West Seattle “pirate radio” back on the air

As of about an hour ago, Radio 33 is on at 87.7 FM, as announced earlier this month.

Jack Loblaw February 17, 2008 (8:17 am)

I hope the pirates realize that it is a federal offense to broadcast on a radio frequency without a FCC station license. Broadcasters take this real seriously and have after hour contact information for local FCC enforcement personnel. This is just not a be arrested and taken to King County jail kind of thing by SPD — it is a federal crime involving federal jail time and fines in the tens of thousands of dollars for the first offense, let alone the FCC will confiscate every piece of equipment involved in the operation. I am surprised that WSB is announcing that someone is intending to “go on the air” illegally.

WSB February 17, 2008 (10:19 am)

Jack – these guys know the law, and sought out the publicity. They believe the public service they are providing (they’ll be broadcasting the Homeless Marathon; last time they told us they went on, it was to broadcast the Seattle FCC broadcast-ownership hearings live) outweighs the risk.

Dale Roose February 17, 2008 (11:38 am)

The term “pirate radio” means different things to different people and does not necessarily mean illegal, even on AM and FM broadcast bands where low power unlicensed broadcasting is allowed.

There’s little reason for pirate stations to broadcast on the same frequencies used by high power commercial broadcasters because hardly anybody would hear them. Commercial frequency assignments are usually separated leaving open unused frequencies where properly designed, operated, and maintained low power transmitters would not interfere with commercial broadcasts, although commercial broadcasters may not want the competition.

The radio spectrum belongs to the people and there should be room for short range neighborhood community radio, but it can’t survive if needs many millions of dollars to operate or to lobby at the federal level for licensing allocations.

But like anything else, some people will try to abuse it to feed their personal egos, because they just don’t know better, or just to be annoying, which is why licenses should be available for low power community radio stations so they can be regulated.

Aaron February 17, 2008 (11:49 am)

Your righteous indignation is noted Jack, but I think we all need a little anarchy.

Bob February 17, 2008 (4:13 pm)

I listened around noon but didn’t hear them here. Maybe too far away.
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A few years back there was an effort, and some people here in Seattle took part in it, to influence the FCC’s pending rulemaking on low-power licenses, to make it a lot easier to get very low power (around 1 watt, I think) transmitter licences for more local people who wanted to broadcast. It might have been a good thing for neighborhood groups who could put on a regular program for a few hours in the evenings, say.
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But the FCC drastically cut back on the proposal, based not so much on technical criteria as opposition from the radio business. Guess what, NPR and our local “public” stations (KUOW, etc.) were against it just as much as the other networks were.
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So, low power licences exist but are scarce, infrequently available and hard to get. And they’d be even more so if a lot of “pirates” hadn’t put their necks out for years before that and made it an issue.

credmond February 17, 2008 (4:47 pm)

Don’t know where there transmitter/antenna are, but here on top of Gatewood Hill I’m getting a very strong and clean signal from 87.7.
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As one who has a pending FCC license application for a low-power FM station, but is getting no where because of the lock-out in the Seattle area for low-power frequencies (grade B contours fro adjacent and alternate channels) I’m in favor of a bit of anarchy.
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The FCC hasn’t served the public interest for most of my lifetime and I’m 60. It began with Nixon and has perpetuated a dismal public airwaves policy to the point where there are no public airwaves anymore. The same FCC is trying to do the same thing with the net-neutrality issue.

Jack Loblaw February 17, 2008 (5:05 pm)

Here is a link to the FCC rules regarding low power operation:

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/lowpwr.html#PROHIBITED

The biggest issue with “pirate” type stations is that the equipment in use is not necessarily approved/certified by the FCC and as such it may radiate outside of the desired frequency or channel and cause harmful interference to licensed stations. Broadcast stations spend quite a bit of money and energy to insure that they stay within their licensed bandwidth. Non licensed transmitters — either home built by amateurs or purchased from a questionable source have the luxury of not being required to meet any interference standards.

Imagine if the pirate station were next door to your home and causing harmful interference to your favorite TV or radio station or worse yet to first responder radios during an emergency — would this make you happy?

tpn February 17, 2008 (6:50 pm)

I’m getting their signal in my neck of the woods (with an aerial directional antenna). Where do I write to get my QSL card?

flipjack February 17, 2008 (8:07 pm)

The worse that would happen is agents would confiscate their broadcast equipment. I’ve heard first hand of this happening. And, by the way, it’s perfectly legal to transmit at 1 watt. (which is hardly anything but…)
Lob that one at the Law Jack.

