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General Radio Discussion / Re: China targets illegal radio broadcasters
« on: April 13, 2016, 1256 UTC »Authorities estimate it can cost around 50-thousand yuan a month to set up and maintain the illegal transmitters, which are normally set up in residential areas.
While the transmitters themselves are often poorly made, many of them are high-powered.
Li Changwei with the Civil Aviation Administration of China says these high-powered broadcasts have the potential to interfere with vital communication channels.
"These shadowy radio frequencies severely affect the operations of our control towers at airports. Sometime, pilots and the air traffic controllers are unable to communicate effectively, impacting flights."
50 thousand yuan converts to over 7700 dollars a month. I would imagine that any operation spending even a quarter of that should be quite RF clean - lack of creating interference would be a priority because that would have the greatest impact on the pirate's longevity, and in turn, the amount of money to be made. I'm guessing that their real problems concern "kids playing radio" and "frustrated DJs" - probably with the same cheap Rohm chip-based FM kitcasters and power amplifiers that the Chinese are selling on EBAY... to us. What goes around, comes around.
Under Chinese law, anyone caught setting up illegal broadcasts is subject to fines and up to 7 years in jail.
All that and Chinese radio pirates are being hunted down with drones too. God Bless America. And thanks for posting, Oliver.