Hey gang, new face here, and probably about to piss a bunch of you off. Let me begin my statement by staying that I am just as much in love with electronics as you are, and that I've been at this for 20+ years, but because of my background, I have ended up on the "Man's" side of the fence.
So here it is, heart on my sleeve. I understand your need to fiddle, tinker, and transmit, I do. And I can understand your anger toward a government agency that regulates to the Nth degree, with fines and big hammers. However, I'm going to tell you why it hurts my side of the house. Let's say you have a 10 watt transmitter @ 107.3 MHz, and your service area is approximately 5 square miles. On the surface. And just for s's and g's, there's a local am station on 1450 kHz, and you're within his service area. Well, let's also say that those two frequencies beat together and create a new frequecny spur @ 108.75. That's in the aeronautical navigation frequency range. Now, let's put all this together, and what you get is aircraft receiving a combination of your broadcast, the AM station's broadcast, and probably NOT the signal that the receiver was looking for to safely navigate the aircraft.
But how often does that happen? That's the silliest thing I've ever heard! You might be surprised. So, please, check your equipment, check your service area, go outside of your service area a few times a year and make sure you're not transmitting too far. This is only one scenario, there are less annoying and much worse. Please help me keep the flying public safe by being safe yourselves.
That can happen with just about any radio transmitter, be it pirate or legal. Luckily product frequencies generated from two stations signals mixing is usually so low in power not to travel far, if even past the property of the transmission.
Even when I run both my AM and FM transmitters at the same time, both being at 10 watts the mixed images don't travel past my neighbors house so I don't worry about it. The reality is that all stations cause this problem, but it's usually not a real issue at any practical distance.
Either way you bring up a good point and this is something pirates should keep in mind.
You're absolutely right Kage. One point I failed to make is that on the ground, that signal is very weak, however, with only weather to attenuate the signal, in the area above where the phenomenon occurs, that spur can sometimes reach two to five thousand feet. This is only one of several RFI scenarios that can cause problems.
If you don't mind me asking, what, if any, measures do you guys take to ensure you're only radiating on the frequency you've assigned yourself? We use spectrum analyzers, frequency counters, wattmeters, and various other pieces of test equipment to verify our equipment.
Oh, and please, I'm not lecturing, merely self educating.
We use spectrum analyzers, frequency counters, wattmeters, and various other pieces of test equipment to verify our equipment.
Most of the people here have used those same tools to ensure their transmission equipment is working properly. Even at bare minimum most people I have talked to on this forum have used various radios to confirm they are not putting out any RF on harmonics of their originating frequency or spurs near it.
A lot of the pirates I have talked to over engineer their station to make absolutely sure it would meet or come near the same specifications of a licensed station because trust me the last thing a pirate wants is to cause interference which would be the number one way to get noticed by the feds. The people who have educated themselves enough to realize this use 5+ pole filters on their RF output, choose frequencies that have no first or second adjacent local stations near their channel of choice, calculate potential harmonic frequencies to make sure they don't fall on any important communications.
Of course sometimes there will be a newbe who buys some cheap transmitter made in another country and puts it on air w/o taking any precautions and eventually they do get a knock on the door. This is one of the reasons the technical forums here exist to try and educate people and warn them of what not to do.
I am a career radio and television broadcast engineer. Built AM's, FM's and TV plants. I've also inspected and measured facilities and not a single one of them are 100 percent clean, especially when there is a cluster of them in close proximity.
I am surprised the old and worn out fable of "airplanes will fall out of the sky" is being used here. Such was not the case even 30 years ago, or even 50 years ago.
The next part should not be taken personally. But those who cry wolf over this sort of thing tend to forget that the rare instance is not applicable to all. As Kage pointed out, there are operators who spend thousands in transmission equipment and even thousands more in measuring equipment...some even use the very same Potomac FIM's and antenna monitors as the licensed counterparts do.
Unless the laws of physics change because of a piece of paper carrying a bald eagle sitting on an antenna symbol, the "one blame fits all" coat won't cut it.
How about the attention be focused on those licensed entities violating rules left and right and getting away with it for years?
Licensed to violate. Seems there are more problems elsewhere.
Don't take my word for it. Shop the FCC field notices and pick from a wide variety.
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
I am surprised the old and worn out fable of "airplanes will fall out of the sky" is being used here. Such was not the case even 30 years ago, or even 50 years ago.
I never mentioned airplanes falling out of the sky. My rfi tickets usually have pilots complaining of hearing music on frequencies designated for TRACON and tower communications, as well as ident for navigational equipment. I didn't join this forum to be a nuisance, but if i am, then let me apologize.
faarfi no one is pointing fingers. The issue stems from a long term stance on FCC officials using the most common fear to punish pirate operators. This really has nothing to do with you. It's the case of seeing friends, or fellow pirate operators go down and blamed for such things. Yes it's completely possible that harmonics and spurs can cause interference and they do. But to compare low power pirates that try their hardest to filter and keep a squeaky clean signal in comparison to licensed operators who just don't give a shit, and let me say that's not always the case, is to place blame on the wrong party. The reality is that most pirates I have known try really hard to make their signals cleaner than a green hippie driving a Prius.
