The AM Forum

I was listening to WBCQ last night and I heard the owner of the station during his show said that the FCC has almost given up trying to bust outlaw radio stations in NYC and it pretty much has the same strategy for parts of Florida.

I think the last thing I want is for a state government to  be in the business of policing the radio waves. It could affect us if some know it all cop is a friend of your PITA neighbor who doesn't like your tower etc.

http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2011/02/14/new-york-state-bill-aims-to-criminalize-pirate-radio/ (http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2011/02/14/new-york-state-bill-aims-to-criminalize-pirate-radio/)

http://www.fybush.com/NERW/2011/110207/nerw.html (http://www.fybush.com/NERW/2011/110207/nerw.html)


PLEASE KEEP THIS ON TOPIC. This could turn into a run away political discussion so please keep it about radio. Thanks.

If this was covered before, I didn't see it. Again, not good news to me.

 

It is unclear to me that the States have the legal authority to control the airwaves, since they come under the interstate commerce clause - they can not be contained to a single state... at least this is the basis for the creating of the FCC, afaik.

A very very bad law for NYS...

                   _-_-bear

FYI:

  Saland@nysenate.gov


I wrote.

                  _-_-bear

I find this particularly disconcerting


Looks to me that this could be broadly construed to include RFI resulting from deficient consumer electronics junk. No doubt it would eventually be thrown out by the courts, but that doesn't prevent the hassle, and possible heavy legal expenses in the meantime.

Don, ya left off the first part of that sentence about "a radio transmission in this state without first having obtained a license or an exemption from licensure"

The law seems to be geared towards unlicensed transmissions in the same way that when a cb operator trashes a neighbors tv, he has to shut it down. When a licensed ham operator trashes that same tv, it's the neighbors problem. The whole thing is based on having a license to transmit or not.

I do agree that it can become a headache by placing the burden of enforcing that law on people (police) that do not specialize in this field. They need to be able to determine the law correctly and apply it correctly, and I don't think that's going to go down that way. The states only want in because it'll they think it'll generate revenue.

The whole problem now is that the feecee is loaded with a bunch a fatass lazy bureaucrats that don't want to do their job in the first place, vs having the building full of technically qualified and legally educated people. 

The issue is that the real radio (and TV) FCC employees are all retiring and there just isn't anyone with the same skill sets to replace them.

Same goes for the broadcast business.

Time to change careers! Govment jobs pay, on average, 2X a private sector job of like kind and when was the last time you heard about govment layoffs?

I wonder ifn they gots online applications?

Bud, the FCC (regardless of whatever they might pay), broadcasters and defense contractors around here simply can't find acceptable RF-qualified employees.

One defense contractor around here has perhaps 25-50 openings for RF engineers, techs, satellite and terrestrial antenna engineers, and more that they haven't been able to fill. The FCC recently had a field engineer job open in Seattle that they couldn't fill after months of searching.

Why can't they hire the thugs in da Cadillac yo?

http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/

This is just another sign that broadcasting is on death row.

The reality is that the FCC hasn't been doing much about pirates for many years. How could so many pirate operate for decades if the FCC was really doing anything?

I have been reading about that in the broadcast rags for at least the past 20 years.  The technical and engineering schools apparently are concentrating on digital-digital-digital, with limited coverage of RF and other analogue-related topics.  Yet recent graduates with degrees concentrated in digital technology are not finding jobs, which are being heavily outsourced to Asia.

This is a strong argument for maintaining amateur AM privileges and encouraging amateur AM operation.  The AM community is one of a remaining few facets of amateur radio whose participants still show a significant level interest in actually working hands-on with the technology we use for communicating, and that includes RF. Otherwise, amateur radio has largely become a communicator's hobby, in which the primary requisite is to spend money to buy off-the-shelf plug 'n play radios.

It follows therefore, that amateur AM is providing a training ground for a badly needed technology.  The problem I see is that like broadcast and FCC rf engineers and technicians, a large portion of the AMers we hear on the ham bands are also at or near retirement age.

The precedent has already been created. Florida passed a law a few years ago making it a felony to transmit without a station license and to cause interference to licensed broadcast stations. I believe that a similar law was recently passed in New Jersey. The constitutionality of neither law has been challenged in court and the FCC has issued statements welcoming the Florida law.

A possible precedent that could be brought to challenge these state laws is South Carolina vs. WBT. In the 1920s, the state of South Carolina sought to charge a license fee for radio receivers, similar to the practice in a number of European countries. WBT in Charlotte, North Carolina challenged this law, as its signal is widely heard in South Carolina. The federal courts ruled in favor of WBT.

