Mr. Bruce I think you already know that I believe the story you have related to us about bad treatment you received at another website who decided to berate you continuously without ever allowing a fair response from you.
And it is easy, just exactly as you say, to believe that 87.7 and 87.9 are legit FM channels.
The fact that many if not all FM radios include 87.7 and 87.9 makes it seem obvious that these two frequencies are part of the band.
In my case I have four certified Scosche Transmitters that operate at 87.7 and 87.9, and yes, they have FCC certification labels! I could reasonably insist that these transmitters are legal!
Now we have a new rule, Part 15.236 which describes in rather complex language that certain TV frequencies including 89.7 and 89.9 are available in some locations based on an FCC database for use by 50 mW part 15 "wireless mics".
The definitions for "wireless mics" and "intentional radiators" are not mutually exclusive in their language, but seem to be describing the same thing from two different points of view. I would go so far as to say that all transmitters in the world are "wireless mics" and its a logical argument.
The part 15 rules have other non-uniform contradictions and I don't believe some of them in any "literal" sense.
It would be very reasonable to state that part 15 of the rules are overdo for the same re-write that just took place for the personal radio services.
For what it worth.. I had no clue about 87.7 and 87.9 being off limits for use, but recall some discussion on it maybe a few months ago. Similiary, I had no clue about requirements limiting 1710 in AM until maybe a year ago (although I never desired to broadcast 1710) -- Point is; It's an easy honest mistake and not indicative of a deliberate act... What could possibly be the motive behind it if it were a deliberate act!
I've never looked too deeply into Part 15 FM.
Carl Blare Said:
Mr. Bruce I think you already know that I believe the story you have related to us about bad treatment you received at another website who decided to berate you continuously without ever allowing a fair response from you.
MrBruce Said:
And I think it is unfair and wrong that users here, who have accounts over there, display that kind of attitude they do here.
I did nothing wrong and every if, an and but was wrongly thrown at me over there to assume I willfully and intentionally set out to break the law, it does get kind of sickening after a while.
Complaints of interference does not give anybody the right to assume and accuse anyone of any crime without proof. I can accept one transmitter interfered with one cry baby's signal, but to accuse and assume and incriminate people with various unproven other facts is BS!
None of the transmitters were altered to operate outside of part 15. So we did nothing wrong.
Bruce.
Mr Bruce, it is understandable that newcomers to Part 15 broadcasting can make mistakes. That is why sites such as this (and Hobbybroadcaster) exist - to help those new to Part 15 wade their way through the rules and pitfalls. It's also regrettable that Hobbybroadcaster appears to have failed that mandate in regards to your situation. I think that sometimes any one of us can jump to conclusions far too quickly, and that then colors subsequent actions and words.
But that's all in the past. Lessons were learned, hopefully by everyone involved, and also hopefully, everyone has moved forward from it.
This is certainly a valid example of how to avoid complaints, particularly if the complaint was based on the frequency you were using - ensure that you are broadcasting on valid Part 15 frequencies! However, the real reason may never be known.
You hypothesized interference to a listener on the 1st adjacent channel. A listener who is being interfered with on an adjacent frequency, even the 1st, would have to be awfully close to your transmitter, given its puny field strength. I've been using an RSS210/Part 15 transmitter recently, and I can detect no trace of my signal on the 1st adjacent frequency (on a pretty sensitive portable radio) past about 15 feet. I use an Iphone/clock radio to monitor my signal, sitting at about 4 feet from the antenna, and I can hear nothing on the 1st adjacent frequency (although it is pretty deaf).
Hi ArtisanRadio
The Facebook page complaint claimed to be on the same street as one of the transmitters, but would not go any futher than admiting that.
Now you do realize most of those transmitters were located where people lived on top of or next to each other and we do not know how sensitive the receiver of the complainant is, or if an high-gain antenna with amplifer was used. Keep in mind if the station was WESU, which is rather weak here even on a car radio on the highest point in Norwich, the listener, most likely had to have some type of set up to get that signal at his house, which was not in a very good location height-wise. So, they had to be doing something to get that weak signal to show up on their FM receiver.
Now see that is what the real problem is, we do not know. But someone does know and it would have been nice if people worked together, then everyone would have been happy.
We would have got off of 87.9MHz because now we knew it was not legal, the listener of 88.1 would have his reception back, as we'd get away from 88.1 all together and there would have been no need to post about a pirate and cause much hatred.
