Pirate AM in Marysville, OH

[phatdaddy]

I had occasion to be in Marysville today and happened to scan the AM band on my car radio. There is what appears to be a pirate station operating on 1620 in the expanded band now on the air. They are selling advertising for local businesses and are playing really ancient classic country music. A check of the FCC databases shows nothing licensed in Marysville (or anywhere else on 1620 kHz).

If this guy is pretending to be a part 15 operator, he's way over power because I can hear the signal for 5 to 7 miles outside of town. I have never ran across a legal part 15 operator with that kind of coverage, so if this guy is indeed legitimate he should start selling his antenna design here on the internet.

 

[jcolletta275]

Could he be doing something similar to Surfside? Running multiple synched P15 transmitters?

 

[Timewarp]

That takes alot of nerve! I'm sure you won't be hearing this much longer. I'd bet that the
operaters of Marysville's little AM think this is unfair competition. I'm sure the FCC will agree too.
They would be advised before the guys from Detroit show up.
The FCC will fine you $100,000 if you have it, or $10,000 if you don't.
Many pirates pretend to be part 15. Nothing new! Unless you make the transmitter yourself or are
an educational institution you are limited to less than one block range.

 

[WCWalker]

What a coincedence. It just so happens I was in Marysville today and it just so happens I visited the station in question.

The station is completely LEGIT and uses a Hamilton Rangemaster transmitter. It is an FCC Part 15 AM Type Accepted transmitter! I'm afraid the FCC DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU! A while back an FCC Field Officer from Detroit inspected the station and didn't see anything wrong with the station.

You know what takes a lot of nerve? Ignorant people such as this pretending to be informed on a subject and slinging around gossip and innuendo about someone's station before they have all the facts. And I also suggest you familiarize yourself with the FCC's rules concerning part 15 AM operation. 15.219 supercedes previous rules that limited a station's coverage area and now it is perfectly legal to have a station broadcast several miles on a mere 100 mw into a ten foot antenna.


Unbelievable...

 

[phatdaddy]

What kind of antenna system is he running there? Whatever it is he should start selling them because that thing is really kicking A$$. I could hear it almost down to Rt 161 and Rt 33. Is the station actually in town or is it south of town? Since you say this installation has passed an FCC field inspection then maybe Keith Hamilton should use this station as part of his advertising campaign for the Rangemaster trannies.

 

[WCWalker]

He's using a standard CB whip and the transmitter is up around 40 to 50 feet in the air. The results this station is getting is very typical for a station of this nature in an area with a ground conductivity of 8 millimohs. I have a friend running a Rangemaster in upstate NY that is getting similar range because he's so close to Lake Ontario.

The range of the station in the other three directions is much shorter. This is due to the way the unit is mounted and grounded. While you can hear it ten miles in that particular direction I found it was only perhaps 3 miles in the other three directions. The transmitter is located right near downtown Marysville.

 

[rfry]

It is an FCC Part 15 AM Type Accepted transmitter! I'm afraid the FCC DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOU! A while back an FCC Field Officer from Detroit inspected the station and didn't see anything wrong with the station. ... He's using a standard CB whip and the transmitter is up around 40 to 50 feet in the air. The results this station is getting is very typical for a station of this nature in an area with a ground conductivity of 8 millimohs.

The first link below leads to a recent notice where the FCC cited a Part 15 AM operator with a similar installation.

http://www.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-269883A1.html

Using a Part 15 certified transmitter does not mean that it meets Part 15.219 when the radiating conductors used with it exceed 3 meters. That radiating length includes more than the whip antenna, it includes the length of all conductors leading from the elevated tx to the ground. Paper 3 at the link below explains why.

http://rfry.org/Software & Misc Papers.htm

//

 

[WRPO]

Hello everyone. Just to let you know, the antenna I am useing is already being marketed by a local store in Marysville..it's called Radio Shack. It retails for about $ 19.95 and is available at most stores. Try one..they work well. I am a retired radio engineer, with about 50 years experience in the broadcast business. I really think I know what I'm doing.. and it's legal. ( and inspected) Have a great day, and find something else to gossip about.

