5 ms·

As someone who has extensive experience broadcasting on "pirate" radio, it is great fun, and typically harms no one. In fact, during some natural disasters, the

by Carrok 2y ago

As someone who has extensive experience broadcasting on "pirate" radio, it is great fun, and typically harms no one. In fact, during some natural disasters, these pirate stations became a great source of up to date crowd sourced information on what was going on, even helping coordinate first responders. Obviously letting everyone broadcast radio-station strength FM signals willy-nilly is a bad idea, but going after someone in a neighborhood occupying an unused swath of spectrum is not, in my opinion, the best use of anyone's resources.

byteknight 2y ago
Agreed - But if everyone followed this philosophy we would have reason to enforce it. Perhaps the thinking is then, therefore, enforce before it becomes a problem?
- Carrok 2y ago
  I don’t think “everyone” has the interest, know how, equipment, and time to operate a radio station. But I would personally very much like to see what it would look like at “problematic” levels. That amount of independent media would be truly a thing to behold.
akira2501 2y ago
> and typically harms no one How would you know? If your equipment was operating improperly or out of specification, how would anyone contact you to let you know? > these pirate stations became a great source of up to date crowd sourced information This is a fantastic claim that should come with solid evidence. I know licensed HAM and other operators do practice and work to provide these services, but I've never seen them legitimately attributed to pirate stations anywhere. > but going after someone in a neighborhood occupying an unused swath of spectrum It's complaints based. The FCC does not "scout around" looking for pirates. If you step on my signal, I will record it, and I will report it to the FCC. If your station has been found and is being shut down then your actions rose to this level of notice. > the best use of anyone's resources. I agree. The airwaves are _everyones_ resources though. It's those who abuse the system that create the waste.
- Carrok 2y ago
  This sounds like a lot of pearl clutching from someone with zero experience in this space, but I'll still try and reply in good faith. > How would you know? If your equipment was operating improperly or out of specification, how would anyone contact you to let you know? The stations I broadcast on had websites and Facebook pages. Anyone was free to lodge a complaint, but no one ever did. > This is a fantastic claim that should come with solid evidence. I know licensed HAM and other operators do practice and work to provide these services, but I've never seen them legitimately attributed to pirate stations anywhere. It's a fair ask, but sorry I'm not going to dox myself to provide you with evidence. Either believe me, or don't. That said I don’t think the claim is that “fantastic”. What’s hard to believe about people tuning into a hyper local station to get up to date information during an emergency? The fact some of those folks were volunteer fire fighters or search and rescue makes it too hard to swallow? > It's complaints based. The FCC does not "scout around" looking for pirates. If you step on my signal, I will record it, and I will report it to the FCC. If your station has been found and is being shut down then your actions rose to this level of notice. Again, we were operating on unused bands of frequency with low power transmitters. I promise you there was no one else's signal being "stepped on". > I agree. The airwaves are _everyones_ resources though. It's those who abuse the system that create the waste. If you consider a small, fun, independent, neighborhood radio station to be "abuse", then sure, we're the bad guys. I would counter argue that you shouldn't need to provide the FCC with tens of thousand of dollars to use resources that are going unused, and that no one is going to "miss" anyway. It's not like the spectrum is some finite thing that can never be recouped once used. If someone else started using that part of the spectrum at a commercial level, we can just turn our low powered gear off.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - HocusLocus 2y ago
    I operated an unattended 87.9 for ten years in two OK towns and one OK city, 30' mast with distinctive circularly polarized FM element. I think the greatest dangers are to shuffle music you like that happens to be popular, pull political talk crap from the web of uncertain content. Talking yourself is fine if you want and try to maintain a reliable weekly schedule. But be aware of curiosity, a human voice increases the chance you might some day have an FCC CE3k (Close Encounter of the 3rd Kind). Never happened to me. 87.9 is great because it is the default freq of a lot of small plug in transmitters, so tiny signals are ubiquitous and it's the low edge of the band. Never sell anything or rebroadcast Internet sources that sell things (exception is Old Time Radio shows with ancient commercials). Find a playlist of older things that aren't 'hits'. Don't let any broadcast FM salesman conclude, "they're taking listeners from our market." Stay away on the band from Public Radio Stations, they are likely complainers and if there's one at 88.1 then bump to a few slots above it. No 'fake' IDs with letters of course, and I'd suggest no jingles or station cute names. Psychologically this gives some busybody an entity in their mind to oppose. Be nothing but a signal. I did week long marathons of CBS Radio Theater, old Prairie Home Companions from the time before Keilor was savagely MeToo'd, and long form rock like ELP and reggae and classics and whatnot shuffled from a big eclectic list of older everything (but not 'hits'). Once I did a solid week of one long ~40 minute seamless loop of wave after wave of crowd laughter. Nothing but laughter, crowds and individuals with distinctive laughs. As the week progressed I felt the average quality of the FM Band increasing.
mindslight 2y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if these fines are payable directly to Clear Channel. Personally I'd say that at this point in the evolution of FM radio, half of its broadcast spectrum should be made available for unlicensed use by individuals operating lowish power transmitters.

by Carrok 2y ago

byteknight 2y ago

Agreed - But if everyone followed this philosophy we would have reason to enforce it. Perhaps the thinking is then, therefore, enforce before it becomes a problem?