Bob February 17, 2008 (8:30 pm)

Jack, it’s not rocket science to use a radio transmitter on a precise, stable frequency. People do it all the time, to very narrow tolerances, without even knowing the first thing about it, while operating commercial two-way radios in various services. Reasonably inexpensive good transmitters can be found without much trouble.
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Even back in the ’60s in the days of vacuum tubes when I held FCC licenses (not in radio broadcasting, though), VFO frequencies could drift as the tubes warmed up. But any transmitter that operated on one exact frequency used a plug-in quartz crystal as a frequency source, to give rock-like frequency stability. These were extremely accurate, a larger version of the quartz crystal in your wristwatch. And there are other more sophisticated ways to do it now.
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The problem with broadcast radio interference when using empty channels beteen stations isn’t so much the FM broadcast transmitters, it’s the installed base of receivers. (Well, setting aside things like the i-Whatsit, I suppose.) Lots of broadcast receivers have excessively wide bandpass filters, for cost reasons and because it’s easier to get good evenness and fidelity with little trouble that way with old traditional technology, as long as the stations are sufficiently far apart.
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Many people would hear interference when listening to FM on adjacent channels if a station were to broadcast on an empty channel, even if the transmitters all were perfectly within spec. With a communications-grade receiver that’s not an issue. But consumers don’t buy those to put in the kitchen.
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There’s no need to make consumer electronics FM radios a lot better than they now are either, since the FM stations continue to be much more widely spaced than necessary, with only every other channel in use.
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Rather than mandate better receivers to improve matters and make the FM band usable by more stations, the FCC limits licensees. It’s more in tune with their agenda anyway.
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That made sense in the 1960s, but much less so today, as available digital electronics can address the need for tighter channel bandpass at a rational cost level.
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If they can do HDTV, they can also do improved FM standards to utilize the existing FM band much more fully. End of rant.
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Well, I still can’t receive the signal. Too much steep terrain in the way out here, I guess. Maybe it’s antenna time one of these days.

Dave February 17, 2008 (8:45 pm)

I’ve been a radio broadcast engineer for over twenty years. If the pirate can be heard for more than a few hundred feet, it’s illegal, no question. I have had to locate pirates several times, when I started getting interference complaints. Once I locate them, I call the FCC and they bring Federal Marshalls along. If I can find them, the FCC can, and many HAM operators can, too.

The problem is that just because a channel sounds vacant, doesn’t mean that firing up a transmitter on it won’t cause problems. For example, if this 87.7 transmitter has any horsepower, it will cause blanketing interference to licensed stations near that channel, on nearby radios.

Neighboring listeners to KPLU, KNHC, and several translators are likely having problems without understanding why. One licensed translator is on 88.1, so it’s easily interfered with because it’s only two channels away. The selectivity of the radio is a big factor. Most consumer radios are pretty lousy these days.

Pirate radio is not harmless, which is why the FCC takes action against them.

bob February 18, 2008 (2:22 pm)

By the time the FCC acts on your snitching them out, Dave (last initial “P” per chance?) these broadcasters will be long gone.

Ken February 18, 2008 (7:50 pm)

Just a note on frequency and perception /reception

On both the cheap emergency radios I tried the 87.7 frequency on, I get a harmonic of 107.x fm (or is it a translator and if so why)

High power FM stations bleed all over the place when you’re close to the transmitter, but usually into areas just off the tunable range. Admitedly most harmonics are caused by the radio design and filters.

I will fire up the dx440 tomorrow and see if it can discriminate.

I am also on the Delridge side of Highpoint so if it is on Gatewood hill, there is several thousand feet of rock and gravel between me and line of sight on the antenna.

Bob February 18, 2008 (10:19 pm)

On some little digital-tuning radios, a spurious signal shows up .45 MHz from the center frequency of the strongest stations. So these radios are still using a final intermediate frequency of 455Kc, which dates from the beginning of AM radio.
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As to why spurious signals from 107.7 would appear at 87.7, consider that the FM band is 20 MHz wide, 88-108 MHz. If you had the enviable task of concocting a feature-laden plastic radio to be made in Shengzhou for a parts cost of two bucks and 87 cents and you couldn’t afford to reject the first IF images adequately, what would you choose as as the first intermediate frequency, so as to put the strong unrejected IF images somewhere out of the way? That’s right, 20 MHz, so they’d be just outside the FM band. The first IF in those radios must be 20 MHz and the second, well, who knows but it might still be 455 kHz.
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Generally, “interference” is mostly in the circuitry of the beholder, when it comes to cheap radios. Lots of them would receive two stations at a time, if FM stations were assigned adjacent channels. Some would receive three at a time.
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You’ll notice that most of the local FM stations are assigned frequencies 4 channels apart – 92.5, 93.3, 94.1, 94.9, 95.7, 96.5, 97.3, 98.1, 98.9. Even though each station stays strictly in its own frequency slot, a lot of cheap radios can’t keep from receiving more than one station at a time if they’re any closer.
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We have the FCC to thank for this. A round of applause, please.
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(Bob with a capital B.)