 

[WCWalker]

Hey Fry. What the hell are you talking about?

You claim they both are a similar installations? I don't see ANYTHING in that NAL that suggests that station either uses a Hamilton Rangemaster transmitter or ANY OTHER Part 15 AM transmitter. No mention is made of an alleged field strength, transmitter Type Acceptance or power level. Therefore they are not only NOT similar installations but it is also very likely the transmitter that alleged pirate in California is using is not a Hamilton Rangemaster.

 

[rfry]

Hey Fry. What the hell are you talking about? ... they are not only NOT similar installations etc

Here is a quote on this topic without my edit or comment -- re-posted from, and with appropriate credit to another website (details on request):

Rev. ----- told me that he is fully complying with the FCC orders, but he no longer has a functioning radio station. He tried operating his transmitter at the level of the earth, but it didn't have any useful range. I told him that, without adding to the antenna length by mounting the transmitter on a metal pole, or using a long ground wire from a roof-mounted transmitter, the range would be expected to be about 400 feet, or so.

Rev. ----- told me that he was expecting to get a two-mile range, because that is what was advertised in a Rangemaster ad in Radio Guia, which, I think, is a radio program guide in Spanish. The ad also said that the transmitter was approved by the FCC, and so he was surprised to get a citation from the FCC. He thought, he had done everything right, since he had followed all of the manufacturer's instructions.

This station was cited for excessive length of its ground conductor, not on lack of tx certification, excessive field strength or anything else.

Your own post stated that the Marysville tx and whip were 40 or 50 feet in the air, and that would lead to one or more long, radiating conductors to "ground" or elsewhere -- which is the point similar to the FCC citation referred to here.
//

 

[WCWalker]

In the future it might be prudent to post pertinent information such as this prior to making an accusation. Interpretation of the rules by various Field Offices is hardly uniform. The bottom line is this, the station in Marysville, OH had a visit by the FCC and it is still on the air. As previously stated by myself and others, your interpretation of the rules and that of the FCC may be two different things. Times and rules change as do the perception of how the rules read. That does not make it right but it is the reality of the situation. Look at the way congress and the bureaucraps in DC have perverted the original meaning and intent of The Constitution.

While I do admire you for your crusade to clean up the airwaves and rid us of the Part 15 stations that might not be in perfect adherence with the rules I would like to recommend that you spend a little more time policing the airwaves of the licensed AM and FM stations. Far more licensed stations violate MANY FCC regulations than do part 15 operators. 'nuff said.

 

[Timewarp]

Well! The headline is wrong! This is not a pirate. He's part 15. Of course, all of you are
right. Field offices do not read or enforce part 15 the same way all over the country.

I remember the FCC showing up on an unlicensed FM broadcaster in the 1990's. He was running
about 1 watt and claimed to be part 15 on the air. The FCC man said, "I'm turning your power
down to 100 mw. Now have fun and play with your toy, till you are bored. Bye now!"

Good luck!

 

[phatdaddy]

My apologies to WRPO and others for jumping to the conclusion that a part 15 signal heard 5-10 miles away was a pirate signal. Since your station has passed FCC muster, my respects to you for an engineering job obviously well done since it seems to perform so well. I am also a retired RF tech/engineer for 40 years who has worked on many types of installations and your 100 mW seems to be performing with the best of them.

I would like to propose a hypothetical part 15 installation and get everyone's opinion as to whether it would pass muster or not: Suppose we were to install a certified Part 15 transmitter on the metal roof of a large warehouse or other building. The "ground" jumper from tranny chassis to metal roof was less than a foot long.

