Much of what getting posted on this site is becoming nonsense: not grounded in fact.
I also have to issue a 'Really?' when I hear talk about amateur radio operators endangering world peace.
I still fail to see what perceived FCC violations in the amateur radio bands have to do with Part 15 broadcasting.
Lots of F Bombing and QRMing Here.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzRFhV7U5AM&t=314s
The racist comments and F bombing Oh and the N word. Count the FCC violations here.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEV7n0rGl4s
More Childish Noise making and Jamming.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6pI-yaRWGM
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3knAIFqCoo&t=24s
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0xkZWvfxns
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH1os0qd1QQ
I'll have much more (on The-Initiative site) as I find some of my favorite examples of why the FCC is looking in the wrong place when they go after little Johnny quarter mile on FM because their paid by corporate big wigs. What Fine Business Operators these guys are.
This not only has alot to do with part 15, but the future of Radio. If they can't reign in these repeat violators than how the heck can the FCC do anything to control Radio at all. It will become the wild west whereas Radio operators will take the law into their own hands.
I think when you hear this you'll have a different outlook on all of it fore sure. Maybe I should do a Radio show on it but I'd have to beep out lots of the language. Maybe make it a Internet broadcast only and ask the public what they think of Amateur Radio now? I've heard some crap on 2 meters before but this takes all of the cake. You may as well let Howard Stern loose on the airwaves once again which is tame compared to this.
You seem to be excusing illegal operation on the broadcast bands because there are perceived FCC violations on other frequencies.
That is not logical, and certainly not valid. If the FCC decides to let chaos reign in, say, the CB band, it has nothing to do with illegal Part 15 broadcasting, which remains illegal no matter what happens on CB.
And it does nothing to further your cause of increasing power to hobby broadcasting.
I suggest that you focus on that, as opposed to worrying about these other things.
And if it eases your mind, I can also tell you that there are very few violations in the amateur frequencies, compared to the number of amateur radio operators, I'm sure far less as a percentage than the number of pirates vs Part 15 broadcasters. In 2015, there were over 725,000 licensed amateurs in the U.S. alone, orders of magnitude more than serious, unlicensed broadcasters. If all you can point out in terms of violators is a few youtube videos from over the years, I think that amateur radio is doing fairly well.
I compare that to the Part 15 Facebook closed group, which I participated in for a little while until it became clear that the majority of individuals, posting at least, in that group were operating in violation of FCC regulations. And that was from their own words.
It's no wonder that the FCC looks suspicously at all Part 15 broadcasters.
Some of the Pirate spokespersons on Facebook post on this site.
The Wackadoodles have been pulling that crap on the ham bands for decades. The world hasn't ended, radio hasn't become the "wild west" and it hasn't led to any war.
These nut jobs get busted on a regular basis. Obviously the don't care about the rules. Losing a license doesn't mean a thing to them, as they'll transmit illegally.
Many of these low life scumbags have been fined, and paid fines, and given up equipment, etc. many have been caught and stopped.
The stories of their enforcement actions and pursuit of wackos like this is well documented and somewhat legendary.
The concept of not worrying about your Part 15 rules because the FCC can't stop these hams is quite misguided.
TIB
timinbovey Said:
So torqued off people listening is a source of a complaint. Another major source of a compllaint would be other stations managers, owners, and engineers. If your FM causes interference for the guy next door, or across the street, who enjoys listening to the FM classical station 60 miles away, and his reception is marginal, or he put up an antenna to get it, and you come on blasting your ganster rap on the frequency (because you didn't check to see and consider that someone might be trying to listen to a distant station) you can be pretty sure he'll complain. He may not call the FCC, he may call the station complaining that he's getting interference. They'd likely send their engineer to investigate, and HE may discover you and file a complaint. So run a clean signal and make sure you're not on a frequency that's got a signal there, no matter how weak it is.
MrBruce Said:
That would be the case with WXTZ 87.9 Norwich
I believe I have figured it all out with how and why my station was being investigated by HB and other people.
I believe, based on a post, posted on WXTZ 87.9 Norwich's facebook page Quote; "Part 15 my ass" that person -- whose name I no longer have -- stated they were located on a certain road near one of the 8 transmitters we were using and that they could not use their equipment.
Now I assumed this person wanted to use his own FM transmitter and we were jamming the channel preventing his use of it.
Now I found out about the WXTZ radio network being subjected to possible FCC action from a post that appeared at HB. They were posting actual pictures from the facebook page of WXTZ 87.9 Norwich.
Now, the easiest thing anyone could have done was call the phone number we aired and posted on the facebook page, to address us with the issues and things would have went a lot more smoother than they did. We would have moved off of 87.9MHz.
Now, I still have no clue what prompted the complaint, but in doing my own research, I believe I have the answer that no one would ever give me, so here it is.
My belief is this.
At the time, none of us invloved, had learned yet, that 87.9MHz was illegal for part 15 broadcasting, so we used that channel (200). However, I do not believe that is what the complaint was originally all about.
