The "in related news" story in this article is way more interesting, someone who apparently feels pretty strongly about running a pirate radio station.
- FCC is proposing $80,000 fine against a man in Oregon for operating an FM pirate radio station since 2018
- first complaint was in 2018, agents tracked it down, warned the man, and he gave them his transmitter
- second complaint in 2019, agents tracked it to the man's new home, they warned him again, he gave them his transmitter
- 2 stern warnings wasn't enough, because third complaint came in 2022, agents tracked it to the man's home again, the man's wife gave them 2 tranmitters
- the man then posted many videos on Facebook about his pirate radio station, and dared the FCC to lock him up. He then started another pirate radio station
I know it's not a popular opinion, but the AM/FM radio bands have become such (corporate) crap that I laud people like this radio pirate. I wish a kind of public-access could open up on half the frequencies on the dial.
I develop radio transceiver software for FCC-compliant radios.
The FCC helps ensure that specific radio bands are allocated for emergency purposes. There are regulations based on numerous performance characteristics of radios that must be met before a radio transmitter can be sold and operated. The problem with pirates is that they either aren't aware of these considerations or don't care. Either way could lead to interference with firefighters, police, or ambulance dispatch in life-critical situations. (The P25 digital radio communications standard was written specifically to address interoperability between different manufacturers, as a direct result of the inability for first responders to coordinate efforts during 9/11, which led to more lives lost than would have happened otherwise.)
Beyond the FCC, counties need to stay within their allocated spectrum band, lest they interfere with neighbouring transceivers.
Yes, corporate radio is trash. In Canada, we have CBC Radio, which is free of advertisements. Allowing radio pirates to jam airwaves is neither a good idea nor a good solution to corporate crap.
Okay, now, can you explain to me how an FM transmitter, transmitting somewhere between 87 MHz and 108 MHz will interfere with your emergency services? Potential harmonics? Can you point at one case of this ever happening, ever in real life where modern emergency communications were interrupted by a FM transmitter?
> can you explain to me how an FM transmitter, transmitting somewhere between 87 MHz and 108 MHz will interfere with your emergency services
Jamming EAS(https://www.fcc.gov/emergency-alert-system). In the rural midwest, it's critical for distributing tornado warnings further from town than you can hear the sirens. Periodic tests are required, and there's a readiness report.
>Can you point at one case of this ever happening, ever in real life where modern emergency communications were interrupted by a FM transmitter?
EAS failures due to interference causing poor signal does happen. From the August 11, 2021 Nationwide EAS Test: "There were 78 test participants on receipt and 32 on retransmission that reported failure to receive the test message due to poor signal. Test participants attributed the poor signal to interference, a weak signal from their monitoring source, or a weather-related complication."
"Illegal pirate radio stations interfere with the Emergency Alert System (EAS). EAS is critically important to protect the public and national security. During national, regional, and local emergencies, the broadcast EAS system is essential to saving lives. Stations participating in the EAS system must be able to transmit and receive interference-free signals. Pirate stations do not participate in the EAS system and do not comply with FCC's EAS rules monitoring and broadcasting EAS alerts. Further, unlicensed illegal stations interfere with licensed radio stations. Such interference affects EAS alerts that are broadcast by licensed radio stations. Thus, consumers located near a pirate radio transmitter will not hear the legitimate station's EAS alert."
> Jamming EAS(https://www.fcc.gov/emergency-alert-system). In the rural midwest, it's critical for distributing tornado warnings further from town than you can hear the sirens. Periodic tests are required, and there's a readiness report.
Not just the midwest. Anywhere there is not cell service where there might be some kind of an alert that needs to be generated. AM, FM, and the weather bands are often the only reliable signals that can be received in some areas.
Flooding, tsunamis, avalanches, nuclear power plant warnings, civil defense warnings, etc all have SAME codes.
> EAS failures due to interference causing poor signal does happen. From the August 11, 2021 Nationwide EAS Test: "There were 78 test participants on receipt and 32 on retransmission that reported failure to receive the test message due to poor signal. Test participants attributed the poor signal to interference, a weak signal from their monitoring source, or a weather-related complication."
Out of how many test recipients? If I'm reading the report correctly, it was at least 19,302, which means interference caused failure for < 0.6% -- and the overall failure rate was slightly higher than 10%.
But weather is more local. 6MHz might not get that good of a range with low powers like that thanks to the really high amounts of man made noise on HF bands.
So the inherently local nature of VHF complements the inherently local weather alerts. Floods and tornadoes are not an issue at a distance of 300 miles.
That seems rather limited compared to EAS in practice, since some EAS stations will relay appropriate alerts, and since EAS runs over both broadcast FM, AM, and TV stations.
Real life communications have been interrupted by faulty sump pump motors and bad LED drivers. Actually trying to build a radio is no guarantee of success.
A long time ago, we were acquiring the shadiest RF devices possible to test against our WiFi routers, which should avoid auto-selecting interfering frequencies. One device we got was an analog wireless security camera thingie bought right from Amazon. "2.4GHz" it declared, so it was the perfect test case. We turned it on and there was no WiFi interference whatsoever. We got out the test equipment and... its carrier frequency was right on the edge of the L1 GPS frequency. You turn the thing on, there goes GPS for the neighborhood. It was impressively disastrous and we did not test it any further!
That's a company trying to build a radio product, for sale to consumers in the US market. I don't have a lot more faith in random people trying to build FM radios. Sure, you'll know if it doesn't work, because you tune your car radio to it and you can't hear anything. But unless you're careful, you can radiate a lot of power in the sidebands and the harmonics. That will trash licensed spectrum users, which is Not Nice Of You. (As for "amateur radio" operators, how to build and test radios is part of the exam, so there are a lot of great homebuilt radios floating around out there. Also part of the test is knowing when you can use non-amateur frequencies, and what the punishment for doing so is. Needless to say, not a lot of trained hams are building pirate radio stations. So that brings the likelihood of doing a bad job even higher; by definition, only the unlicensed and untrained are even trying this.)
This comment is already too long but I want to relay another fun fact. Building a receiver can interfere with other users of the spectrum; a common design mixes the incoming radio signal by a higher frequency, filters it, and then mixes it down to audio frequencies. If you don't shield this well, then your receiver is actually a transmitter on some random other band. Be careful and test your design with a spectrum analyzer. It's not rocket science but it's not trivial either.
