I’ve just learned that my buddy, David Goren, is selling his remaining stock of Shortwave Shindig T-Shirts for $15 each (shipped!). That’s a great deal in my book–especially for a shirt sporting a Jeff Murray, K1NSS original design!
I just purchased a spare Shindig T-Shirt. David only has a few select sizes and colors left (Black/White and Medium/Large).
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Martin Kraft, who writes:
Where’s the hidden den of pirate radio? The Caribbean? The South China Sea? Nope, according to RadioWorld, it’s the New York City metro area:
http://www.radioworld.com/article/nybsa-76-pirates-stations-in-new-york-northern-nj/279213NYSBA: 76 Pirate Stations in New York, Northern N.J.
A number of pirate stations are operating throughout New York City and Northern New Jersey, according to a recent engineering survey that was recently unveiled by the New York State Broadcasters Association.
According to the survey, 76 stations are currently operating without an FCC license in four primary locations. There are 19 unauthorized stations in the Bronx, N.Y.; 29 in Brooklyn, N.Y.; 13 in Newark, N.J.; and 15 in Paterson, N.J. Brooklyn saw a 58% increase in the number of pirate stations compared to a similar survey conducted in 2015.
The survey does observe that it has likely underestimated the number of pirate stations in the area, and that the total number could be more than 100.
“Like our previous studies, the new survey provides compelling evidence that the FCC needs to address this problem,” said David Donovan, president of the NYSBA. “Last summer, the entire New York Congressional delegation asked the FCC to fix the problem. While the FCC has published an Enforcement Advisory, it needs to devote the manpower and resources to increase its enforcement efforts. Moreover, Congressional action will be important to assist the FCC in these efforts.”
The potential harms associated with pirate stations include: interference to Broadcast Emergency Alert Services; interference to FAA frequencies; and failure to comply with RF radiation rules of licensed broadcast stations.
The survey was conducted by engineering firm Meintel, Sgrignoli and Wallace. The full study can be found here.
Thank you, Martin!
When I visit my buddy David Goren in Brooklyn, I’m simply amazed at the diversity of the pirate radio scene on the FM band. When David isn’t surfing the shortwaves, he’s logging local pirate radio stations. Check out his Facebook page: Flatbush Pirate Decoder. David most recently presented a program on the NYC pirate scene at the 11th HOPE conference–you can download a recording of the presentation here.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Goren, who shares this latest update from ABC Reception advice:
Thank you for your email.
We are working towards restoring the services this coming Friday at 9am Sydney time.
Kind Regards,
ABC Reception Advice
A number of Post readers received this same message (thanks to you all for sharing). I, for one, hope to hear my staple broadcaster back on the air Friday morning. I’ll certainly be listening!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who writes:
You might consider reporting on The SWLing Post that there will be several talks at the The Eleventh HOPE conference this Fri/Sat/Sun that might interest your readers, including:
Tuning in to New York City’s Pirates of the Air
David Goren
Pirate radio in New York City is a homegrown cultural phenomenon that is at once aesthetically vibrant, technologically tumultuous, and undeniably illegal. Emanating from clandestine studios and hidden transmitters, the sounds of Kreyol, Yiddish, Spanish, and Caribbean-accented English waft into the urban atmosphere. On an average night in Flatbush, Brooklyn, it’s not uncommon to be able to hear as many as three dozen pirate stations between 87.9 and 107.9 Mhz. This flowering of outlaw micro-radio stations in Brooklyn and throughout the greater New York City region is a major disruption to the status quo of corporate controlled, robo-playlisted mega stations. Their unregulated presence and programming often reflects the throb and hum of a diverse city more authentically than traditional media outlets. Join radio producer David Goren for an audio tour of these stations featuring the music, programs, and personalities that make up New York City’s pirate radio scene.