I know, the world is not perfect, but, hopefully people will read this and stop and think. That maybe this person needs help with education in regards to legal part 15. The only thing we really did wrong was use a channel that we weren't supposed to be using. As for power and antenna, well everything was legal, the transmitter was operated according to the owner's manual and no large external antennas were used.
The Decade MS100's had FCC certification numbers on them, although, they were all sold off by their owners. You do realize, I only provided a studio feed to the owner's of those transmitters, but I did not legally own the transmitters.
I only did what I do now, provide an on-line stream, only this time, the feed is for Internet only, unless someone asks for written permission to broadcast it, it will remain that way.
Post #42 Did piss me off a bit though. I'll leave it at that.
Bruce.
Oh and one last thing.
The facebook page to WXTZ has long since been deleted and everything on it is long gone.
But when that person posted on the page saying "part 15 my ass" no matter how many questions I asked, he always repeated himself saying I wasn't allowing HIM to use HIS part 15 equipment.
I asked if he was trying to run his own part 15 radio station (thinking he wanted to do what we were doing) but all he would say was we were preventing him from using his part 15 equipment. (WHAT part 15 EQUIPMENT???) He just never made a clear answer to any of the questions I asked him, nor did he say I was preventing him from listening to his favorite FM radio station by causing interference to it.
Eventually, this person ignored any futher questions I asked them.
Now interference wise, from 87.9 MHz, I can understand 1st adjacent 88.1MHz or second image on 200MHz (87.9 X 2 = 200) being interfered with, but I highly doubt it was anything in between those two frequencies.
I never kept a record of who the person was, and the page is long gone, so there is no way of looking back and finding out.
I don't know if he complained to WESU, but somebody complained to somebody obviously.
But all along, I thought that dude was upset because he could not use his part 15 FM transmitter, because of us. Now I'm not so sure anymore.
Sensible communication was totally lacking on this whole charade as you can very well tell.
Bruce.
Dang!! After posting my last post, I went to bed and thought about my answer and realized I typed the wrong numbers into the calculator and posted the wrong answer in my last post.
87.9 X 2 = 175.8 NOT 200, like I posted in my last post. You'll notice the time of that post was at 1:55 AM EST, and I after posting that it bothered me to the point where I got back out of bed to recheck that again and realized, 87 times 2 can't equal 200, only 100 times two can. Too late to fix that error now.
Now, back to bed.
Bruce.
Mistakes are very easy to make in the world of radio, especially with part 15 and newcomers to the hobby. I think honest mistakes are no big deal and great learning experiences. Up in New England and the northeast pirate radio is a rampant problem with hundreds of illegal FM operations in a small geographic area. As a result engineers take a "pirate first" mentality to unlicensed operations in the area, meaning that they assume you are illegal until proven otherwise. Because of this they take a more stealthy approach, though this is actually pretty standard procedure, of taking measurements first and asking questions later. I like to call this gathering evidence. After the readings are taken the decision is then made to either contact the FCC or talk to the operator depending how far above the limit they are and how safe the area is.
If I remember your case correctly, you had posted before operator identification had actually occured and nobody at that point knew it was your station yet. IIRC only observations had taken place and no readings had been made yet. IIRC it never got to the point of FS readings and FCC intervention. All that said, I agree that nothing should have been posted until after contact had been made by either the engineer or FCC and not before FS readings had been made. If your setup was exactly as you stated it was, the FS readings would have shown your station to be functionally compliant but on an illegal frequency. Making it an honest operator's mistake and not a case of gross negligence.
As for 87.9, there are two FM stations licensed to the frequency in the US. These class D FMs were displaced and moved there at some point in history, with no future stations to be placed on 87.9 due to it being occuped by TV 6. At one time, I think the 80s and earlier, Part 15 TV was still allowed so 87.5-87.9 were useable under the television rules. When the FCC ended part 15 TV, 87.5-87.9 were no longer available.
EDIT: Upon reflection I do not wish to derail this thread any further. Comment deleted. -Please remove this reply-
mighty1650 Said
If I remember your case correctly, you had posted before operator identification had actually occured and nobody at that point knew it was your station yet.
MrBruce Said:
First, thanks for the decent reply in post # 54
Second, I did not react until it was stated they knew who the name of the owner of the facebook page was and continued verbal insults were posted towards me. Plus images taken from the Facebook page and posted without my permission.