> can you explain to me how an FM transmitter, transmitting somewhere between 87 MHz and 108 MHz will interfere with your emergency services
In isolation it’s a dice roll. Normalise it and the game becomes power: since nobody is coördinating spectrum, the loudest transmitter (noisily) wins. Waiting until that predictable point doesn’t make sense, particularly given the FCC seems to have warned this guy in the past without handing out a fine.
It’s not emergency, but i would consider an airport to qualify. The airport on Orcas Island, WA had harmonics issues from someone running an illicit FM transmitter in 2018.
More recently, a construction permit on 107.9 was cancelled after it was determined that it could not co-exist with an airport. (If I find the link, I'll edit this reply and post it)
John Tune airport should complain. Interference with air traffic is one of the highest enforcement priorities with the FCC. They'd probably show up as fast as they could drive there.
> Okay, now, can you explain to me how an FM transmitter, transmitting somewhere between 87 MHz and 108 MHz will interfere with your emergency services?
The fifth harmonic will land squarely in the chunk of band between about 435MHz and 500MHz, and being roughly 200kHz wide even assuming they're not overdeviating like hell it'll obliterate a huge chunk of the band. Given how poorly constructed many "pirate TXes are it's almost a given that they'll have ridiculous amounts of out-of-band radiation.
There's one very popular design available on the Internet which I won't link to but will leave as an exercise for the reader, which has a rather nasty sproggie that's only about 10dB down at around 156MHz when it's tuned for about 104MHz. Now, that chunk of the FM broadcast band is quiet around here, but the sproggie passes through the transmitter's largely untuned (at least, broad as a barn door) PA and out the antenna.
The whole thing is not terribly efficient at radiating something 200kHz wide all over the bottom end of the Marine VHF band, but it sure is noticeable.
I have measured some cheap aliexpross specials and they ware remarkably dirty.
A forest of spikes around the fundamental thanks to parts of the TX strip oscillating.
I guess the manufacturers just pulled every last bit of gain and output power from their transistors with minimal amounts of additional parts.
And the end result is something you cannot run even if you had a licensed FM broadcast band frequency.
Some years ago, here in Brazil, I saw a news report on TV where they played a recording from an ATC tower where you could hear a pirate station talking over their transmissions. The pirate station was operated by a church.
You've made a good point regarding bad pirate transmitters.
I still contend that public-access radio ought to be a thing. It can be a certified station in the same way that cable-access in the 1980's was not "pirate cable".
That's funny! I just mentioned that further down in the thread at about the same time as your post.
I think NZ started on FM later than many countries, so they saw the wisdom in reserving some frequencies specifically for that use. Unfortunately that wisdom was gained after the US (and most other countries) already allocated everything.
Ah, during the 80s and 90s, they only allocated 89.0 to 101mhz for FM radio due to previous allocations.
When users of of those bands were moved elsewhere (to mobile phones) they expanded to the standard 88.0mhz to 108mhz range in 2000. Looks like they reserved the 1mhz "guardband" of the expanded range for these unlicensed, low power stations.
Maybe LPFM fits your definition? Community FM radio authorized by the FCC. The restriction is that the range is limited, but then again, a tiny community of is not likely to be blasting a kilowatt anyway.
I do think, since electronics have become cheaper and the AM/FM dial is becoming emptier these days, that we ought to look into what you're saying as a way to revitalize radio.
Although at this point I think it's on a one way path to being more bandwidth for the Internet (in one form or another).
The FCC has visited a friend because some hardware in their house was causing the cable TV signal to leak into the air and it was causing interference on some aircraft-related frequency.
Don't all these issues exist BECAUSE fm/am radio has no public access to begin with? Illegal marijuana means no regulation of the supply chain, for example
I suspect part of the problem is that since there's no "off-the-shelf" solution, and with the entire category being more-or-less off-limits for the hobbyist, pirate-style radio is going to be done with random mispurposed or home-made gear that almost certainly ignores ALL the rules, not just the inconvenient ones.
Is there a "turnkey" solution for someone who wants a broadcast radius bigger than the "talking real estate sign" with a 100-metre radius, but smaller than the smallest commercial/non-profit products? I know there was a lot of talk about low-power FM a few years back, but I think that was still at a level of cost, complexity and licensing far above a lot of the potential audience.
If we had a few nationally allocated free-for-all spots on the FM and TV bands, I'd expect to see such products appear very quickly. Since they'd be made by legitimate manufacturers with the desire to stay in business, they'd generally be well-behaved and have controls limited to stay within bounds, but that would probably be enough to satisfy the niche of "I want to control what's on the radio." Yeah, the channels would be a complete noise mess, but we already did that with CB and the various bands we allocated for Wi-Fi.
Bluetooth Auracast still has a chance at becoming a thing, and is a one-to-many terrestrial broadcast solution that, if implemented by manufacturers, will be available on almost any mobile device. It allows for 4 watts EIRP and it's one-way (no pairing). I could imagine success in a pedestrian-heavy environment.
Re: "...a few nationally allocated free-for-all spots on the FM and TV bands"
The bandwidth unfortunately does not exist for a nation-wide channel in the USA.
It seems like we had no problems bumping broadcasters off of the higher UHF channels to open up space to sell to telecom companies, so how hard would it be to reallocate, say, channels 5 and 6 to public use?
I'd expect that a lot of broadcasters left VHF after the ATSC transition, because it seems like most modern TV antennas are UHF-centric designs, and channel 6 is already known for reaching into the bottom of the FM band, so it kills two birds with one stone.
The problem with anything new is that it's like the current appeal of ham radio products in general: the only community it reaches is people who already went out of their way to buy a compatible receiver. You can be relatively sure a "general" audience has standard FM and TV capabilities already.
Channel 5 and 6 LPTV stations are being given the opportunity to upgrade from secondary spectrum user (that could be forced off their frequency) to primary spectrum user (that can't be forced off their frequency). So the option to use channels 5 and 6 just closed, as those frequencies are now used in most markets.
I can't think of one major US market off hand that does not have a channel 5 or 6 station.