Monitoring Dusty War Zones and Tropical Paradises – Being a Broadcast Anthropologist
Mark Fahey
Tuning in distant foreign radio and television stations is a conduit to unique and exotic information. These signals are often confronting, uncensored, and unsanitized. In the western world, we blur or pixelate images of death and torture, but signals from war zones or rebellions show tragedies happening live on the air. Other signals broadcast the joy of life on this planet through exotic song, music, and film. Digital wide-band recordings of the electromagnetic spectrum allow virtual time travel, a form of mental teleportation whereby recorded spectrum is tuned to hear stations as if they were being tuned in real time. Take a virtual tour of Mark’s monitoring station in Sydney, Australia which is wired to access the world’s mass media via whatever delivery conduit is needed to capture the content. The station receives hundreds of thousands of inbound digital audio and video channels that let him monitor domestic radio and television from most parts of the world. If he wants to watch breakfast television from Tibet, or maybe the nightly news from the remote Pacific islands of Wallis and Futuna, then it’s available in perfect studio quality. You’ll also see his visits to remote broadcasters and rare, uncensored video from telejournalists that captures the tragedies and joy served up by our planet.
Democratizing Wireless Networks with LimeSDR: Open Source, Field-Programmable RF Technology
Ebrahim Bushehri
This talk presents new, low-cost, open-source, field programmable RF technology, where flexibility is extended from the digital to the RF domain. See demonstrations from the open-source community using the LimeSDR platform, which incorporates two transmitters and two receivers covering 100kHz to 3.8GHz which can emulate GSM, LTE, UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, RFID, HDTV, radio astronomy, passive RADAR, 2G/3G/4G cellsites, IoT gateway, amateur radio, wireless keyboard/mouse transmission/detection, aviation transponders, utility meters, satellite reception, remote tire pressure monitoring, drone command and control, RF test and measurement, and more.
We have more than 150 speakers this time over three days in three tracks.
Thank you Ed! I trust a number of SWLing Post readers will attend HOPE 2016. I certainly wish my travels would make it possible for me to attend this year–it would especially be great to see presentations by my good friends, David Goren and Mark Fahey.
Click here to view The Eleventh HOPE site.
Many thanks to post reader, Aaron Kuhn, who notes the following:
In regards to those HOPE talks, the conference talks will be streamed.
[The] schedule of the talks is here:
The streams will be at:
http://livestream.com/internetsociety
http://livestream.com/internetsociety2
http://livestream.com/internetsociety3(depending on the room the talk is in)
Regular SWLing Post readers may recall a peculiar VOLMET recording I published in 2013 where all of the regional aviation weather was noted as “missing.”
My buddy, David Goren–you know, the fellow behind the Shortwave Shindig and Shortwaveology–gave me the original tip for that VOLMET broadcast.
David recently posted a new mix on Soundcloud. David’s description reads:
“So, a year or two ago Ryan Stively made an instrumental piece called Missing Cities and around the same time I recorded a chunk of shortwave sound that I called Missing Cities. When making some pieces for the recent Shortwave Shindig 2015 broadcast I decided the twain should meet.”
Readers: follow all of David’s shortwave mixes by bookmarking his website, Shortwaveology.net.
I’ve just learned via @shortwaveology that the Shortwave Shindig will be rebroadcast on Saturday March 7, 2015 from 10:00-11:00 PM EST (that’s Sunday from 0300-0400 UTC) via WRMI on 7,570 khz.
Those of you who tuned into the live show last Friday noted that the audio dropped out at times–this was due to a flaky Internet connection at the hotel where the ‘Shindig was held. You will hear the full show, without interruption, in this rebroadcast.
I plan to record this show, but would certainly appreciate other recordings as well to add to the archive. On that note, a few of you have sent recordings of the original broadcast (thank you!)–I will post those as soon as I’ve caught up with work, post-‘Fest!
Thanks to so many of you who tweeted, commented and sent messages with live reception reports of the Shortwave Shindig! Despite a little technical difficulty with our Internet connection, which dropped the audio stream to WRMI for a few minutes, the show was quite a success.
And many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Chris Freitas, in Memphis, Tennessee, who writes:
This is audio from Shortwave Shindig at 9 pm Central time at the SWL Winterfest at Plymouth Meeting, PA on 2/27/15. It was transmitted via WRMI on 7570 khz & received in Memphis on Tecsun PL-660. As you can hear, it came in very well.
Reception reports from the east coast of the US, all the way to west coast were most positive. It’s amazing how well WRMI covers the continent.
Speaking of WRMI, we would like to extend a big thanks to Jeff White for extending the Shindig air time–what a great fellow you are, Jeff!