Carrok 2y ago
I don’t think “everyone” has the interest, know how, equipment, and time to operate a radio station. But I would personally very much like to see what it would look like at “problematic” levels. That amount of independent media would be truly a thing to behold.

akira2501 2y ago

> and typically harms no one How would you know? If your equipment was operating improperly or out of specification, how would anyone contact you to let you know? > these pirate stations became a great source of up to date crowd sourced information This is a fantastic claim that should come with solid evidence. I know licensed HAM and other operators do practice and work to provide these services, but I've never seen them legitimately attributed to pirate stations anywhere. > but going after someone in a neighborhood occupying an unused swath of spectrum It's complaints based. The FCC does not "scout around" looking for pirates. If you step on my signal, I will record it, and I will report it to the FCC. If your station has been found and is being shut down then your actions rose to this level of notice. > the best use of anyone's resources. I agree. The airwaves are _everyones_ resources though. It's those who abuse the system that create the waste.

Carrok 2y ago
This sounds like a lot of pearl clutching from someone with zero experience in this space, but I'll still try and reply in good faith. > How would you know? If your equipment was operating improperly or out of specification, how would anyone contact you to let you know? The stations I broadcast on had websites and Facebook pages. Anyone was free to lodge a complaint, but no one ever did. > This is a fantastic claim that should come with solid evidence. I know licensed HAM and other operators do practice and work to provide these services, but I've never seen them legitimately attributed to pirate stations anywhere. It's a fair ask, but sorry I'm not going to dox myself to provide you with evidence. Either believe me, or don't. That said I don’t think the claim is that “fantastic”. What’s hard to believe about people tuning into a hyper local station to get up to date information during an emergency? The fact some of those folks were volunteer fire fighters or search and rescue makes it too hard to swallow? > It's complaints based. The FCC does not "scout around" looking for pirates. If you step on my signal, I will record it, and I will report it to the FCC. If your station has been found and is being shut down then your actions rose to this level of notice. Again, we were operating on unused bands of frequency with low power transmitters. I promise you there was no one else's signal being "stepped on". > I agree. The airwaves are _everyones_ resources though. It's those who abuse the system that create the waste. If you consider a small, fun, independent, neighborhood radio station to be "abuse", then sure, we're the bad guys. I would counter argue that you shouldn't need to provide the FCC with tens of thousand of dollars to use resources that are going unused, and that no one is going to "miss" anyway. It's not like the spectrum is some finite thing that can never be recouped once used. If someone else started using that part of the spectrum at a commercial level, we can just turn our low powered gear off.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- HocusLocus 2y ago
  I operated an unattended 87.9 for ten years in two OK towns and one OK city, 30' mast with distinctive circularly polarized FM element. I think the greatest dangers are to shuffle music you like that happens to be popular, pull political talk crap from the web of uncertain content. Talking yourself is fine if you want and try to maintain a reliable weekly schedule. But be aware of curiosity, a human voice increases the chance you might some day have an FCC CE3k (Close Encounter of the 3rd Kind). Never happened to me. 87.9 is great because it is the default freq of a lot of small plug in transmitters, so tiny signals are ubiquitous and it's the low edge of the band. Never sell anything or rebroadcast Internet sources that sell things (exception is Old Time Radio shows with ancient commercials). Find a playlist of older things that aren't 'hits'. Don't let any broadcast FM salesman conclude, "they're taking listeners from our market." Stay away on the band from Public Radio Stations, they are likely complainers and if there's one at 88.1 then bump to a few slots above it. No 'fake' IDs with letters of course, and I'd suggest no jingles or station cute names. Psychologically this gives some busybody an entity in their mind to oppose. Be nothing but a signal. I did week long marathons of CBS Radio Theater, old Prairie Home Companions from the time before Keilor was savagely MeToo'd, and long form rock like ELP and reggae and classics and whatnot shuffled from a big eclectic list of older everything (but not 'hits'). Once I did a solid week of one long ~40 minute seamless loop of wave after wave of crowd laughter. Nothing but laughter, crowds and individuals with distinctive laughs. As the week progressed I felt the average quality of the FM Band increasing.

mindslight 2y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if these fines are payable directly to Clear Channel. Personally I'd say that at this point in the evolution of FM radio, half of its broadcast spectrum should be made available for unlicensed use by individuals operating lowish power transmitters.