track us down. Radio and electronics were my hobbies. "Pirate radio continues to exist in the internet age for a variety of reasons," John Nathan Anderson, a broadcasting scholar and author who is working on a book about pirate radio, explains via email. "The government decided that radio was too influential as a means of mass communication to be in private hands," Peter Moore explains in an email. They also spent the regulatory fees that they have to, you know, spend I think yearly, and so they have an investment in their service and these unlicensed stations NP that. 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. Other times though you might have reason to suspect that they are in on it, they are getting a kickback. Loggings are in real time and there are very fewif anyoff-topic posts. So they thought that was a way for them to avoid detection by hopping from building to building and frequency to frequency. 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. But by the 1960s, the postwar baby boom filled the U.K. with millions of teenagers who were eager to hear the rock 'n' roll records that the BBC declined to play. Now that maybe gets us down to the building, you know, where it might be operating. 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 had a 20-mile range. It has become more common for pirates to transmit images using SSTV.A few have experimented with FM or digital modes like RTTY, PSK31 . MR. SWARZTRAUBER: We only waited 15 minutes into the episode to get to the fun part so I hope you are listening. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, we don't have a rule in the books that prohibits that from happening. So --. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, the legitimate one, the licensed station. Pirate radio operators usually have day jobslike most of usthus only transmit while home from work. 3. Now you usually get one of your top, you know, first or second choice. You know, is this a massive national problem, are there particular areas where it's a problem? 16 days ago. 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. 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. I received this QSL from the amazing Radio Ronin Shortwave shortly before he received the knock from the FCC and stopped transmitting. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Got you. Yes, so it's kind of like a cascade of options --. For his new show, Bruce promises "me and my musings and all the great . Weve now covered the who, what, where, when, and how of pirate huntingbut what about why? 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. The British government, though, didn't appreciate what Radio Caroline and other pirate broadcasters were doing. The price of the equipment is $2,960.51. Some pirates simply key down their mike and begin talking, sharing their political or social views; others offer near-professional music productions, complete with listener feedback, and often acknowledge listener reports with QSLs (radio postcards). On Easter Sunday in 1964, the station went on the air, playing the Rolling Stones' single "It's All Over Now" as its first song. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes, it's -- Pirate radio has been around for decades. And that's it, we will catch you next time. You have somebody that puts a station on the air and then what that person does is he leases air time for his station for other DJs and they come in and so he is getting a kickback from the DJs and he is getting advertising revenue. Indeed, since pirates are operating at lower power, they get much more bang-for-the-watt out of SSB. 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. No, not the Pirates of the Caribbean or East Africawe're talking about pirate radio. Why? I am Evan Swarztrauber. The FRW is an email-only newsletter devoted to the hobby of pirate radio listening, and is distributed free to those who contribute. When do you hear the station? In the U.S. the most famous example of a Pirate Radio station was Mexico's XERF. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: And obviously as a good citizen I have never to my knowledge listened to a pirate radio station. 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. They have a bill circulating around called the PIRATE Act. That was right when the internet really started exploding so he was able to get his message out. 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. A lot of stations conceal their antennas, they hide behind things, they take the antennas down during they day, so they try avoid detection. That's really helpful because then we can note when to send the agents out. Is it when you are driving in, you know, to and from work? 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: And we talked a little bit about why this is a problem. One of the FCC's top enforcement priorities is cracking down on pirates. While you can hear some on weekdays, your best bet is Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, local time. 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. One of the first pirate radio operators we know of was Ronan O'Rahilly. More areas, more just the urban areas. We also would be required to file a report to Congress annually on our enforcement activities in pirate radio. Is this something that plays a role in alerting you to these stations that broadcasters themselves are identifying them and complaining about them? Unauthorized stations are particularly prolific in the New York City area, where a 2016 study by the New York State Broadcasters Association (NYSBA) found that there actually were more pirates then on the FM band than legal licensed stations. Now I know that finding pirates is reasonably achievable; at least, it is possible to know roughly where, and generally when, to find them. Pirate radio broadcasting on shortwave radio in North America is mostly done in a frequency range just below the 40 meter amateur radio band, from about 6815 kHz to 6970 kHz. 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. So, for example, if youre listening for North American pirates from Europe, youll need to plan accordingly. I decoded this Wolverine Radio SSTV QSL on the SSTV iOS App. Listening to pirate radio is perfectly legaland frequently an ear-opening experience. MR. DOMBROWSKI: No, not the public face, but he's all the behind the scenes guy. 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. In the quieter winter months, stations seem to pop out of the ether. Whether youre a QSL collector, a content DXer, or the casual SWLer, I find theres something in pirate radio listening for everyone. Pirate stations want listeners to discover them, so they broadcast in various "watering holes." Launched just five months ago, Internet Archive's Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications has expanded to more than 61,000 items related to amateur radio, shortwave listening, and related communications. It is illegal for companies to market equipment that hasn't gone through what we call a certification process, equipment authorization process, where they get a company to look at their transmitter to make sure it complies with our technical rules and doesn't have potential to cause interference to other radio services. It would create chaos if we allowed them. 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. MR. SWARZTRAUBER: Right, he's no the public face of it. 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. All you need is a location to host the antenna and access to electricity unless you've got batteries, then just the location.". MR. DOMBROWSKI: So you could cause like a catastrophe if we, you know, let this continue. And one of the reasons that they are causing harmful interference, in particular to the FAA operations, is because they are not tested, right. MR. DOMBROWSKI: Yes. 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. Ive had great results in the past with an old Icom IC-735 and a 40-meter dipole antenna. 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. To track pirates, you'll need a radio with both AM and SSB modes. And so we need to make sure that we stop the importation of this equipment, we stop the marketing of these illegal transmitters. He received the knock from the amazing radio Ronin Shortwave shortly before he received the from. 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