My thinking is that the metal roof would serve as the return for the RF currents generated by the antenna and would therefore be the counterpoise instead of the soil some 10 feet or more below. Do you guys think such an installation would be legal even though it is not at ground level? Seems to me like this would be an excellent way to get some great performance out of a Part 15 installation.

 

[rfry]

Suppose we were to install a certified Part 15 transmitter on the metal roof of a large warehouse or other building. The "ground" jumper from tranny chassis to metal roof was less than a foot long.

My thinking is that the metal roof would serve as the return for the RF currents generated by the antenna and would therefore be the counterpoise instead of the soil some 10 feet or more below. Do you guys think such an installation would be legal even though it is not at ground level?

From the viewpoint of physics, using the metal roof as a counterpoise would not add its own far-field radiation in the horizontal plane to that of the whip and short ground lead - as long as the metal roof was lying in the horizontal plane. But it would add to the maximum radiation of the whip and ground lead if the roof has a vertical peak, or pitch to it.

Any conductors leading down from the tx and/or metal roof to a "lightning ground" or to the power/program source, however, will add to the radiating length of the whip and short ground lead unless those conductors are isolated from the Part 15 tx system using r-f chokes of some kind.

How a given FCC inspector would view the compliance of either of these scenarios with 15.219 is an open question.

//

 

[Black_Shire]

Phatdaddy, William Walker could probably describe this in better detail than I, but I recall seeing online photographs of a Part 15 AM small-town radio station in the South that used a Talking House transmitter with the outdoor ATU and 8.5' CB whip antenna. The ATU/whip unit was mounted atop a small (50' or so high) metal grain silo and was grounded to it, and the station achieved multi-mile range with it.

If I recall correctly, the station owners sent a courtesy letter to their local FCC Office that described the station installation (including the transmitter, antenna, and ground system) in detail, and the FCC Office had no problems with it.

If my recollection is correct (which it may not be, as it was ~3 years ago and I just briefly skimmed through the relevant text), your proposed metal roof Part 15 AM installation should be FCC-kosher.


-- Black Shire

 

[Black_Shire]

Suppose we were to install a certified Part 15 transmitter on the metal roof of a large warehouse or other building. The "ground" jumper from tranny chassis to metal roof was less than a foot long.

My thinking is that the metal roof would serve as the return for the RF currents generated by the antenna and would therefore be the counterpoise instead of the soil some 10 feet or more below. Do you guys think such an installation would be legal even though it is not at ground level?

From the viewpoint of physics, using the metal roof as a counterpoise would not add its own far-field radiation in the horizontal plane to that of the whip and short ground lead - as long as the metal roof was lying in the horizontal plane. But it would add to the maximum radiation of the whip and ground lead if the roof has a vertical peak, or pitch to it.

Any conductors leading down from the tx and/or metal roof to a "lightning ground" or to the power/program source, however, will add to the radiating length of the whip and short ground lead unless those conductors are isolated from the Part 15 tx system using r-f chokes of some kind.

How a given FCC inspector would view the compliance of either of these scenarios with 15.219 is an open question.

//

Some Part 15 AM stations use MOV (Metal Oxide Varistor) lightning arrestors to satisfy both the FCC requirements and their local electrical codes' lightning protection requirements. An MOV lightning arrestor is an open DC circuit except to the extremely high voltage and current of a lightning strike, but acts as a capacitor to AC and will conduct RF.

One lead of the MOV lightning arrestor is connected directly to the ground terminal of the Part 15 AM transmitter (or outdoor ATU). The other lead of the MOV arrestor is connected to the ground lead, which then continues down to the ground rod, buried metal water pipe, metal roof, or radial system.


-- Black Shire

 

[Neil E.]

Questions for WRPO

Congratulations on the apparent success of your part 15 station.

Gossip and speculation can be avoided if facts are available. With this in mind could you please tell us why your station was inspected by the FCC? If an inspector "passes" the installation does he/she leave a memo to that effect, and if so, does this ensure that another inspector will pass the station?