I don't know how many RF type jobs I went after 10+ years ago in both the gov, def, and com world only to be denied or ignored.  I succumbed to the digital age at a defense contractor doing systems engineering but I'm amazed at how many questions my coworkers ask me about EMI, RF, audio, etc.

  ::)  If you want to hear some real stupidity, go to 3840 LSB any night after 0500z. Steve, K6TXH, continues to operate out of control despite years of evidence having been collected. The ARRL AND FCC have no backbone. My contention is that they should both disband and refund member/taxpayer money because they do nothing except talk and take no action.... About the only thing that will get the attention of ARRL and/or FCC is if he makes threats against life or property on the air. Everything else K6TXH gets a pass on. Go figure!  :o

Best regards,

Gary, K7EK

The FCC used to have 13 monitoring stations, fully staffed.  I lived near one of them, which was located in Belfast, Maine.  They had an irritating habit of sending me and my customers of my radio shop violations when they got bored listening to HF.  By the early 90s, all the monitoring stations went remote control.  I wonder if they still exist?  Its been a while since they wrote me up.... 8)

They also conducted field visits from these stations.  I remember one day back in the early 80s one of them flagged down an oil truck, conducted an inspection then demanded to be taken to the fearless leader of  the truck's radio system.

Times sure have changed.  Now they can't even shut down a silly little transmitter in Belgrade, ME. But perhaps one could call the Belgrade Lakes dog catcher with his (future) vast new powers.

Peter

Here's more. Yes, the FCC has closed down many of their field monitoring stations. But I have heard that they still exist, but are now remotely controlled.

I once met an attractive woman who left the FCC after they closed down Grand Island, Nebraska. (LOL!)

They're just not getting funding from Congress to go bust the illegals. That's the problem. There's a whole lot more that I could post here about it...But I won't.

You know...Write your congressman...Either give more $$ to the FCC, or cut back even more per the wishes of many. All good for the jammers and other miscreants. Is enough funding to enforce the laws worth it? I think it is. And let the FCC keep the fines they collect!!

The law seems to be geared towards unlicensed transmissions in the same way that when a cb operator trashes a neighbors tv, he has to shut it down. When a licensed ham operator trashes that same tv, it's the neighbors problem. The whole thing is based on having a license to transmit or not.


[/quote]
Really a plus for us. As licensed operators we know how to properly adjust our equipment.
The Cbers are max modulation/over modulation and running excessive power way beyond the license free 4 watts.
11M get into everything when you approach 100 watts output.
Expect less from the FCC as we head to third world status.

Fred

The FCC still operates some remotely controlled monitoring stations, although not at the scale that they did 25 or 30 years ago. They also have some monitoring equipment at their field offices, which are now considered to be part of the Enforcement Bureau. Government budget cuts have taken their toll. As for the Belgrade, ME (K1MAN) case, that will take some time to wend its way through the bureaucracy. Since Baxter did not pay the forfeiture, the government will have to sue him for the $21K. The FCC did designate his license renewal application for hearing, but amateur radio is not a priority matter for the Commission these days. The days of commissioners such as Nicholas Johnson (the one who was instrumental in yanking the license of WHDH-TV in Boston) are long gone. Baxter's hearing date will probably be set once the government puts the collection lawsuit on the docket.

LOOK out for KRAP on 6955


just keeding

The VOA and Monitoring Times enjoyed it HA!
I'll upload the commentary from the VOA

The operative word here is or. That word could put a duly licensed amateur radio operator in deep doo-doo in NY if he is causing RFI, even if the problem is in poorly designed consumer products belonging to his neighbors. This bill, had it been introduced in the days of analog TV, would have been a real headache for amateurs living near New York City, Buffalo, or Utica. All three were channel 2 areas and everything seems to get into channel 2 (54-60 MHz). Likewise, Schenectady, which was (and still is) a channel 6 (82-88 MHz) area.

While TVI is less of a problem these days, we still must contend with the crappy phones imported from the Far East, as well as stereos, computer speakers, and other consumer junk. Also, the second harmonic of our 6 meter band falls inside the FM broadcast band and harmonics can be generated internally in the receiver front end.

Best for those of you in the Empire State to fight this poorly worded legislation and leave the policing of the RF spectrum to the agency designated by Congress to do so, the FCC. Although the FCC seems more interested in listening to lobbyists and auctioning spectrum (thanks, Congress, for the Telecomm Act of 1996, which thrust the FCC into the role of spectrum auctioneer), rather than in being the traffic cop of the airwaves.

What happened exactly? I vaguely remember hearing something about it.  Wasn't it some kind of corporate dispute involving networks and ownership, or were they actually caught doing something illegal over the air?