Broadcast transmitters need certification or other forms of verification as a way to certify that they do not put out spurious emissions. Many uncertified transmitters put out emissions at 10.6 and 21.2 MHz above the operating frequency. 90.5 MHz plus 21.2 equals 111.7 MHz, which is in middle of a band of frequencies used for aircraft navigational aids. You can easily imagine how that can be a danger.
Pirate stations generally don't fork out the extra cash to get a certified or verified transmitter. And uncertified/unverified transmitter manufacturers generally don't test for compliance regarding interference to public safety bands.
Should we be worried about hostile powers building radio transmitters to interfere with emergency broadcasts, but only turning them on before they launch a nuke at us?
This desperate grasping for straw to try and justify illegal use of radio is sad to witness.
Radio is available for use for everyone with proper licensing and certification; there's even a block of frequencies reserved for amateur use (read: ham radio).
The US is a country based on rule of law, your anarchist arguments aren't providing useful discussion.
My comment wasn't attempting to justify use of illegal radio, and your comment was unnecessarily rude, but I'll ignore that (and I won't call you an authoritarian statist).
My comment was questioning the efficacy of FCC regulations against protecting from a "real" threat, i.e. same kind of argument as "gun free zones only stop good guys with a gun while not stopping bad guys with a gun."
If anything, I was asking if there should be more regulations to protect against threats that attempt to obfuscate their presence.
The FCC is, admittedly, reactionary in general because of geographical reality; generally they receive a complaint and then they investigate in response.
Any incidents that go beyond just interference will likely involve other regulatory and law enforcement agencies anyway, so it's unlikely the FCC itself needs more powers for now.
>Radio is available for use for everyone with proper licensing and certification; there's even a block of frequencies reserved for amateur use (read: ham radio).
yeah, but it is not legal to encrypt the ham radio traffic, kinda defeats the whole point of having a frequency for DIY usage.
I come across a lot of digital signals and there are people who like to experiment with different digital modes. In practice, it's hard to distinguish this from encryption.
I don't the parent comment you replied to is saying "if Russia hasn't killed our radios yet than pirate radio is fine". They're wondering if it's a potential attack at all - and if you don't know much about radio then that's a perfectly reasonable thing to think. It's only after you learn about energy dissipation and so on that you realize that the hostile power needs to be pretty close to the actual thing they want to jam.
Though it's not like Russia hasn't already tried anyway[0].
I'm pretty sure most people here are going to at least know what ham radio is. That's not the reason why people here are sympathetic to pirate AM/FM radio broadcasters. It's moreso because the AM and FM radio bands are basically a cultural dead zone: ClearChannel and friends bought them all up in decades past and turned them into garbage. This is the sort of misallocation of resources that economists tend to have a blind spot for. According to them, efficient markets[1] are perfect allocators and anyone not having their tastes satisfied are just harbingers of failure[2] angry that their Crystal Pepsi got discontinued. The reality is that there's literally no reason to have eight stations all playing the same mainstream format in one market, and the FCC has dropped the ball on maximizing public utility of the spectrum.
'Cause here's the thing: yes, radio is "available for use" with proper licensing and certification, but that's basically an elaborated no. It's sort of like saying "copyrighted material is available with proper licensing". Nobody is going to be able to afford the licenses, if they're even offered, because the FCC runs on an auction system. And it turns out that that the mainstream station formats are really, really profitable to the point where you can outbid everything else. Is this an actually worthwhile use of the AM/FM bands to have what are effectively duplicates of the same station on every band in every market?
[1] Fun fact: did you know the Efficient Markets Hypothesis implies P = NP? It's true - if markets are perfectly efficient then they can solve boolean satisfiability problems, which are NP-complete, and thus you can break all crypto.
On the other hand, inefficient markets also imply all those finance soothsayers with their technical analysis can actually beat the market.
I don't think so. The amount of infrastructure (most notably, power) needed to operate such a transmitter that would make a meaningful impact to emergency broadcasts would raise red flags on the local level well in advance.
I've had severe radio interference from Mexico while I was about 600 miles from the border and less than 50 from the US station's 5KW transmitter, and I have no idea how much further from the border the Mexican station was. Handheld radios from a business illegally operating on the wrong frequency rendered radio comms at a job site I was working at completely unusable, and those transmitters are less than 1 watt. Your received power is miniscule compared to what even small transmitters are throwing out, so it really doesn't take much to degrade the signal to the point of uselessness, and those are with properly built transmitters and receivers on the wrong channels, forget some amateur station that's blasting noise all over the spectrum.
You mean the FM transmitters so that you can play your music on an empty station? I've had interference from them, too, but they're usually very low power and most useful when not stepping on another station, so there's some incentive to not mess with other stations.
You're correct, and I should have fact-checked that rather than relying on my memory of what co-workers have said. Project 25 (P25) was started in 1988/1989; the first compliant radios came out in 2012. At some point after 9/11, it was mandated that all government radios purchased must support P25 (for interoperability), likely as a 9/11 Commission recommendation[1].
The FCC's primary job is to protect the corporate profits after they pillaged a public good and auctioned it off for peanuts to preferred corporate buyers depriving the public the use of that resource using the false narrative of "public safety" and "public good" as justification for this....
it is shameful people buy into, and believe the FCC method of "allocation" is either good, or designed to "save lives" when clearly that is NOT the primary purpose of the allocation plan
Radio frequencies are not public goods. Public goods must be nonrivalous and nonexcludable. But only one entity can effectively transmit on a given frequency at a time, so it is definitely rivalrous.
Seems the argument should be more that it is a merit good, but even then some determination must be made as to how to allocate each frequency resource. Auctions are a decent way to do that; supply and demand. So long as they are public and truly go to the highest bidder, I'm not sure there is much to be dissatisfied about.
Thankfully the internet exists to allow people to transmit whatever they want; granted it's still limited to the internet so not the same.
The idea of "only one transmitter" might have made sense in 1950 for analog signals with no chance of replay, but I have to think we've learned a lot about multiplexing and collision detection.
If we allocated broadcast bands today, would we have a hundred narrow channels, or would we have a smaller number of channels and use a TDMA or CDMA style system to expand the number of available slots? I could even imagine packetized broadcasts-- rather than "KXYZ-FM" being on 98.6, your receiver would just scan the entire band for packets tagged KXYZ, and they could dynamically reallocate based on local noise levels or atmospheric conditions.
