2 men ran illegal Marion County radio station, deputies say

[ChrisSmolinski]

MARION COUNTY, Fla. - Two men were arrested on Tuesday after Marion County deputies say they were illegally operating a radio station.

Deputies arrested Juan Nieves and Luis Galindo after discovering a radio tower mounted behind a single-wide mobile home in Summerfield.

Nieves admitted to authorities that he was the owner of the station, which had been in operation for the past year. He also admitted that he had no license but he was aware it was required to run a radio station, according to the report.

...

Federal Communication Commission authorities were alerted to the unlicensed station by a Clear Channel Inc. engineer. Clear Channel Inc. owns 700 radio stations across the nation.

...

Full article: http://www.clickorlando.com/news/2-men-arrested-for-operating-illegal-marion-county-radio-station-deputies-say/-/1637132/20722436/-/sax67v/-/index.html

[cmradio]

Isn't an arrest unusual I thought procedure was a C&D first.

Peace!

[clobdell]

Florida enacted their own state law which considers pirate radio a criminal office. I'd say the law is unconstitutional because the airwaves at the FCC's jurisdiction, but I haven't yet heard of a court challenge, but in this case it sounds they were working with each other "in cahoots", lol.

[skeezix]

Unlicensed stations are illegal because they can interfere with other stations, as well as with any aircraft flying in the area of the tower said Kimberly Silva, a FCC agent.

How tall was this tower? I don't think the FAA cares until its over 200'.

[diymedia]

Dirty rig throwing spurs or somesuch. This is, unfortunately, more common than we'd like in S. Florida. Though in this case it sounds like an engineer with Clear Channel took on the "airwaves police" role and hunted 'em down. Licensed broadcasters love to throw the "pirates can make planes fall from the sky" claim whenever they can.

[Pigmeat]

Pirating is a Sched III felony down there,isn't it?

[cmradio]

Dirty rig throwing spurs or somesuch. This is, unfortunately, more common than we'd like in S. Florida. Though in this case it sounds like an engineer with Clear Channel took on the "airwaves police" role and hunted 'em down. Licensed broadcasters love to throw the "pirates can make planes fall from the sky" claim whenever they can.

Licensed broadcasters throw out lots of crap, too. Wasn't one LTE experiment in NV responsible for knocking out GPS and some aircraft ILS and the FCC just said, "All's leagal, deal with it!"?

Peace!

[BoomboxDX]

Not to mention the numerous legal devices that throw out RFI, using the utility wires as long antennas.  All apparently government certified or approved.

I have a neighbor somewhere within two blocks that has some device that sounds like a UFO taking off, coating the entire HF spectrum between 7 mhz. and somewhere above 15 mhz up to three blocks away.

It makes me wonder if RFI ever gets propagated via skip?  If QRP hams can propagate their signals -- sometimes using milliwatts -- does RFI ever make it to the ionosphere?

[cmradio]

I have a neighbor somewhere within two blocks that has some device that sounds like a UFO taking off, coating the entire HF spectrum between 7 mhz. and somewhere above 15 mhz up to three blocks away.

That's a #$% Mac

Everytime I go to this one festival, the people are all Macheads and there's no PC's (except me). SW is full of "UFO's" flying all over the airwaves instead of the standard bzzzzbzzzzbzzzzz.... or whirrrrrrrr.....

It makes me wonder if RFI ever gets propagated via skip?  If QRP hams can propagate their signals -- sometimes using milliwatts -- does RFI ever make it to the ionosphere?

I often wondered this too

Peace!

[kmorgan]

No offense meant by my seemingly racial based comment (it's not) but I'm suspect of that pirate, especially in that area. Drug runners are notorious for using radio in creative ways, in fact on CNBC tonight they had a show on the American/Colombian cartels & how they used many types of radio- including beacons, in their line of work. They still utilize radio, the Mexicans force engineers to build them towers, then dispose of the engineer when he's no longer needed.