Here's some help, Don from WIKI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDH-TV_%28defunct%29

Seems that they never had a license for more than 6 mos at a time for some reason

Don, I think the type of RF technology we AM-on-HF enthusiasts enjoy is radically different from the type of RF design work largely being done nowadays. Today, the RF design of HF circuits is considered somewhat akin to doing design work at DC. Much RF design is now done for Wi-Fi and other microwave-based equipment systems, and there is no comparison between this and a 2-30 Mhz SSB or plate-modulated KW-class transmitter, whose technology may be fun and interesting from an amateur standpoint, but is considered as utterly and completely obsolete otherwise.

Just my two cents.

73,

Bruce

But still, the LF/MF/HF/VHF spectrum is still being used by stations other than amateurs. This includes all of terrestrial AM and FM broadcasting, including IBOC.  Also short wave broadcasting (such as it is), and apparently the government still considers the HF spectrum essential enough that they nixed the proposal to give us a real band in the vicinity of 5 mc/s. The broadcast industry is lamenting the dearth of even the technically knowledgeable people needed to maintain existing facilities. And someone has to be able to handle all the low frequency stuff below the AM broadcast band.

Studying the fundamentals of a.c. from an engineering class textbook and then jumping right on to computer and microwave technology is a far cry from the training needed to design, build and maintain low frequency radio communications facilities. The AM ham community could prove to be a worthwhile training ground to fill those needs. Plus, knowledge and skills in that "obsolete" technology still lays the foundation for expertise in to-day's state of the art. Once upon time, it was very  common to hear major personalities in cutting-edge innovation boast of having got their start as kids via amateur radio.

The problem with that, Don, is that the stations are upgrading away from "iron based transmitters" and going to plug and play modules.

One module dies, nobody cares.  Replace it when you can get up there, it's ONLY dropping you 500-1000 watts.  Yank it, replace it, send it back to Continental or Harris or ???.

As we started to say in the 80s, troubleshooting to the component level is a dead science.  You'd be AMAZED at the number of people who literally cannot comprehend the fact I can trace a circuit, replace a bad transistor, diode, etc. and make it work again...  "Why don't you just throw it away"?

The FCC 'delegating' enforcement to local municipalities started in the late 90s.  I had a write up on it when it STARTED on a now defunct website...  Tried to find it.

Constitutionality was tested and it was found that the FCC didn't have the authority to delegate it's powers, so to speak, to local enforcement officers.  There where reports of cops pulling over truckers and taking supposed illegal radios, amps, etc.  I had a driver write me an email about the cop taking his power mic...  According to the FECES, ANYTHING that alters the transmitted signal, and this officer took that to mean ANYTHING.  Costs you more to fight it than to replace the 'confiscated' gear.  This local governments enacting laws will prove to be interesting, to say the least.  I, for one, really don't want a cop coming after me because I have an antenna on my car (San Diego County Sheriff had a harassment campaign at one time of ANY CB antenna having car out after midnight.  I got pulled over, at 2:30, almost every night..  Pulled the Wilson mag mount off, never again.  Didn't seem to make ANY difference I'd be in uniform from my job to them.)

Besides, when you purchase a CB radio, the laws are now written that you HAVE obtained a license for that radio.  You agree to the laws and regulations by using said radio.  No, they don't issue call signs, but the paperwork in the new radios boxes state that you ARE a federally licensed station, and you accept this by utilizing the radio.  If you don't agree, return it.


--Shane
KD6VXI

This also gives agents authority to enter your home for a "station inspection" without a search warrant, just for having a CB radio physically located on the premises.  I just saw on the FeeCee's Nailed List the other day that some CBer was fined $7500 because he wouldn't let them in to inspect.

I never heard of anyone challenging this in court.  What if the inspectors made a mistake, and the illegal transmission coming from a densely populated area was not actually coming out of the house or apartment they suspected, and there wasn't even a  radio in the house.  Would that homeowner or tenant still be liable for not letting them in? Or to take paranoia to the next higher level, is it conceivable that fed agents, lacking probable cause for a search warrant, could CYA a forced entry on the basis of the suspected presence of a CB rig in the house, and claim they were conducting a station inspection?


There is other equipment in the station besides the new solid state digital transmitter.  What about the ATU unit, directional antenna phasor, feed line, tower, antenna bays, etc? I think this is the kind of RF technology that broadcasters are having a hard time finding engineerl/technicians to maintain. I could easily imagine an older station with a perfectly working vintage transmitter finally having to replace it not because they couldn't find parts for it or afford the power bill, but because their contract engineer retired or died, and they could no longer find anyone to keep it going.