That sounds a bit like DAB multiplexes. Except that there is a single transmitter and you buy a slot in it.
Cognitive radio with dynamic frequency selection was all the hype along with TV white space radio. But the only actual service that has materialized was the 3.65GHz CBRS one.
And that seems to only have been successful thanks to it sharing frequencies with the 3.5GHz 5G bands, making equipment available and affordable.
In this case, they're blocking out the Emergency Alert System of KBOO. Since KBOO is operating in HD mode, both stations were occupying the bandwidth between 90.5 and 90.6 MHz. KBOO is charged with providing emergency alerts for the immediate vicinity of the 90.5 pirate, but was compromised there.
EAS is expanding to provide visual alerts as well, which the 90.5 pirate fully blocked.
Yes, I think a lot of people don't know what's available (or, at least possible) on their local dial.
It's hard to draw an exact parallel between public access on cable and public access on FM/AM.
Public access on cable is using infrastructure that cable TV companies were required to provide, as a cost for the privilege of using public right-of-ways to run their cables. All costs paid by the cable company.
None of that is in place in the US for radio. Each station has it's own transmitter and must obtain it's own tower space. There's no one to pay for the transmitter, tower and related infrastructure for a public access radio station.
The closest is the currently existing Low Power FM service, and the Non Commercial FM Service, but it's not free, like public access cable is/was.
Pretty damn popular with me. Licensing and ownership rules are as corrupt as can be.
Radio belongs to the people, it is the definition of a public good. It is incontrovertible that the ownership rules will be tweaked in the direction of corporate interests at every opportunity.
People (you and I, and our elected representatives, and pirates) need to do everything possible to yank it back, as far and as hard as we can.
The fact that LPFM hasn't even _pretended_ to offer the _opportunity_ for a license in _ten years_ is everything you need to know about that farce.
The timing of LPFM windows can't really be closer than 10 years from the previous window. Filing windows with LPFM and certain other services can't overlap, and there legally needs to be time between each for consider objections and competing applications.
An LPFM window can not overlap with: (1) Full Power Non-Commercial FM Stations, (2) Full Power Commercial FM Stations, (3) FM Translators (or, repeaters), (4) Full Power TV Stations, and (5) Low Power TV Stations. These windows can not overlap because each of the above services must consider each other in their applications.
The FCC is still wrapping up decisions from the recent 2021 Non-Commercial FM filing window, and has said that they expect LPFM to be next. But they can't do that until the public has the opportunity to object to the final permit granted.
What's stupid is that LPFM stations have a regulated max range of 3.5 miles, which means you could have a ton of them throughout the country without overlap, even if you reserved only 2-3 frequencies for them. This really shouldn't be an issue.
Yeah, spectrum is not being used in the most efficient way. I've heard many different valid ideas on how to do it better, but, in most cases, requires a literal act of Congress.
> Radio belongs to the people, it is the definition of a public good.
Public goods are defined as nonrivalous and nonexcludable. While you cannot exclude anyone from listening to your transmission, the very act of you transmitting prevents others from doing so on the same frequency, within the same locale. It is not a public good by definition.
Im very against government interference, but this is one situation in which government regulation makes sense, so long as the portions of the spectrum allocated to the public are fairly auctioned. Admittedly, I have no idea how the private allocation works.
During pandemic I set up a little automated FM radio station for my block and the surrounding ones. It had a voice-synthesized DJ and a big randomized playlist of great music. The whole thing ran on an RPi with a little USB FM transmitter. My neighbors - the ones who still owned radios - loved it.
I don’t think so, the transmitter was under the power limit for amateur FM, and it didn’t overlap any local stations. That was my interpretation of the law as I read it before I built the station, doesn’t make it accurate or authoritative though.
A legal unlicensed FM transmitter could possibly cover a small area as described.
If it's line-of-sight on a frequency with no interference and stays at the legal limit of 250 microvolts per meter measured at 3 meters, and there's a good receiver with a good antenna, it's possible.
In some towns (like mine) I’m fortunate that there are a couple stations that are either listener supported, or run by a local university as a vocational program to teach broadcasting and DJ disciplines.
Good radio is (for me) the best way to discover music. I love my local stations WITR college radio run by RIT and WBER which is listener supported.
I totally get pirate radio as a cultural necessity to fill that gap for cities where the radio is all commercial shit.
The guys hijacks a public frequency to put whatever he personally wants on, broadcasts Alex Jone's Infowars and Steve Bannon's War Room[1], and people are celebrating it as "the people" taking back the airwaves?
FYI, the company Clear Channel was bought out long ago and split up, with the billboard company keeping the name Clear Channel while the radio/ broadcasting/ media company re-branded as iHeart.
You may think the radio stations are still awful, but it's an entirely different company.
I like this opinion. When they move corporate radio to DAB+ or whatever I'd love to see the FM band or part of it become available to special user groups. Of course with a centralized planning authority and certified equipment. Shouldn't be a huge deal, it would be similar to CB, just a bit more regulated.
This way this band and its ubiquitous receivers would still be very useful.
I doubt that's very feasible though. There's so much equipment around for this band. The same way with the 27Mhz CB band. If they ever sell it it will be swamped with interference by people still using their old radios.
I've sat next to an FCC officer whilst operating just above and just below citizens band. He was more curious than anything about our local CB group. This may no longer be the case but at the time they didn't really care about people doing their own thing unless they were interfering with a business or any other revenue impacting shenanigans. We were careful to not interfere. Well, most of us. One of us could be heard through ceiling fans, toasters, light bulbs, TV's but he rarely spoke. We noticed that the FCC would make an example of an extreme clown about once a month and it would get published in a magazine but they always left us alone I think in part because we all used nice gear and only operated with the power required to get the job done. We would only step it up when someone was trying to clobber the truck drivers.
That still seems to be the case. If you tune into some shortwave bands between 6 and 7 MHz where there never seems to be any commercial traffic, there's still regular pirate broadcasts inside of the US (I think it's a neat hobby for a lot of people -- I certainly like listening). I'm sure if really pressed the FCC would do something about it, but short of extreme abuse they don't seem to do much outside of occasional spurts of cracking down (unless you're operating in the FM bands, or otherwise impacting commercial or military comms).
