Hello everyone. I'm new to this site, and glad I found it, I've been reading valuable information all morning. I wanted to tell you guys about my setup and get some feedback and see if there are any flaws in my evil plan.
A couple months ago I was reading about legal low power am transmitters. I used to be a morning show DJ years and years ago but got out of it because the pay was pretty low. Fast forward 10 years, I've got a great career, make an excellent salary, but still miss broadcasting. Well the town I live in does not have a radio station. So I decided to start a low power am station. From what I read I could get 1-2 miles range which would be perfect. To cover my entire town from my house I would only need 1 mile range. So I started ordering equipment, started my own LLC company, joined the local chamber of commerce, and started getting things in order.
I make the mistake of telling a couple friends that I was starting a station. I didn't think it was a mistake at that time, because after all I had already decided 100% to do it. Well they told a few people, then they told a few people, then pretty soon the entire town knew. Everyone was excited, they damn near acted like they were going to throw me a parade.
So all this was before the equipment arrive and I was set up. Once I was set up I found that I did get a little over 1 mile range legally. But that was only in a VEHICLE!! Had I done my research a little better I would have found out this 1-2 mile range doesn't do anything for me as far as getting inside homes and businesses. My town is 16 blocks long. I can get inside a home as far as about 2 blocks from me. I screwed up and didn't research it enough to find out the range I was reading about was only talking about vehicles. My mistake.
So I have ordered a second transmitter from Greece, it's a 20 watt transmitter. Here is my plan, keep the legal transmitter hooked to the brand new 600 square foot studio building I just built. Yes, I have some serious cash invested in this to run it as a legitimate business. I will use a splitter to run 2 audio signals from my mixing board. 1 line will go to my legal transmitter, the second will travel underground to my house about 50ft away. Inside my house I will run the 20 watt transmitter with a discreet antenna on the side of my house. The illegal transmitter power outlet will be wired to a switch by my front door. I will send a signal and broadcast on both of them, and where they are getting the same audio signal at the same time perhaps they won't interfere with each other??? Hopefully......
Then if I ever get a knock at the door by some guys in suits I can cheerfully tell them of course they can look at my setup, I'll be happy to meet them around back and show it to them. Then as I close the front door and walk towards the back door I'll hit the power switch to turn off the 20 watt transmitter. Then I can meet them out back and show them my legal setup. I know I'm starting to sound all James Bond and stuff, but I have no experience breaking the law and I'm doing the best I can with my limited knowledge of illegal activities.
I really am trying to run a legitimate business here and I don't want to break the law, and I honestly do feel terrible about it. Never in my life have I ever done anything to where I would even have to worry about a knock at the door.
But I think I have a few things going for me. First of all I live in a small podunk town in the middle of nowhere. I don't have a FCC office near me for probably 600 miles or more. The nearest radio station from me is 60 miles, so I won't really be stepping on their toes and most likely I won't be in their way to where they would want to report me and shut me down. I have the support of the town and up till now have been operating as a legitimate business as well as promoting local events and businesses, so chances are slim that someone from my town would report me.
At the top and bottom of every hour I will broadcast a station id, saying something like this: "You're listening to ___________ broadcasting on ________ AM. We are privately owned and operated by __________ LLC and broadcast on a FCC certified transmitter licensed under Part 15.219. It's license number is _________. This station fully complies with the technical requirements of FCC rules and regulations Part 15.219. You can reach us at (XXX) XXX-XXXX or _________."
The reason is, I was told that 99% of the time, the only way you get caught is if someone reports you. If people hear this and realize I'm not a pirate radio then it dramatically reduces my chances of being reported.
On the downside though we do have a local LPFM station that just started up. I am stepping on his toes. I haven't talked to the guy yet but his morning show totally sucked ass and nobody liked it. It's on my list of things to do though, contact him and try and build a friendly relationship. If anyone was going to report me I would imagine it would be this guy.