Two things killed WHDH-TV. One was an ex parte contact that an executive of the Boston Herald-Traveller newspaper (owner of WHDH-AM/FM) had with the chairman of the FCC in the early 1950s, in which the newspaper executive took the FCC chairman to lunch in an attempt to influence him, as several entities had applied for channel 5 in Boston. The other, which formed the basis of the 1969 FCC decision to grant the license to a competing company and the court decisions upholding the FCC decision, silencing the station on March 18, 1972, was concentration of media ownership. The same company owned a daily newspaper (the Herald-Traveller), a 50 kW AM station, an FM station, and a VHF TV station, all in the same city. Nicholas Johnson was an activist commissioner who sought to diversify media ownership in ruling against WHDH-TV. The competing applicant that won the channel, Boston Broadcasters, Inc., had no other media holdings in Boston or elsewhere. Their station, WCVB-TV, signed on as soon as WHDH-TV signed off. Of note in this case is that WHDH-TV had a clean record as far as programming and technical facilities are concerned. The station itself did nothing wrong. But an FCC commissioner who dedicated himself to social engineering killed the station.

The pendulum has since swung quite far in the other direction. Although it is still technically taboo for a daily newspaper to own a radio or television station in the same market, the FCC has been granting waivers of that rule and existing TV-newspaper or radio-newspaper combinations have been grandfathered.

Nowadays, some companies, such as Fox, actually have duopolies in some major markets. In New York, Fox owns WNYW and WWOR, both VHF stations prior to the forced DTV conversion.

As a footnote to the WHDH case, the loss of WHDH-TV killed a 125 year old newspaper in Boston. The Herald-Traveller folded several weeks after the TV station went dark. An excellent book chronicling the WHDH case is The Hundred Million Dollar Lunch by Sterling Quinlan. That book is probably out of print nowadays, but I was able to buy a copy recently on Amazon.com.

One problem is that a lot of the engineering currucula, at least here in Pennsylvania, are geared toward computers and I.T. or electrical power and plant design, rather than RF. The other is that there are many of us who got our training informally, as I did, but who cannot afford to go to college for a formal degree. An average college tuition costs the same as a mortgage for an average house, resulting in a mountain of debt for new graduates. And there are companies out there (Greater Media seems to be an example) that won't hire technical people who do not have a degree, even if they can take a transmitter apart, find bad components, and put the transmitter back on the air. Never mind that the stuff taught in a lot of the colleges and universities is totally irrelevant to broadcast engineering and keeping stations on the air.

IIRC, the FCC issued a public statement saying that it had made a serious error by revoking WHDH's license. Too little, too late, but the pendulum was well on it's way to the Reaganomics side at the time, and IMHO it has been stuck there ever since.

Bill, W1AC

Former Chief Engineer, KRUZ-FM
Former Asst. Chief Engineer, KDB-AM & FM

That's a whole can of worms in itself.  Higher education has become a money grabbing racket. Tuition and other costs are rising at probably double the rate of inflation, about on par with medical care. My daughter graduated cum laude with a bachelors degree (which took her 5 years because she got a double major, plus schedule conflicts made it impossible to take some required courses until the following year). She had a scholarship that paid some of the costs, plus the insurance settlement from her accident paid more, but she still owes a big debt on her student loan... and she attended a state university and paid in-state tuition.  Now that she has graduated, she is working as a waitress in Chattanooga, unable to find a job in her field of study, and is planning to attend a local community college for 1 1/2 years while working part time, to become certified as a massage therapist.  From what I hear, her situation is typical, probably hitting over 50% of recent graduates.

Back in my university days, almost any graduate could have had a job lined up and waiting for the day they graduated if they wished to go that route.  There were corporate job recruiters at the school every day trying to find students who would fill vacancies at their company. But now, having a bachelors degree doesn't mean a lot, and graduates are a dime a dozen.  The BS or BA is about as effective as a ham ticket for finding a job. University to-day is like yesterday's high school diploma. You almost have to have one to get any kind decent job or launch a career, but once you have a degree it doesn't guarantee anything. And tuition just keeps on rising.

Time warp around Christmas 1997
The AUDIO was originally taped from a SWL radio with a built-in mic.........the quality was not typical pirate radio slop bucket.
Running 1 KW A.M. into a 30 foot high UniHat vertical and 70 radials. I'm guessing this was monitored in California?

It's a pity this license is no good any more.

This pirate never got busted.

Let's Learn Vinconian! This pirate was also rather creative.

http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/vorv/index.html
(a 'pirated' copy, as the real site is long gone)

No college education of any sort is meant to teach someone everything they know to be successful in their chosen field.  That's why doctors undergo years of internship and residency.  Professional Engineers must undergo years of apprenticeship under a licensed PE.  An English grad isn't automagically qualified to teach English.