Probably the quickest way to get the FCC hunting you down, now that I think about it, outside of irritating a commercial or mil operator, is to draw the ire of hams, some of whom, so far as I can tell, will go to the ends of the earth to stop you/ruin your day if you give them reason.
Yup. Even though he had a nice President series radio, he was driving the amp too hard and his beam antenna was aligned to skip to the south-east of the US which happened to align with the 15KV lines. He liked to occasionally talk smack to the guys in the Louisiana swamp lands. I guess one could say that was an old school troll.
So obviously fans don’t have speakers or Alexa in them, I think.
At the time the internet was just a slow link between a few colleges and nobody had cell phones so I tend to agree.
You hear sounds from the motor/wiring?
I honestly don't know. The only induced reactions I can explain are when the truckers running powerful RF linear amps could partially illuminate the fluorescent lights at trucks stops. But I have no idea how he managed to induce not only enough signal to make noise but to also somewhat hear his voice. It was very "tinny" and raspy sounding. The more I think about it the sound was similar to what one might hear if they had two cups connected by string and someone was screaming into it.
Couple years ago I was driving down the highway and got within a few hundred meters of a guy who was no doubt shooting skip on CB (skipping the ionosphere to work hundreds of miles away). The signal was powerful enough that when he keyed on his taillights would almost shut off and I could hear him through the cassette adapter in my car.
Back when modems were a thing, I spent some time living at a friend's house, and shortly after I moved my computer in I started hearing voices. Very faint, but the content was ominous fire and brimstone stuff. I thought I was losing my mind, but I hunted around and they were coming from the computer. Apparently the phone line was acting like an antenna and picking up some religious AM radio show, and playing it through the modem's speaker.
I picked up radio on an old metal dental filling back in the day. Was enough to subtly vibrate it and make it audible to me in my bedroom when it was quiet.
It's not bas extreme as a filling, but I've encountered several accidental radio receivers over the years. A solar powered race car I worked on had a problem with going to 100% throttle whenever someone transmitted on a handheld radio nearby. A stereo audio pre-amp I built from a kit would readily pick up AM stations. When I first visited my in-laws home, I discovered that their subwoofer was preaching evangelical gospel.
I've got a few guitar distortion pedals that can pick up AM when the knobs are in a certain position. It's fun to turn it on in between songs at a gig when we're checking our tuning.
> The gold and amalgam tooth fillings did not act as an antenna or point-contact transistor when placed in a real human skull. Explanations for the supposed Morse code pickup included a Galvanic cell reaction between two teeth fillings and saliva.
> This myth was first claimed by Lucille Ball in an interview on The Dick Cavett Show, with the fillings explanation offered by Buster Keaton.
Myth Busters was great. But for some of their tests you need to keep in mind they built a model with limitations (such as their assumptions) and tried to replicate a claim. In certain cases they were unable to replicate either due to an incomplete model or trying to replicate something that was never published as science in the first place. In their case the endless shape and size of fillings, location, signal frequency and strength, other things that could amplify, etc.
I know it happened because it happened to me once. With a sound mind, unencumbered by substance, and able to test. I could never replicate outside of the one time. But during that time if I moved my head one way (I assume my saliva and contents of it moving) it would go away. Moving it back, the sound was clear. Very tinny, vibrational if that makes sense, but there. Coming from the inside. I remember the weather from that day even as it was such a weird thing.
But I could never replicate.
They are right in saying they could not replicate. But it’s theoretically possible to create a semiconductor with saliva solution and a filling and pick up a strong enough signal in a certain position.
Amsterdam pirate stations in the heyday of pirate radio (and TV!) had spares on the shelf. It usually wouldn't be more than an hour or two after a raid and they'd be back on the air as if nothing changed. In rare cases stations were off the air for more than that, and usually only because the studio itself had been raided and that took a lot more to put back together again than the transmitter location (usually far removed from the studio).
No, most of these broadcast enforcement actions are driven by interference reported by licensed broadcasters.
I don't know (offhand) who reported interference for the Portland station, but they were running an analog FM signal over the digital signal of a licensed independent public broadcaster. There were two signals on the bandwidth between 90.5-90.6 MHz. If a pirate station operates in the same town on the same frequency, it's likely a complaint would generate from that.
Amateur radio is by definition self-policing. The operators are required to keep their own frequencies clean, and will go to considerable length to do so.
They have little interest however in interference involving CB, broadcast FM or similar (unless they are asked to assist).
Most interference investigations into Broadcast (TV, AM or FM) are triggered by complaints from the commercial licensee (who pay big money to use the channel).
Yep. Amateur radio operators couldn't care less about a pirate FM station, but will fiercely defend their own bands.
Our local ham community once got a foreign country to move their over-horizon radar off the ham bands by escalating it with the authorities until they raised a formal diplomatic complaint. Lol.
And rightfully so - ham bands are under constant threat of getting reclassified and auctioned off to the highest bidder. It's use it or lose it.
The Low Power FM (LPFM) [0] service provides for 100 watt stations covering small areas and should have relieved the pressure to pirate but for some reason there hasn't been an LPFM application filing window since 2013. The question I have is why has it been so long since new applications were accepted?
The application filing windows need to be timed out to give other services their opportunity. An LPFM station can be impacted (or impact) the following signals which get their own filing windows:
Non-Commercial FM (uses same spectrum);
Commercial FM (uses same spectrum);
FM Translators (uses same spectrum);
Full Power TV (uses adjacent spectrum that LPFMs must consider);
Low Power TV (uses adjacent spectrum that LPFMs must consider).
The above filing windows can not overlap, and there needs to be a time buffer between each window in the event there are competing applications, or if there are objections filed by the public and other spectrum users that need to be considered.
LPFM will likely be the next window to open. The FCC is wrapping up decisions related to the recent Non-Commercial filing window. When that is done, they can move on to the next window.
I don't know the answer to timing of application windows, but I believe last time almost all of the permits went to religious stations, which may not be what someone sick of what's currently available on the proverbial "dial" is looking for. (there are no "dials" anymore ha)
As an amateur extra I'm glad to see the enforcement. Most of these pirate stations are cobbled together from leaky baofeng trash, sizzly amps and random pot steel masquerading as antenna. They're dangerous radiation hazards at worst, and almost always a nuisance to the airwaves operating as overpowered noise across the spectrum. This is a great way to wind up sending randos to the urgent care with rf burns.