There are many who are interested in the part 15 installations such as yours which apparently achieve good range, especially those using the Rangemaster where the gossip is that though the elevated installations are not compliant with 15.219 it is claimed that FCC inspectors accept such installlations.

You would not only quell this gossip but help your fellow part 15 enthusiasts by sharing the story of your station design, construction, and inspection.

By the way, I live in Dublin just south of Muirfield near the river and with my outside dipole and Yaesu FRG 100 receiver I am sorry to QSL that I hear nothing on 1620 kHz. but S1 noise. I do hear the Dublin TIS on 1610 (S-9) and the SWACO TIS from the landfill in Grove City on 1630 kHz. loud and clear (S-6). I'll keep trying and let you know if I can hear you. That would be nice.

Neil

 

[Grrrradio]

The fact that the FCC would even care about these arcane points of Part 15... whether bird crap flying through the air with little bits of mercury in it from nearby factories would count as a temporary "ground" and bring the station out of compliance... is absolutely ridiculous when, as other posters have indicated, many licensed stations get away with much more and much worse. The college station I pulled shifts on in Iowa earlier in the decade had a co-channel in a nearby major city that cut across our signal a mile west of the college town's city limits... this was just outside our theoretical 60 dBu contour, and well outside their 50, but somehow they managed to cut across us at several points. Something similar happened to the south with our theoretical 50 dBu and something just below their theoretical 40. Keep in mind that neither signal was directional (or supposed to be...) and this was Iowa (i.e., flat)... our CE did some calculations and determined that, in order to exhibit this behavior, said station would likely have had to be running the 10 kW for which they once had a CP on a cleaner frequency, rather than the 500 W they had to cut down to after moving to co-channel with us. Then there was the joyous fun of a local 250 W translator spitting out SECOND-adjacent for five miles, with audio sounding almost as good on this spur as it did on the fundamental.

So, licensed FM's running twenty times their power... translators operating well outside basic engineering parameters (I now deliver pizza less than four miles from the Twin Cities Telefarm, with something like ten C-FM's on a combiner -- 400 times the power of a translator EACH, and I hear NOTHING on second-adjacent until inside half a mile of these)... or some guy who mistakenly has a couple of extra feet of ground that end up giving him 500 more feet of coverage you can hear if your car has a Delco radio and you turn its engine off, on a frequency that's not otherwise occupied anyway. Your tax dollars at work -- which would you prefer your government to spend them on?

 

[ISUcyclone]

I think you're all far too paranoid about whether your part 15 station is legal or not. Granted, there's nothing wrong with doing the best you can to stay within the legal limits, but there's far worse things. Here's an example:

The scenario that Grrradio mentions is accurate (we've personally discussed this exact incident). I've performed a longley-rice analysis at one of the areas in question and said station could not have been running legal power at the time. I also know that another station that is running nearly 7x its legal power, and has been operating overpower in some manner for a couple years, as well as breaking about every part 73 rule in the book, yet its still on the air. A number of other stations in the area are plagued with technical problems that are in violation of FCC rules. No fines or anything yet. Grrrradio can attest to this.

So don't worry about a couple extra feet or a few hundred milliwatts. In the whole scheme of things, its not a big deal.

 

[WCWalker]

Grrradio and ISU. You are correct. I too have worked at a licensed station albeit was a almost ten years ago and saw the same kind of problems. That station was hardly in full compliance with FCC regulations. And after talking to other people that have worked at other licensed stations I'd say it is a safe bet to say the majority are hardly in full compliance with FCC regulations.

R. Fry and others that come in here and like to claim a station is illegal even though it has passed FCC muster have too much time on their hands. I also have to question their motives in pointing an accusing finger before having all the facts on the subject. It's shameful... I might also add it is not up to the station owner in Marysville to have to prove anything to Neil or anyone else on this board. Gossip is the product of immature people that need to find something constructive to do in their spare time.