A college education gives some proof to a future employer that the person has demonstrated understanding of the fundamentals of the field in question, can express him/herself in written and oral fashion, and has demonstrated work ethic in completing assignments on time etc.

My employer, in recruiting engineers, gives bonus points for candidates with a ham ticket or demonstrated interest in other technical hobbies such as car restoration, building model airplanes, private pilot, etc.  We put new hires (regardless of private industry or other experience) through almost a year of specialized training and 2-4 years of apprenticeship before turning them loose in their own shop.  Once there, they are expected to work independently, be the regional expert on a wide variety of systems, and manage people/money.  It's been our experience that new grads right out of college are just as successful (if not more) than new hires on their second or third engineering career.

It would be ridiculous for every EE program to mandate a course on broadcast engineering, etc.  AFAIK most EE programs include a communications theory course covering modulation, demodulation, etc.  I was taught vacuum tube theory circa 1985 and remember having to plot load lines in a final exam  ;D  It didn't qualify me by any means to be a broadcast engineer, but it gave me the fundamentals had I chosen to go that route - just as if I had chosen to work in digital design, power engineering, computer engineering, etc.

That's what high school did for millions of students in an earlier age before college education was commoditized. I agree with Don that a BA/BS is now considered the basic credential one is required to obtain for any job that pays a middle class wage. An argument can also be made that a AA/AS is today's equivalent of a high school diploma for entry level work. There is little reason for anyone to waste four years in HS when they can obtain a GED on their own time and get into the local community college to begin an AA/AS program.

73, Jim
WA2AJM/3

Not sure your premise follows history, Jim, as it pertains to the engineering field.  I'm not aware of any high school curriculum that offered courses equivalent to a 4-year engineering degree back in the day. 

If you look at some of the ads in old 1950s CQ magazines etc Hughes, RCA, and IBM were recruiting *degreed* engineers and/or non-degreed technicians.  Of course there were guys working as engineers without degrees, but they most likely had years of experience before they made that jump and/or had special talents.  It would be hard to say that they received this experience and/or got a chance to develop these talents in high school.

In a broader sense, are college educations more universal for a middle class income because most employers demand that qualification, based upon more complex job requirements - and therefore colleges are meeting the demand amongst students/prospective employees?  Or is the supply of degreed prospective employees greater and employers can therefore be more selective during the hiring process?  Probably it's a mix of the two, but it's doubtful either case is entirely attributable to a "commoditization" of college education.

The graduate may not see it that way. An MSEE colleague fresh out of college entered as technical marketing and left the company because of disappointment in not progressing rapidly to management. Young people right out of college seem to have very high expectations for rapid promotion but do not understand the facts of the real situation because they have not been working as an employee in real jobs. It's almost as if they feel they are on some kind of fast track. There does not seem to be anything taught in school to prepare such people for the long and difficult road to promotion.

That's not been my experience with new grads, Pat.  We have a few that drop out for any number of reasons - usually involving a significant other or spouse - but I can't recall any leaving for lack of promotion opportunity.  Of course my employer promotes faster than most, and places substantial responsibility early in a career.

That MSEE had misguided expectations. Why would they think that they should advance quickly into management first without having any hands-on experience in the field, and second, zero management experience or education. The person had an MSEE not an MBA. Finally, this person should have studied the company to see just what the promotion prospects were. If the company was stable (little turn over) and not growing rapidly, then where would the open positions come from? You're right, they didn't think it through or were just plain clueless.

You're mixing apples and oranges, John.  I never said I was against higher education, just that college degrees have become commodities. Relatively few people went to college at all until the advent of the GI Bill and government subsidiised education loans. It was the federal government that began the commoditization  of higher ed when it began pumping government money into grants and loans. The net result has been an oversupply of degreed workers in areas such as the humanities, social sciences, and liberal arts, and many people in college who should never have been in college in the first place.  I also question the need for a BS in many fields, and see a need that trade schools, apprenticeships, and guilds or professional societies could fill better. I don't think that today's job requirements have gotten any more complex, there are just different fields of specialization available that didn't exist yesterday. I don't belittle the EE student who earned his BS or MS, and there is a need for that kind of education, but engineering and science majors make up a much smaller part of the overall picture.

73, Jim
WA2AJM/3

The voice of the woman with hairy legs sounds very familiar............And the large room echo is pretty funny......definitely sounds like a Russian radio studio.

I hope she was bare-legged or else wore those dark opaque things, not sheer nylons.  ;D