To be clear I really hope for compliance here as many amateur hams are more than willing to help a nonprofit set up a commercial radio station to further their mission. Proper grounding, signage anchoring safe operation and maintenance are all things were well versed on and can lend a hand with, oftentimes free of charge
I get it, that there are negative consequences that are sometimes disruptive to amateur radio.
However, my counter point would be that it's really the FCC who should be blamed for what is obviously an unfair system where Clear Channel can basically "own" FM radio across the entire country. If a pirate wants to set up a micro transmitter to broadcast something cool, and doesn't interfere with anyone (obviously unlike this guy), I have a hard time seeing them as the villan.
The US Congress loosened the restrictions on station ownership, enabling the dominance of companies like Clear Channel,with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC is just enforcing the law.
The FCC, like the rest of the Executive Branch, is tasked with executing the law. Neither legislating nor judging the law is their job, nor should they engage in such behaviour.
On its face this looks like a neutral ethical stance, doesn't it?
Behind the mask it's just a thinly-veiled defense of powerful corporate interests. Those are the parties who (in our modern political system) decide what "right" means, when it really counts.
They make the rules. Predictably the rulebook, if read carefully (congratulations), favors their interests. They didn't leave any "holes" for us.
That teaches us about power. It doesn't make it right.
That's the beauty of dividing up the structures protecting corporate power: everyone has someone else to blame. "One hand washes the other."
The executive branch can blame the congress, like you just did.
Congress can blame the corporations, because they'll fund a rival candidate if they do anything to offend their interests.
Corporations can (and do) blame others, but in our system they don't really need to. Everything corporations do is moral by definition, because they always seek the economic optimum. Don't look into it, I'm sure it's fine.
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Power always tries to fashion for itself a perfect suit of legitimizing armor, without any gaps. You've been describing some of the pieces. The job of dissidents (and yes hackers) is to find holes in that armor, and if necessary poke new ones.
Dissent created the modern world. Every citizen owes an enormous debt to past (and future) dissidents, even if we don't personally identify as one.
A society without dissent is not likely to work out better in practice for the average citizen. We'd better make room for it.
>The executive branch can blame the congress, like you just did.
Yes, because Congress is at fault. Dissent is fine, but it is at best unproductive and more probably counterproductive if it is misdirected. If the laws are bad, it is unequivocally the legislature's fault.
>Yes, because Congress is at fault. ... If the laws are bad, it is unequivocally the legislature's fault.
Congress is only operating under the constraints of voters and corporations. Just try to be the proverbial "good Congressperson" and see how fast you get voted out in favor of a well-funded rival appearing from nowhere.
The same is true of the CEO of Exxon, incidentally. You could magically swap the head of Greenpeace in there, but that person will still be constrained by the obligation to shareholders (among other things, via the threat of removal).
It's not the individual people at fault, the problem is the emergent behavior of the system itself. You can't fix it by swapping out "bad" people for "good" people. It doesn't work.
>Dissent is fine, but it is at best unproductive
I don't think the civil rights movement was unproductive.
> This is a great way to wind up sending randos to the urgent care with rf burns.
In my - ahem - personal experience with RF burns that would require rather close contact at those frequencies. Though I have it from a reliable source that you should always first check if there are any pigeons sitting on your antenna before powering up anything over a few hundred Watts.
I went to a Tesla museum in Belgrade, Serbia. Towards the end they handed out fluorescent tubes and powered on a device that lit them up. I’m assuming it was a small Tesla coil but I’m no EE.
I have a pretty dim view of how this whole situation has worked out.
Originally, little Class D radio stations were supposed to be for the nearby community, since the reach is quite small. Local radio, for local people. We'll have no trouble here!
But during the wild media deregulation of the 1990s, the barriers to entry were lowered, standards relaxed, and to the FCC's surprise, they provoked what could only be called The Night the Translators Came. Thousands of applications came in for "translators," which meant translate in the geometric sense -- to move. In other words, they merely rebroadcast other content, non-local content. This almost always means religious (re)broadcasting networks, like Moody, taking over. Local content suffered massively. Even today, most of your Low-Power FM (LPFM) stations are religious in nature, piped in content that might have been recorded decades ago.
To make matters worse, now-tight FM space where LPFMs might live got tighter as NPR whined to Congress about how much space they needed around their signal. How they love to play the underdog. Real radio engineers disagreed but hey. I've held a small grudge ever since, only compounded when they muscle in on stations elsewhere. My old college station, well, they let us know the temperature in that town occasionally!
So now there's just not much room for community radio.
Yeah, many of those translator licensees and LPFM organizers followed the rules, but not the intent of the rules. And they really pushed the limits of those rules.
My uncle ran a pirate radio station in rural east Texas in the late 60s with a transmitter he built himself. He broadcast music, and I think some sermons on Sunday from the local Baptist church. It was very low power, probably no more than 15 miles range.
Until my aunt ran a clothes line to the antenna and suddenly it could be picked up in Dallas. Within a few weeks the FCC had tracked him down and made him stop. Luckily they just confiscated the equipment rather than putting a teenager in jail.
The FM band is pretty crowded in most places, and there are a bunch of very important frequency bands right next to it and on multiples of those frequencies so if it wasn't designed very carefully there is a good chance of interference with something that matters. And people operating something that matters tend to have a hotline to the FCC for such cases. I'm surprised they issued a 'warning' rather than that they just took it down and confiscated the gear.
It certainly poses an interesting question. In the context of this article I ran a quick search for any registered stations in the Portland area using 90.5 FM and I didn't find anything. Not saying that there isn't, but nothing I could find quickly.
Also, I don't know many pirate stations that would broadcast solely for the purpose of disrupting another station. My understanding was that most pirate broadcasters do so in order to send their own message, and so finding open signal space would seem to be key.
This station was interfering with KBOO on 90.7 and a licensed low power FM on 90.3. The shoulders of the analog signal on 90.5 overlap the signals on 90.3 and 90.7.
Not that it's a critical decision point, but KBOO is rather old and well known in some circles. They aren't powerful but they are respected. When the favorite neighborhood watering hole is disrupted, people may speak up.