I know what was said in public was nothing compared to what was being shared in private and it boiled over the pot to the point where I repsonded.
If they knew my real name, obviously, the admins and webmasters knew it to, because I went through a rather lengthy process to get accepted as a forum member, in fact I still have those original emails saved where I registered and they contain my real name in several of them.
If I was a part 15 site owner, and I know geograpically where a pirate is located, I would check my own crew for a possible bad apple in the group and compare the possiblilties. IP #'s, names, location etc.
Plus the studio photo that was posted, showed a lot of the equipment I talked about in various forums. I put that all together and knew they knew it was me and I was angry that I was being treated this way and talked about that way, so I responded out of anger, but all I called that person was a "BULLY" nothing more. I was called numorous insulting names and took offense to it. We plubished a phone number so people could call us, it did not warrant being called names over it.
Putting all that together, I decided based on what I read, they already knew who owned the station as that was already stated that they did.
My response at first was that of a confused person, I did not know what the real complaint was at that point and time and thought one of the transmitters (which were privately owned) was operating with illegal power, so I contacted all 8 transmitter owners and told them what was taking place and asked if anyone did anything to the transmitters to make them transmit an illegal power output.
I was told by all 8 owners that they had not changed anything, but because of what was happening, I suggested we just shut everything down and I gathered the group together and told them that they could face a possible fine using this stuff and I asked them if they wanted to risk that possiblilty. All 8 said they didn't realize they could be fined IF something isn't quite right and mutually agreed to abandon this idea. They did not like the idea of having strangers walking about their homes and property over a silly little toy transmitter.
That night, everyone went home, turned off their transmitters and I ended the on-line feed If I am not mistaken that was April 15 2015.
Our desolving the station made it look like we were hidding something, because I even unpublished the facebook page because it was no longer relevent and I then deleted it, although Facebook has a 90 day policy, the page can be undeleted for a total of 90 days, after that it is gone forever.
So hopefully you understand now why I reacted so defensively and why I reacted at all, I just hated the fact that they are staring at my name and saying I can't believe you're acting so innocent when we all know it's you and your station. Mind you, the photos showing my studio area (which was the cover photo of the WXTZ facebook page) and the photos showing posts to the Facebook page were dead giveaways it was my station they were talking about.
Bruce.
What is amazing is that a photo of your studio does not qualify you to be a pirate.
I don't wish to split hairs, but the Amateur Auxiliary program is an official snitch program I was referring to. And it's because these folks are equiped and more aware is why you're likely to be busted by them. If they got wind of a 'pirate' somewhere, considering the authoritarian attitude of many in the ham arena (and Part 15, fwiw), my guess is you're toast.
though impossible to prove without putting out names and even callsigns believe it or not, the fcc does indeed act in many ways as skywave mentioned.
NOW, there is a caveat.. i'm in south Fl, pirate radio capital of the USA pretty much. here it's not uncommon for you to get a "turn it off" warning first. you shut it off and its all over. if you continure being a bozo then they get serious. some folks go on getting warned multiple times before things get nasty. i think the agents are being beyond fair.
i've spoken with two from the local field office. they pretty much know you are there within a short time of you going on the air. i'm not talking part15 folks, i'm talking higher power pirates. they are so bogged down that they react only to complaints. as i said, thats the story in miami. probably very different in slower cities.
of you look at the documented cases for south Fl, they are all repeat offenders.
This makes good sense. Why one would continue after the FCC asks you nicely to shut down is beyond me. This reminds me of the kids station in Tampa. They were asked to shut down at first and then the FCC helped them to be compliant.
Even then they let the station slide a bit over the standard rules as many have reported to me that the station was still beyond 200 Ft range.
I imagine too the fact that the transmitter was clean could have something to do with it as well. I'm not sure if they are 24/7 or just a "Sometimes" station.
Thanks for the info as its of interest to many.
The WKID station is in Clearwater. They were never asked to shut down. They did invite Ralph Barlow to to be a guest on their station and it was recorded and archived. It is true that FCC engineers measured the signal to make sure it was compliant. The transmitter is a FM-100 from Ramsey. Their father is a radio engineering tech at the Pinellas County S.O. He actually requested the interview. They run 24/7. The ONLY person I am aware of that had issues with the station and the FCC was our friend Bill.