I really don't want to go the illegal route, but I'm going to anyways. I have an entire town that was excited they were getting a radio station, and while not disappointed yet, if I'm not able to do what everyone was hoping I will be disappointing people. I am not planning on being power hungry or drawing attention to myself. I haven't hooked up the new transmitter yet, so I don't know how many watts I'll be using. But I'll use just barely enough power to get inside the homes and businesses within a 1 mile radius of me. Maybe it will be 1 watt, maybe 10?? But just enough that the town can listen to me. And if an inspector looks at my legal setup and is happy with it, but notices a second antenna on the side of my house? Well maybe I can tell him I had originally broadcast my station from my house. But when I built the new studio I relocated the transmitter to the new building. And I just haven't gotten around to going up in my attic, tearing out the old cables, and taking down the old antenna, but it was on my list of things to do???
Because I live in a rural community I have a lot of farms and ranches in the area. I am streaming online so that those people can tune in also if they want. But anyways, that's my plan. Have the 2 transmitters going and if I ever get a visit, quickly shut the power off on the 20watt one and hopefully not get in any kind of trouble as we go out and inspect my legal, legitimate business. On a moral note, I justify my actions to myself by saying, "hey, I'm not asking for much. It's not like I want to get a 30 mile range. I only want 1 mile inside homes and businesses so people can tune in. After all, it's what they want." I know that kind of reasoning is horse crap, but it does give me a little comfort! So that's my evil plan. First time in my life I've ever broken a serious law.
Oddly I didn't see your post show up right away. Not really a quiet site, just has some times of inactivity. Running two AM transmitters on the same frequency is not easy to do. They both have to be synced perfectly so that they don't cause each others slight error in frequency to cause beating which results in selective fading and at worse audible beat tones to the listeners radio. It is possible to sync two transmitters but it is not an easy task. There are Part 15 legal stations that have experimented with this and the setups can become complex.
The old general rules apply like not using fake call letters and instead just saying you are a micro powered broadcaster, don't mention being a pirate or anything else that garners unneeded attention, use the minimum amount of power you need to reach the audience you want, and of course make sure you are not causing interference to any other stations on the same channel or out of band frequencies.
You can easily make a stealthy antenna for AM by just stringing up a wire out to a tree using insulators. T style marconi or inverted L always does the trick well when they are tuned up properly and with only 50' of wire and 10 to 20 watts you will easily cover a small town right into peoples homes. You can even match the color of the wire to its surroundings. Using a green wire in a woodsy area for example is almost impossible to see at any distance.
The idea of keeping a legal part 15 transmitter at the same location as the pirate transmitter is not a new idea, however I don't know anyone who has actually tried it, or got caught pirating and actually tried to distract the FCC with the legal transmitter in hopes that they will believe you and just walk off. The good news is that if you do show the FCC your setup if you get the knock and are nice about it, tell them you did not know it was illegal then they almost always just give you a warning letter to cease all operations or face a penalty. It is rare for the FCC to bust a station and fine them right away or confiscate equipment unless you are running ridiculous power levels or causing horrible interference. Of course this can even depend on which state you live in since some have tougher laws now.
I highly recommend you download the LPAM Handbook if you haven't already. That will give you almost all the information you will need to get started.
One more thing, it may be an option to use your towns power lines as a leaky radiator. There has been a few people here who have had success running legal transmitters into the power grids neutral wire. Since most roads have power lines near them you will get into car radios and of course into houses since they are all wired up. This is called Carrier Current Broadcasting and I believe is legal up to 50 watts in the US. It will depend on how your city wires its neutral and ground wires though. Some places tie them both together at the power box causing any signal to be dumped right to ground rods outside, but other places may run the neutral separately or may even be able to modify the power box, but that can be extremely dangerous unless you know exactly what you are doing. It is an option though, and I know another person here who covered their entire town w/o ANY external antenna by just using the power grid, and legally I think. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_current
So that's my evil plan. First time in my life I've ever broken a serious law.
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