96.3 pirate

TerryKay · Oct 20, 2008

We've got a new one in south St. Petersburg, covering the lower half of Pinellas. All automated dub reggae, no voice or spots noted on Saturday. Running in mono mode.

drt · Oct 20, 2008

TerryKay said:
We've got a new one in south St. Petersburg, covering the lower half of Pinellas. All automated dub reggae, no voice or spots noted on Saturday. Running in mono mode.

I noticed that pirate as well on Saturday, around 4pm in my car from around 38th Ave N to around 22nd Ave S (Chattaway's); then later around 7 or 8pm I noticed it wasn't there; forgot to check it out yesterday (Sunday).

Around two years ago, there were two pirates on the air each weekend and I suspect both were transmitting from south St. Petersburg; one was 96.3 and the other was 96.7.

Then back around 2002 (give or take a year) there was a bold pirate that was transmitting from 1st Ave N and 31st St N, across from the main Post Office; thery were even so bold to even give a call in number for requests and were running advertisements! The FCC shut them down, I believe their frequency was 102.1 .

drt

TerryKay · Oct 21, 2008

Indeed, drt. I DFed the old 96.7 pirate to a residence just south of Central back in 2003, the same with the old 102.1 (in the two-story brick building across from the bank -- there used to be a mobile phone reseller and some type of women's shelter office or somesuch in the building, of course they did not answer the loced doors). The former was mostly Old School soul and the latter was reggae with commercials. I never DFed the old 96.3, which was stereo, though it seemed to be closer to Tropicana Field. It too was Caribbean format. 102.1 was closed by the FCC and rumor has it 96.7 and 96.3 were also visited, though no NAL's were ever located on the FCC dB.

coolaid213 · Oct 21, 2008

I sold this guy my mono Veronica PLL kit like 2 years ago at the Lake Maggiore hamfest. He blew it up shortly thereafter...

Must have finally fixed it.

FiveStar · Oct 22, 2008

Is it necessarily a pirate? I mean if you took one of those little Radio Shack xmtrs and put it on a roof slightly above the rest of the roofs around you, wouldn't you get a bit of coverage without a clear violation? Just askin'

drt · Oct 22, 2008

FiveStar said:
Is it necessarily a pirate? I mean if you took one of those little Radio Shack xmtrs and put it on a roof slightly above the rest of the roofs around you, wouldn't you get a bit of coverage without a clear violation? Just askin'

I suppose that's possible under the right conditions; if that's the case, the signal is getting out at least 2.5 miles; I was receiving them clearly from just a block or two north of 38th Ave S and continued to pick them up as far south as 22nd Ave S; a distance of about 5 miles..... so if the rooftop RS transmitter was mid point between those two locations, then they're getting out 2.5 miles.

That makes me wonder why the SIRIUS/XM monopoly....... err merger had a condition that XM and Sirius receivers that had signals getting out more than several hundred feet were non-compliant and a big deal was made of that. (people were supposed to get free "beads" to attach to the non-compliant units to decrease the signal output.

drt

coolaid213 · Oct 22, 2008

I just told ya what the guy is running... I wasn't kidding 8)

And no, those radioshack kits won't get you much more than a block... even if you put 'em up on a push up pole. Been there, done that.

Lots of pirates will do that though to bend the rule that says your antenna has to be so close to the transmitter, or else! Just strap the x-mitter to the side of the tower... voila! No line loss! Doesn't work so well with those little 10mW rigs... but pump a watt in there, now you're talking...

FiveStar said:
Is it necessarily a pirate? I mean if you took one of those little Radio Shack xmtrs and put it on a roof slightly above the rest of the roofs around you, wouldn't you get a bit of coverage without a clear violation? Just askin'

TerryKay · Oct 22, 2008

I heard them from near Tropicana Field on I-275 to the Tyrone Mall with little signal degradation, and then north on Park/Starkey, when the signal was finally lost just north of Ulmerton (and this on a crappy stock Hyundai radio). So I'll let you decide if that could be legal ;D

drt · Oct 22, 2008

TerryKay said:
I heard them from near Tropicana Field on I-275 to the Tyrone Mall with little signal degradation, and then north on Park/Starkey, when the signal was finally lost just north of Ulmerton (and this on a crappy stock Hyundai radio). So I'll let you decide if that could be legal ;D

Have to make a correction, that should have been ...38th AVe North, not South.

I was being speaking tongue in cheek, as I know from trying to take an RS fm transmitter and adding wire and placing in around the eaves of my house and at best I could get the signal about 2 blocks away and that was a very weak signal two blocks away.

Wow..... if you received that same pirate almost to Ulmerton, they are really pumping out a good signal. From just north of 38th AVE North to the Chattaway, it was a strong signal on my car radio without any interference or fluttering.

drt

FiveStar · Oct 22, 2008

Thanks to all of you tech types for clearing that up. I worked for a guy in the Caribbean a couple of years back who ran a cluster in the midwest for Cox a few years back. While he was doing that he also had his own pirate station specializing in trance-ambient music. It was just a 5w xmtr coming from his second story attack, running off a laptop computer, but he had some awesome but he was covering some pretty good ground (very flat there) and apparently someone entered his pirate station in an Arbitron diary. I think it was just after that he pulled the plug. The potential fallout outweighed the fun of having a station that he could do whatever he wanted on.