They get caught not because of signal interference but because they are listened to! That is usually why a good pirate goes down. It has nothing to do with airplanes falling out of the sky, or whatever imaginary scenario anyone believes. It has to do with fame. Once a pirate gets known and people start listening the licensed stations paying to be on air get pissed off and file a complaint.
I know this sounds pathetically simple and almost like a joke, but remind you these people do this shit to themselves. The whole industry is based on lies and competition so as soon as some pirate comes on air and steals the listeners (which isn't hard to do) they are going to take you down.
This is the name of the game. This is also why the average listener is so angry with radio and are switching to other mediums. Radio is killing itself because of this kind of crap and we are tired of it. I can only hope that the idiots on the dial fight so hard that eventually they will just cancel each other out and maybe.. MAYBE one day the FM broadcast band, or even AM mediumwave band will be like CB radio. The cool part is that everyone owns a radio. So let them burn out. I hope they do. I would love to work for "real" radio, but money isn't worth it.
Let me put it this way.. and simply... Why bust pirates that are running a clean signal, or even cleaner than their licensed counterparts? I know you know this and that is probably why your first post dealt with such a question and gave some tips to us because you respect what we do and probably enjoy listening But hey man, what if we ran clean? (not assuming we don't) What if we ran cleaner signals than the licensed ops, and fired out a signal NOT interfering? I assume you are on here because you realize how ridiculous it is working for an agency that has no concept that a piece of paper means nothing in the end. That piece of paper, that "license" what is it? Seriously what the hell is that? It's a document saying the station will pay money to stay on air. It has nothing to do with specifications. If it was a matter of a slip saying someone can run a transmitter w/o running interference don't you think we would already do that anyways? No one wants to fire up a transmitter and cause interference be it pirate or ham or broadcast. The license only proves one thing... it proves you have money and you can suck on the governments ass. If they could approve proper LPFM or LPAM licenses, make it so that a normal ma&pop station could get licensed then what is the harm? This is NOT A MATTER of spectrum space. That is a pawn in their game. This is a matter of idiocy rivaling in money.
I'm not concerned with the knowledgable pirate, I'm more concerned with the guy that buys or builds an FM transmitter with little to no knowledge of how it works. That is the norm in the NY metropolitan area. I'm dealing with folks that don't care how they sound, just as long as they get their voice on the air. I have also found a plastic welder in an industrial park that was causing RFI, so it's not just the radio stations, pirate or otherwise. I was just trying to find out more information of what you guys do, and why, not so much where you are or when's the best time to "catch" you. I'm merely looking for RFI in the aviation spectrum, and if it's a transmitter, so be it.
There are a good number of NAL's in the database of other radio transmissions causing interference to aviation bands which are not caused by pirate operations in the FM band.
No one denies the fact that there are some out there who just toss up a piece of long wire or hook up a dipole and shove as much juice as they can into it with no filtering, no measuring and no concern. Though the numbers are small, they are there. Some of those who do such types of operations do show up at places like this forum and ask for info, and few of them actually ask first before throwing the switch. Those that don't ask cannot be stopped until later when they are shut down.
RFI is going to happen regardless. In your area of NYC, where every channel is occupied and then some, it is even more prudent for RFI with so many transmissions intermixing through the air producing ghosts and intermod. With so many transmissions, it does not take much at all to intermix a far less powerful signal with one that's throwing flames a few miles away and produces a sum on some odd ball frequency, and that less powerful signal may be coming from a toy wireless mic or a kit. It would not surprise me some of those aviators reporting hearing music on their communications are actually coming from intermixing of licensed stations rather than from a pirate and highly probable from signal sources miles away and not right beneath them. The power ratios are simply too wide to just point at a rouge operator as the cause. Atmospheric conditions and all the variables that come into play cannot be ignored either.
BTW I too was once on your side of the fence and been through it all, seen it all and done it all, including tagging quite a few licensed facilities doing far more than bending rules. More like outright blatant violating and repeating those violations left and right for years and still doing it, all the while continuing to get renewals and blessings by their consultants.
Bottom line is its all about the bottom line....$$$$$. What brings in more revenue...the NAL's or the auctions for frequencies eh? Even more so versus pirate shut downs.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars and even more are dumped into bidding for a CP at every filing window and mount up to more revenue than rows of NAL's which take quite some time to fully collect. Those that are tagged drag out the process of collecting on NAL fines all the time, but the auctions and licensing fees are payable and due immediately.