My belief is that because we were on 87.9MHz and the person who complained on Facebook "Part 15 my ass!" was a die-hard listener of WESU in Middletown Connecticut which broadcasts on 88.1 MHz. Link: https://wesufm.org/
As you can see it is a station located on 88.1MHz and more than likely has some interesting programming that attracks listeners. The station is not very powerful in my area, in fact my city is just outside their usable contour. But obviously, even a compliant FM transmitter is going to effect a close by person who is listening to 88.1 from a transmitter operating on 87.9 it is considered 1st adjacent channel.
Now being that an egineer from Harford Connecticut was hired by an unknown broadcast station, I believe WESU got a complaint from my local listener -- who had called the station complaining -- they then contacted an engineer, being Hartford is close to Middletown, they hired one from there. That engineer came to town and observed whatever he observed and because I ordered a shutdown of WXTZ permanently, they closed the case.
WXTZ left 87.9MHz, the local listener got his WESU reception back and the WXTZ station was also no longer on 87.9MHz, two birds killed with one stone.
So Tim you are correct, although, my assessment is purely speculation, I think it makes the most sense.
Bruce.
this this is a very good finding Bruce and it shows why one really needs to take the time before going on the air on FM or AM.
Thelegacy Said:
this this is a very good finding Bruce and it shows why one really needs to take the time before going on the air on FM or AM.
MrBruce Said:
Well that is true. We were NEW to this stuff and no where did we see anything that stuck out about 87.9MHz being illegal to use, not even at HB which is where I was hanging out at the time.
Now obviously one of the 8 transmitters were interfering with this guys ability to listen to a licensed station on 88.1MHz.
I know nothing about a transmitter reaching 1 mile or more as was stated, however the source of that information might have been a forum member at another forum board who misunderstood the frequency and mistook 87.9 for 98.7 which is another legal full powered licensed radio station WNLC 98.7 in my market area and that post was used against my station as reaching many miles.
Now the station in question which I believe to be WESU 88.1 and its agents could have contacted us by the public phone number we posted and aired on a regular basis and explained to us that one listener was no longer able to receive their signal because of 1st adjacent interference from 87.9MHz and explained that that frequency was not legal for part 15 use and we would have moved.
If you know the history, you'll soon understand that the station was accused and called a law breaking pirate and this made us all look bad even though none of us knew we were breaking the law. I mean, yes, I can understand the reason behind it, but, we were not intentionally trying to break any laws.
As for 1st adjacent interference, I looked at the FCC data base and it showed that none of the stations on 88.1MHz were close enough for 1st adjacent channel protection. We seen stations licensed to 87.9MHz on the west coast and felt hey there are none here that we'd interfer with so 87.9MHz would be good to use.
On the subject of 1st adjacent channel. Yeah sadly, even if you are legal and you are next to a channel that has a station that is far, far away and your neighbor listens to it and you interfer with his reception and he is a die-hard supporter of that distant station, he calls the station and complains about his loss of signal, that station would go to the trouble for that ONE listener to have you shut down for causing interference to that listener.
If you viewed WESU's website you see they have a listener pledge drive on their main page, this guy in my area, was probably a pledge donor who loves the programming this station put out. Here is the link again https://wesufm.org/
Although, interesting enough is their history, which you can read about on their website, indicates, that they started out many, many years ago as a pirate campus radio station on AM, although most likely back in the day, there either was no FCC as it is known to be today or their rules were not as strict as they are now.
So moral of the story, when it comes to a part 15 station operating legally and a licensed part 73 station is not happy you are on their truff, such as the FM broadcast band, they can have you shut down, just for a simple thing as interfering with your neighbor's abilty to listen to them, it does not matter if you are within their protected contour or not, if you interfer with ONE of their listeners, they can say you are causing willfull interference and file a complaint against you. The key word here is "interference" That is what the FCC will most likely act upon quite quickly.
This opens you up to a possible inspection, if you are over on anything, that makes your station even 1% illegal, you could face possible serious action from the FCC, then again, you may just get a verble warning. Keep that in mind though, there are serious risks invloved when using this stuff. It can be either a bad experience or a simple learning lesson.
For me and my crew, it was a learning lesson, just wish it was handled a bit differently than it was.
It can go the same for AM as well, so it is not just FM we have to worry about. You can cause adjacent channel interference on AM to.
Bruce.
Bruce you're an intellectual genius. This is something I've been talking about for quite some time. If you're causing interference on AM or FM to an adjacent channel you could be spotted and looked at in a bad light. I do believe this is one of the things that happened to even that legal station that was running a non-modified Talking House AM Transmitter whereas the FCC told the operator they had to shut it down.
As far as you're phenomenal range with a non-modified part 15 certified transmitter again I have lots to say about this. Height and terrain have a lot to do with range no matter what they have to say about it. I have shown examples of this plenty of times. However this is not the entire plan for this post so I won't go there. I will once again coment on my stance on 87.1 to 87.9 MHz which is it is not currently being used it is in the white space spectrum in my opinion the FCC needs to update this to meet the modern day times. Not only that but there are plenty of transmitters available at your local discount store that do go down to 87.9 Mhz and some cover 87.5 Mhz without any hacks or modifications to get them down there.