Yeah, good point. Those people may have complained directly to the FCC, or a donor may have mentioned to KBOO that they can no longer get the station. Action may have originated on the listener level with a station as loved as KBOO.
KBOO's signal, centered at 90.7, starts at 90.5 MHz. The edge of the digital HD signal touches 90.500 MHz. By a pirate operating on 90.5, half of the pirate analog signal is directly over the KBOO signal.
KBOO did not purchase spectrum as they are a noncommercial station, and those stations are not subject to application or regulatory fees. KBOO has the same rights to the 200 kHz for analog and the additional digital bandwidth on either side, as any licensed FM station in the US has (expect for perhaps some FM translators).
As for analog vs. analog on adjacent frequencies, they interfere with each other, because there's a little bit of overlap. Analog signals don't have that "cliff" that the band edge that digital signals have. Analog FM can fit right next to digital, because the digital signal stops right at the edge. But the little bit of overlap of a 101.3 signal onto 101.5 is doubled when you consider the little bit of overlap from 101.5 to 101.3. It's significant interference on a receiver.
If you look at the lineup of licensed stations in any one location, you'll notice that stations are spaced by at least one vacant channel. For example, in most cities you'll see an alignment like this: 101.3 (full power), 101.7 (low power or distant), 102.1 (full power), 102.5 (low power or distant).
A full power station can't be in the same vicinity as another full power station for 3 adjacent channels. That is probably overkill, as it's made with consideration for receivers made decades ago that are no longer in use.
> did they purchase double the spectrum as those higher-frequency stations?
Pretty much, yes. There are always guard bands allocated, plus careful calculations to avoid harmonics, intermodulation products, images, etc, which could interfere with other services.
KBOO didn't purchase any spectrum, let alone double spectrum. They're a noncommercial station, which means they're not subject to application or regulatory fees.
They have the rights to what every station on the FM dial has, except possibly FM translators/repeaters: 200 kHz analog signal centered on 90.7, and 100 kHz on each side of that for the HD signal, for a total of 400 kHz. So their signal starts at 90.50 MHz and ends at 90.90 MHz. The 90.5 MHz pirate was operating on top of the licensed 90.7 signal.
(I should note that you're correct about the guard bands with calculations to avoid harmonics, intermodulation products, images, etc)
In this case, KBOO on 90.7 is running HD format, which puts the lower digital shoulder at 90.5 MHz. So this station was operating on top of KBOO, compromising the KBOO signal. 90.5 - 90.6 MHz contained two signals, although the pirate operator didn't know that, as the digital hash sounds like static to the untrained ear.
That's not how it works: It's not just stations on the same frequency.
There a rather complex set of calculations which avoid interference to adjacent stations, plus interference to other services via harmonics, intermodulation products, images etc.
Wonder if - lacking an order top stop from the FCC - I could occupy a frequency and ultimately claim squatters rights or adverse posession on the frequency if someone eventually licenses it.
Adverse possession traces its roots back to the Homestead Act of 1862. I'm not sure how exactly you'd claim you were making a residence out of a radio frequency.
The FCC hasn’t historically supported that. One of the early FM pioneers was ruined when Sarnoff lobbied to allocate his frequencies for another purpose, for example.
As far as I can gather, the building now hosts a Hispanic pentecostal church and the FM radio is operated by that church.
> A big sign in the front says the worship facility that appears to have an FM antenna in the back states it is now the Iclesia Petecostes Alfa & Omega ministry. And if the agent wanted to contact them, the sign had a one-foot-tall telephone number visible a block away that the church’s pastor would answer.
In Norway the government decided to shut down the entire
FM network to force people to move over to DAB+.
This "official" end of the FM band happened years ago
but some radio stations under certain conditions have been
allowed to operate on the FM band still.
I have never heard about pirate stations here in Norway.
I lived most of my life in Colorado and there used to be a few :)
It would seem fun to operate a few FM pirate radio stations
in Norway since nobody is supposed to use the frequencies anyhow.
They (governments) can't do this without some kind of control over the transmitter used. "Wild" transmitters would have spurious emissions that could land in critical frequency bands-- for example, they could interfere with air traffic frequencies, or frequencies for first responders.
I think technology exists that could make that part of the concept work, but it would require certified transmitters that automatically check in with a database daily or hourly.
There's also the issue of radiation danger. A human can not be close to a high (or medium) power FM antenna for any length of time without adverse health effects. And a human can't really be around a low power FM antenna (i.e., 10-100 watts) for extended periods. The health issue would be a problem with the "wild" idea.
New Zealand has a popular service like you mentioned, but the limit is 1 watt. But in many cases, that can cover a town.
Isn't that what shortwave is for? Somewhere in the 5 MHz if I recall. It isn't installed in cars but you can buy receivers on Amazon. I think the licensing is minimal.
The licensing for USA shortwave broadcasting is very difficult. For AM or single-sideband, you have to run a minimum transmitter output of 50,000 watts with a directional antenna. For digital/DRM, the minimum is 10,000 watts with a directional antenna.
I point out "directional" because it's very expensive at those power levels.
You also need to pay for each transmitter-hour per quarter, for international coordination.
In addition, you need to demonstrate that your signal will reach at least one other country than the USA.
Often these antenna arrays take up many, many acres of land.
I stand corrected. That's pretty nuts... especially that the people using it are often some pretty radical stations. I rememeber tuning in on a web-sdr site and hearing some of the really post-apocalyptic stuff coming out of the Appalachians. Felt like Fallout.
I think I know the station you're talking about. It's up in Maine-- one of their frequencies run the Overcomer Ministry and another one has dome theory flat earth programming called Worlds Last Chance. That's WBCQ. Check out the mind blowing antenna arrays at: <https://swling.com/blog/tag/wbcq-the-planet/>
How powerful of a transmitter can you operate legally in the USA? How much space does that cover? I know there is some limit cause drive in theaters used to transmit on FM and I believe there even used to be adapters for cars that would transmit a very very short distance.
In the United States, without a license, on FM you can operate with 250 microvolts per meter, measured at a distance of 3 meters. That comes out to about 11 nanowatts. Depending on your receiver, that's probably about 200 feet.
On AM, with some exceptions, you can operate with 1/10th of a watt with a 3 meter antenna (a/k/a an inefficient antenna). Depending on ground conductivity, frequency used, local electricity interference floor and the receiver, that can get you out a few hundred feet up to about 1.5 miles (in the most ideal conditions).