Over the last couple of decades there have been efforts to launch new low power radio services..yes licensed low power radio services which went nowhere due to persuasion by the big boys to prevent those services from becoming reality. Basically hogging up every damned channel left and filling it up with repeaters, translators and boosters repeating the same programing all across the dial. And that is supposed to be good? And that won't cause folks to take matters into their own hands and just accept what is being dished out to them?
There is a reason why things are the way they are. I throw out a hint as to why, and it is not because of unlicensed radio operations. It's because radio is not what it once was where you had interaction, local presence and individuality. Now its all nothing but playlists ran by a computer and the request line answers with a menu choice.
Radio in the day was the social media highway, where today it's slapfacebook and such. Why are those things so popular..well the answer is very simple...interaction, presence and individuality. A person has more freedom to choose in those mediums than on their radio dial, thus the mass flocks to the freedom of choice.
Perhaps if the playing field were not so highly tilted to the one with the most dangling dollars purging from their pockets, much of this would not even exist. Much of that stems from the very early days of radio when you had contests going on on which radio operator had the absolute best gear (and expensive) in use. For some odd reason, that was favored over anything else and a market was born...a highly tilted market to boot.
It's a lot easier to just toss it all into one basket can call it day isn't it. Knowing darn well as you do that a piss ant 50 watt FM isn't the cause of all your problems or the aviators. But it certainly let's the day's shift end early because there is a scape goat to point as the cause rather than dig deep and find the real cause coming from all those high powered stations. Much harder to get them to correct those causes because the costs to do that is through the roof and it would be quite a kick in the ego trip for the mass public to know the truth. More dramatic to take down an unlicensed flea and slap the word "pirate" to the tag than it is to take down a licensed blatant violator. Wording can play with the mind, especially the mass public's mind. It can make something so miniscule appear and sound like it's a huge mountain when in fact it is not.
I think that as long as the pictures hang tilted on the wall..your going to get others putting up pictures that are hanging straight even though they were not authorized to hang those new pictures.
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
Kage and RFBurns raise the money issue that allows stations to be on the air because they pay the licences and, if there's a technicality that should be corrected, then, well, this is indeed often ignored by those who get the licence money, i.e. the radio authority.
In my country for instance, there was a certain respected regional station, www.pef.pt, located in island of Madeira, that b/cast years on end with a 1 kW tx on 1017 using a "temprary" antenna, viz. an inv. L. At a certain timewhen I was a WRTH www.wrth.com collaborator, I decided to inquire why on earth that particular ch. was never included in the official lists: two replies came, one from the station saying "everything is in order", one from the radio authority saying that PEF channel was not listed because they, www.anacom.pt never issued a license for it. Again, that went on for years on end.
Other cases with several other stations here, both on mainland and in the Açores are different: the MW operation was halted for a number of reasons, either because the monopoles fell during a severe storm (fact) or because they continued on VHF-FM for their MF txs meant higher costs, particularly in terms of electricity.
The stipulated period for halting b/casts on a given, licensed fq does exist, those stations have them long overdue, but their fqs keep being listed. At this time, well, perhaps one of them actually lost or then gave off MF.
No fines, nothing, the licenses are being paid - and this, €€€€, is what really matters.
Well, let me explain my situation. I love radio, I love the idea of being able to communicate without having some wire in the middle. I love HAM radio, I love FM radio, I just love radio! That's why I do it. However, I am very careful myself. As a general rule, I always choose a vacant frequency, use a 9-pole low pass filter, check my equipment, and never go too far out in coverage. I try not to broadcast more than 2-3 miles radius at a max. I use my stuff for personal music or podcasts mostly anyways. My music selection is very under-served in my area because I live in the most liberal piece of junk state in the nation, so Christian radio is non-existent outside of the one station located 80 miles away which is mostly static 60% of the time so basically I have 3 NPR stations because for some reason they have 2 boosters?? Which is CRAP! And 2 Spanish stations in the "non-profit" spectrum and then everything else is crowded with Rap, Rock, and Pop. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the other stations. The one station I do mind is NPR taking up three frequencies on the dial. What is this? So for me, I want to listen to some Christian radio and I do so, with my own equipment, using a nice transmitter at about 10 watts, with low pass filters, and I measure my harmonics with a spectrum analyzer I've had for years and can guarantee that I have zero to almost nill harmonics. Better than the NPR booster down the street which spurs two harmonics that are very noticeable to the local Rock station, and my neighbors complain about NPR beefing up the rock station all the time.
So for me, love of radio and the desire for under-served music. I'm also sick and tired of the stations with money hogging up the bands. I know for a fact the same large corporation owns 4 different stations on my band, that serve different genres. So instead of 4 independent stations, each serving their own genre, we have the same monopoly dishing out Rap, Rock, Pop, and Country, with NPR trampling the only local rock station because NPR decided to play the big boy game with boosters out the wazoo.
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