Steve Lake February 19, 2008 (2:44 pm)

Wow. We were unprepared for the amount of vitriol that 4 watts of cleanly compressed and limited, low pass filtered FM would generate. We were also unprepared with a spare sound card for our automation computer, so Radio 33 signed off the air very early Monday morning. The audio was distorted and noisy, and we are unwilling to transmit a signal that we would not want to listen to.

A note about our signal- it is generated from a high quality broadcast kit developed and sold by a very reputable firm in England, as is our aerial. The kit includes a low pass filter in the transmitter, and another low pass filter is sitting on a friend’s desk waiting to be installed. Any TVI (I=interference) that we have observed is minimal at best, and should be taken care of completely with the second LPF. Our signal is compressed and limited with professional equipment to enhance sound quality and further reduce spurious emissions. On all but one radio here at the studios I am able to listen to the second adjacent channel (such as 88.1 in this latest case) when we are on the air. Potential for interference to licensed broadcasters or public safety officials is almost nonexistent by design.

You are right small b-bob. The comment about federal marshals coming by is laughable. What I have observed is that pirate stations have to be on 24/7 for a year or more to even get noticed by the FCC, and then they usually just send a letter. Educate yourself about this at http://www.diymedia.net.

We love WSB here at Radio 33, but won’t be making any more announcements regarding when we will be taking the airwaves back for a short while. If you are interested in listening to something different, scan the radio dial once in a while. Otherwise, keep watching the Fox Nuisance Channel and shaking your fists at those of us who are practicing a little civil disobedience. You’ll be seeing a lot more of it in the coming year.

Bob February 20, 2008 (3:07 am)

Steve L. said: “On all but one radio here at the studios I am able to listen to the second adjacent channel (such as 88.1 in this latest case) when we are on the air.”
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That’s pretty good, according to what Dave contended is needed for channel separation these days to really make sure – it’s “only” two channels away. Even so, that radio is receiving 87.7 when tuned to 88.1 (two channels higher) and it’d also receive 87.7 when tuned to 87.3 (two channels lower).
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If the FCC’s frequency allocation practices were to change to expect FM receivers starting in the year 201x to need only one empty channel of separation between local stations instead of three, then the “normal” design of FM receivers would immediately change to follow suit.
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Many radios already work that well. All but one of yours do. Even 20 or 30 years ago, I could and did often listen on an ordinary pretty good FM radio to the faint station at 98.5 between KING at 98.1 and whatever the next station was then at 98.9, without any interference at all from the strong stations on either side. Any good radio could do that, even then.
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The poorest models would have to be brought up to spec by 201x or be junked by consumers and radio manufacturers alike. And what the heck is wrong with that? Why should the truly bad low-end of the market hold FM radio expansion hostage?
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This would result in twice as many FM stations being able to operate, including low power ones, in a given area without consumers hearing more than one station at a time.
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There’s nothing particularly infeasible about this proposal – these days, no one really has to make a radio so bad that it needs to span 800 kHz to receive one FM channel (87.3 to 88.1 in the above example).
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FM broadcasting is the only “high tech” electronic industry I know of that passively accepts this bad a situation regarding such exceptionally poor technical standards and expectations.

houdini February 29, 2008 (1:56 pm)

Hey, great comments all. Thanks.
I’ve been talking with some friends here in Columbia City about the potential of a low-power community radio station. Columbia City has a lot of stuff going on, with a lot of potential news value: cinema, farmers market, theater/cabaret, community revitalization. There’s a community wiki, a young parents yahoo group, the Pea Patch folks. But we don’t have a local newspaper or any other community communications medium. Believe me, the purpose of having a station is not to fling taboo words into the airwaves. It just seemed to me that the process of offering someone a microphone to speak into, recording interviews and announcements, kids reading poetry, that sort of thing – would be refreshing. I understand the way radio has sort of collapsed into its present form. I view all these stations like stalagmites. It’s jobs for a lot of people. It’s so boring. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of an electronics engineer to know how to get a clean signal.

Sorry, comment time is over.