Remember this was a case in point as to why FRS Radio's will soon enjoy the frequencies that combo GMRS/FRS Radio's now posess as well as the non licensed FRS service soon enjoying 2 Watts of power. So power from the people seems to push changes which again is something I've been a huge advocate for.
I hope we will see more examples that foster my speeches on this subject so as to wake up the people first before any real petitions can be effective with hundreads of thousands of signatures in which NONE will balk at the idea because they will have proven links to look at for an example of how the people's habits will cause the dire need to rethink things and fix what is wrong.
The spectrum territory and geographical expanses subject to FCC jurisdiction are huge, way more massive than most of us can imagine.
By stark and utter contrast the number of particulars over which a part 15 operator must keep organized are very very small indeed.
Therefore we Part 15ers see things right up close at the "pixlel level" or even the "atomic telescope" pont of view.
To the FCC we are one small bit of pepper shaken onto the 2-billion dinner steaks of America.
The FCC only has time to sweep us out of the way and move on.
Oh good lord...
There was never a time where 87.9 was questionable, everyone has always known you can't use it.
I'm going with WDCX on this one, ya'll are spewing absolute nonsense.
The poster was contracted by the station to investigate a source of reported interference as he was an engineer, Happens all the time. You don't alert a suspected pirate beforehand, have to catch them in the act.
All that said, the FCC long ago shuttered most of their monitoring stations, I'd say about 80% of us don't have to worry about it. The FCC is largely complaint driven.
For some reason it seems like the Florida monitors are still active.
And the best way to avoid complaints, other than not broadcasting over top of another, licensed, signal, is to operate legally.
Let's not add to some of the nonsense by talking about exaggerated Part 15 FM range.
Height is not magical and does not allow you to change physical laws. Field strength varies inversely with distance, and there are limits as to receiver sensitivity (the two most important factors in range).
You're not going to get much more than 200 feet range AT BEST, even with height, with a compliant transmitter to a typical portable (5uv sensitivity) receiver, and in most cases you'll get a lot less. And even if you have the most sensitive car radio, you'll be lucky to get 600 to 800 feet range, line of sight, again probably a lot less.
If you find yourself getting more, your transmitter is likely not compliant.
All of the calculations have been done previously, here and elsewhere. And verified by testing and use in the field.
mighty1650 Said
There was never a time where 87.9 was questionable, everyone has always known you can't use it.
I'm going with WDCX on this one, ya'll are spewing absolute nonsense.
The poster was contracted by the station to investigate a source of reported interference as he was an engineer, Happens all the time. You don't alert a suspected pirate beforehand, have to catch them in the act.
MrBruce replies:
If you are speaking to me, I already said I checked the FCC data base, it showed licensed stations operating on 87.9MHz. LINK:
Hopefully that link works above, but it shows several licensed stations operating on 87.9MHz in the USA.
Now I look at that page and see this which was not originally there back in 2014:
Use of Channel 200 87.9 MHz is restricted to existing displaced full service Class D noncommercial educational stations. See 47 CFR 73.501. Channel 200 is not available for use by other station classes and services.
Also, there was one other station listed on 87.9MHz back in 2014 which is now missing.
Please understand we used 87.9MHz back in late 2014, not 2017, so it's been years now.
Now I said "WE WERE NEW to this stuff", unlike you who has held an FCC licensed station under your belt and should know better.
If everyone's objective is to support part 15 operators and understand NOT ALL OF US were born with FCC rules in our blood, we have to learn and those rules are NOT written to appease a newby like me to easily understand.
My Ramsey FM100 which is my first part 15 device or FM transmitter, was built by a friend, who goofed up on the construction, he did not want to be bothered with figuring out his construction error, so it was given to me to keep and I figured out the error he made and the unit worked.
I joined HB to learn more about this stuff, however the transmitter was in my possession long before I joined any forums.
Now obviously, we all know the Ramsey FM100 (not to be confused with the FM100B model) does not operate below 88.1, but the decade MS100's we bought did, with a certain switch configuration on main board.
Now, as far as I was concerned, we were legal part 15 stations operating 100% legal, we did not amplify the signal, change the transmitter's internals, only thing I realize now, is we were on a channel that was illegal to use. So no, being newbies you can't expect us to look at something on the FCC website and realize we were not eligible to use a frequency that stations like KSFH in California was allowed ot use.
Think outside the box please!
Now, I realize no matter what excuse I use, you see me as a pirate and pirates should not be contacted about things like this first, to maybe find out if we just didn't realize 87.9 was off limits to use?? Perhaps, that is why that part was added to the page above where it states:
Use of Channel 200 87.9 MHz is restricted to existing displaced full service Class D noncommercial educational stations. See 47 CFR 73.501. Channel 200 is not available for use by other station classes and services.
But all due respect, it was not printed there in 2014!
Bruce.