Bluetooth Auracast is the way to go with terrestrial microbroadcasting in my opinion.
It's interesting that the pirate radio stations appear to have been broadcasting religious programmes.
Here in the UK (and presumably other places too) there's an interesting thing that mosques do, that I looked into for a bit about 15 years ago for someone.
Five times a day, mosques must gather the faithful to prayer, so someone climbs up the tower of the minaret and recites the Adhan. There is a different one for each prayer. In the olden days, this would be someone fit enough to climb a long steep set of stairs and then sing at the top of his lungs for ten minutes, then get back down, but these days in predominantly Islamic countries they often just use a bunch of PA speakers and a microphone - or just a prerecorded prayer.
Fair enough, but this won't fly in the south side of Glasgow, where roughly 15% of the population are Pakistani. You'd get shot for making all that noise.
But they still need to broadcast the call to prayer from the minuet.
The minuet, being a big high tower on the top of the mosque, is a great place to put a "four stack" high-gain omnidirectional antenna.
Little cheap UHF walkie-talkies are, well, little and cheap.
There are a bunch of UHF voice paging frequencies around 464MHz.
Sit there and tell me that the Adhan is not "voice paging", I dare you.
Article is weird. It does not seem to draw any correlation between the church-based transmitter and the dude who's surrendered multiple transmitters and acted defiant. Other than placing both stories in one article, that is.
Also, they don't give any hints as to the content of any of these pirate stations. Is it illegal to listen or report on that?
Inside Radio has a reputation of simply rewording FCC press releases. The two incidents are not related, the second one is just a regurgitated story as "filler".
The FCC generally does not mention the content of the broadcast since it's not relevant to their interference investigation. And it's bad optics for the FCC to mention content as it may be misinterpreted as a first amendment issue.
The station in Portland ran a Spanish-language Christian religion format. The station in Eastern Oregon ran a music mix interweaved with far-right talk (not to be confused with conservative talk).
Sadly the system is incentivized to kill off "harmless pirates", especially if they are doing something interesting. It's always going to be in the best interest of commercial broadcast operators to lodge complaints against pirates competing in their band. If you are in the business of selling advertisements on any band of radio (AM/FM/TV/etc), you don't want listeners possibly soaking up air time from anyone else when it costs you money to run your station. So the deck is always stacked against pirates in common broadcast bands. On the other hand, the shortwave broadcast band has much less locality so it's easier to do interesting things on those bands. But of course there's only a fraction of people who actually listen to shortwave broadcast bands, at least in the US.
It should be noted that the Portland pirate was interfering with a non-commercial licensed LPFM station on 90.3, and was operating on the same frequency as the digital signal of a non-commercial community broadcaster centered on 90.7. No commercial broadcast operators had a standing for a complaint in this case.
90.5 MHz to 90.6 MHz contained upper half of the pirate's analog signal, and the lower half of KBOO's digital signal, rendering KBOO's digital signal useless, and blocking all reception on some recievers.
To summarize, the pirate was operating on KBOO's licensed spectrum in the same area KBOO serves and blocking reception of KBOO. It would be a different argument if the pirate was not blocking out another broadcaster.
Depends how you modulate it, but if you went for the widest possible 3.2kbps Codec2 stream and assumed 1kbps is roughly 1kHz of bandwidth (something like a G3RUH modem does about this) you'd be looking at about 60 streams.
Yes, that's the real risk here. Especially if they are using crappy gear, it wouldn't be the first time that a badly designed end stage outputs more at a harmonic than at the principal frequency and your typical FM pirate isn't going to have a spectrum analyzer lying around.
I'm happy to pay taxes for this. The airwaves are a shared resource. Shared things need regulations about how they're used. E.g, cops pull people over if they drive on the wrong side of the road. This is not 'Nam, Smokey. There are rules.
What nonsense? There are so many worse things we spend money on, like weed busts and minor drug offenses, than tracking down unlicensed broadcasting, which can be disruptive to licensed users.
Haha, I'm with you. Freedom to the people, man. But it's obvious that this is necessary to prevent a tragedy of the commons and having spectrum flooded with noise.
Yelp reports this location as no longer being used as a church, and the domain for the church has expired. Beyond that, the article did not comment on what exactly was being broadcast from this particular location, just the frequency. It's a bit pretentious to assume that this is a religious broadcast just from it being in a closed down location.
Also, a quick search for radio stations using 90.5 FM in Portland shows there isn't anything broadcasting on that frequency in the area. The FCC regulates this both for licensing and to avoid signal contamination. It's not doing any physical or mental harm when it's being broadcast on an unused frequency in a range of frequencies that are designated for exactly the purpose of radio broadcast. The operators of this broadcast station, whether it is actually the church or not, are not causing physical or mental harm but they are ignoring the FCC regulations around licensing a particular frequency for public broadcast use.
Disagree with another's beliefs and viewpoints all you want, but let's try to avoid assigning motive and/or blame as well as spurious accusations where they are not due.
I'm on another forum that has been discussing this station for many months. It's been interfering with KBOO. The shoulders of this analog signal on 90.5 overlap with the licensed signal on 90.7. It's also blocking out a licensed low power FM signal on 90.3.
It's Radio Faro de Luz, and they were running a Spanish language religious format.
The church is currently abandoned and owned by another church in Salem, Oregon. As the landowner, the church in Salem is being threatened with the fine.
See, now that is valuable information to have, and I wish the article's author had included these details. I had not looked up the FCC registrations when I did my quick search, but this makes total sense. I'm all for making sure that you have a license when you do these things to avoid the problem that is happening here, which is the shoulder overlap. I don't care what your content is, if you need a license, get a license.
- FCC is proposing $80,000 fine against a man in Oregon for operating an FM pirate radio station since 2018
- first complaint was in 2018, agents tracked it down, warned the man, and he gave them his transmitter
- second complaint in 2019, agents tracked it to the man's new home, they warned him again, he gave them his transmitter
- 2 stern warnings wasn't enough, because third complaint came in 2022, agents tracked it to the man's home again, the man's wife gave them 2 tranmitters
- the man then posted many videos on Facebook about his pirate radio station, and dared the FCC to lock him up. He then started another pirate radio station