8 ms·

I develop radio transceiver software for FCC-compliant radios. The FCC helps ensure that specific radio bands are allocated for emergency purposes. There are r

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.

ipaddr 4y ago
CBC radio is an advertisement. What emergency services are operating under its Steeple in this case?
- RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
  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.
  - djur 4y ago
    Worth pointing out here that KBOO is a non-profit community radio station, pretty close to the "public access" radio that people here are wanting.
    - RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
      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.
sillysaurusx 4y ago
Can you help us understand how realistic the concern is that a pirate might interfere with emergency services? Is it that easy?
- RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
  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.
  - TechBro8615 4y ago
    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?
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      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.
      - nuclearnice3 4y ago
        How would "hostile powers building radio transmitters to interfere" justify pirate radio?
        deleted 4y ago
darepublic 4y ago
College radio stations are usually pretty good. i.e in Toronto CIUT 89.5. I occasionally listen to CBC radio but on the whole I find it pretty vapid.
ctoth 4y ago
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?
- lajupechere 4y ago
  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.
  - RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
    Another one is in California: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-128793A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-128793A1.pdf 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)
  - FL410 4y ago
    The transmitters near John Tune airport in Nashville regularly interfere with avionics. Been that way for years, and no action....
    - RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
      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.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > 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.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
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".
- TylerE 4y ago
  Difference is cable was, well, cable. By definition is cannot cause interference.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - finnthehuman 4y ago
    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.
- phire 4y ago
  It's a thing in New Zealand. Limited to a 1w transmitter, so it can only cover a small area. And only a few subranges within the FM band. But no registration is required, you just need to use pre-approved equipment and anounce your contact details once an hour.
  - RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
    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.
    - dumpsterlid 4y ago
      [dead]
stemlord 4y ago
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
- saalweachter 4y ago
  A quick Googling shows that, in the US, at least up until 2013, you could obtain a LPFM (<100W) license from the FCC for free. https://www.prometheusradio.org/startup_costs https://www.prometheusradio.org/startup_costs So it kinda seems like it was a thing?
phpisthebest 4y ago
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
- RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
  I've purchased bandwidth in a competitive FCC auction and I'm in no way a preferred corporate buyer. If you replace "preferred corporate buyer" with "highest bidder", that would be more accurate in my experience. Otherwise, I agree-- "highest bidder" is not a great way to determine what is best for the public.
- hellojesus 4y ago
  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.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    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.
hakfoo 4y ago
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.
- porkbeer 4y ago
  There are plenty of quality turnkey sokutions, but the price and legal encumberances make them rare in the pirate space.
- RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
  Re: Turnkey Solution 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.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    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.
ilyt 4y ago
But that's entirely different issue. The way to "curb" it would be to just give part of the band as "free for all". Then they can chase people running shittily designed transmitters separately
RF_Savage 4y ago
I thought P25 predates 9/11? All those Astro Spectras and Astro Sabers surely predate 9/11? But 9/11 likely put in much more work into it and multi-band radios that can more easily interoperate.
- thangalin 4y ago
  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]. [1]: https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/MCCA-Testimony-for-the-Record-20-Years-After-9-11_Examining-Emergency-Communications.pdf https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/MCC...

ipaddr 4y ago

CBC radio is an advertisement. What emergency services are operating under its Steeple in this case?

RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
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.
- djur 4y ago
  Worth pointing out here that KBOO is a non-profit community radio station, pretty close to the "public access" radio that people here are wanting.
  - RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
    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.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Can you help us understand how realistic the concern is that a pirate might interfere with emergency services? Is it that easy?

RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
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.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  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?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    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.
    - nuclearnice3 4y ago
      How would "hostile powers building radio transmitters to interfere" justify pirate radio?
      - deleted 4y ago

darepublic 4y ago

College radio stations are usually pretty good. i.e in Toronto CIUT 89.5. I occasionally listen to CBC radio but on the whole I find it pretty vapid.

ctoth 4y ago

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?

lajupechere 4y ago
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.
- RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
  Another one is in California: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-128793A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-128793A1.pdf 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)
- FL410 4y ago
  The transmitters near John Tune airport in Nashville regularly interfere with avionics. Been that way for years, and no action....
  - RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
    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.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> 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.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

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".

TylerE 4y ago
Difference is cable was, well, cable. By definition is cannot cause interference.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- finnthehuman 4y ago
  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.
phire 4y ago
It's a thing in New Zealand. Limited to a 1w transmitter, so it can only cover a small area. And only a few subranges within the FM band. But no registration is required, you just need to use pre-approved equipment and anounce your contact details once an hour.
- RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
  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.
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]

stemlord 4y ago

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

saalweachter 4y ago
A quick Googling shows that, in the US, at least up until 2013, you could obtain a LPFM (<100W) license from the FCC for free. https://www.prometheusradio.org/startup_costs https://www.prometheusradio.org/startup_costs So it kinda seems like it was a thing?

phpisthebest 4y ago

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

RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
I've purchased bandwidth in a competitive FCC auction and I'm in no way a preferred corporate buyer. If you replace "preferred corporate buyer" with "highest bidder", that would be more accurate in my experience. Otherwise, I agree-- "highest bidder" is not a great way to determine what is best for the public.
hellojesus 4y ago
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.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  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.

hakfoo 4y ago

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.

porkbeer 4y ago
There are plenty of quality turnkey sokutions, but the price and legal encumberances make them rare in the pirate space.
RF_Enthusiast 4y ago
Re: Turnkey Solution 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.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  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.

ilyt 4y ago

But that's entirely different issue. The way to "curb" it would be to just give part of the band as "free for all". Then they can chase people running shittily designed transmitters separately

RF_Savage 4y ago

I thought P25 predates 9/11? All those Astro Spectras and Astro Sabers surely predate 9/11? But 9/11 likely put in much more work into it and multi-band radios that can more easily interoperate.

thangalin 4y ago
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]. [1]: https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/MCCA-Testimony-for-the-Record-20-Years-After-9-11_Examining-Emergency-Communications.pdf https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/MCC...