Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Pirate radio stations, beware: You are being watched.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 12:46:30 -0500

By Eliot Kleinberg, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 9, 2004

Pirate radio stations, beware: You are being watched.

Legitimate stations plagued by the outlaw transmitters that fuzz up their
signals complain regularly that the Federal Communications Commission has
neither the staff nor a streamlined process to shut down the dozens of pirate
stations scattered across South Florida.
Some stations send out their engineers with special equipment to pinpoint
stations.
They're getting help.
Ham radio operators, computer programmers, broadcasting consultants and
engineers, and other citizen sleuths also fed up with the pirates' interference
are tracking down the outlaws themselves.
Pirate stations operate with no federal broadcasting licenses; a transmitter can
cost as little as $5,000. Since 1997, the FCC has shut down more than 400 in
Florida alone. South Florida is believed to have more than any region in the
country.

Operators face federal fines and prison terms, but the FCC must bring in federal
authorities and an operator has to be caught in the act. The Florida Association
of Broadcasters is working to introduce legislation next month that would make
operation a violation of state law, giving local authorities jurisdiction, too.

Business partners Lu Vencl and Steven J. Grey of Broward County use equipment
similar to the LoJack stolen car homing device to track pirate stations to their
front doors and estimate their levels of interference.
The two have sent detailed reports and photographs of pirates' transmitter
antennas to the FCC, "but I have yet to receive any reply," Grey said recently.
The agency, as a policy, will not confirm or discuss ongoing investigations.
Another pirate hunter, who did not want to be identified for fear of
retribution, said he contacted landlords to remind them that their leases have
clauses about illegal activities or that pirates violate building codes by
mounting transmitter antennas.

Grey recently tracked 17 pirate stations in two hours in Miami-Dade County. He
and Vencl estimate more than 60 operate in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach
counties and a new one goes on the air every week.
Many pirates don't interfere with legal broadcasts because they pick dial
locations far enough between licensed stations or transmit on very low power or
with low-quality equipment. A few have equipment that prevents them from
interfering.

But most pirates don't know they're interfering or don't care, Vencl said.
Sometimes, a new pirate station begins interfering with an established one,
which jacks up its power to try to drown out the newcomer in a twisted form of
Darwinism.
"It's like a war," Vencl said.

Vencl and Grey have created their own business to battle the pirates. Clients
can hire Signal Finder Inc. to pinpoint anything interfering with radio
transmissions.  That can include cordless telephone and wireless Internet
signals, power line interference, illegal "bug" transmitters, taxicab two-way
radios, even fast-food drive-through communications systems. And pirate radio
stations.

Vencl said he has signed up radio giant Clear Channel Communications and has
inquiries from other operations. Armed with evidence, stations don't have to
rely solely on the FCC but can pursue the pirates with civil suits.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/auto/epaper/editions/monday/south_county_0472500ce4eb40b30022.html

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