Number 5	edited by "Crash" Knorr	September 1998

fighting for air A heck of a lot has happened in US free radio since the last substantive edition of this newsletter. The FCC has been showered with Petitions for Rule Making. It seems everybody and his brother wants to be an FM broadcaster. ACAMBA, a federation of independent AM stations, wants permission to use FM translators to extend their coverage at night. Another group wants the FCC to license special event stations that would broadcast at rock concerts, races, Civil War re-enactments and so forth. Several parties filed petitions to create a licensed low-power FM service, and the Commission held a public comment period on the idea; it is possible that they will put forward a Notice of Proposed Rule Making this fall. The FCC has also been petitioned to increase the power limits for Part 15 unlicensed broadcasting, but apparently that petition has been quietly shelved. You can imagine the Commissioners rolling their eyes toward the ceiling at the thought of radicals and commoners having access to the broadcast bands, as if this were an egalitarian society or a free country or something. You have to wonder, where are all these FM channels going to come from? Last time I looked there are only 100 channels in the FM band. People who are holding their breath waiting for the FCC to turn water into wine are going to be mighty disappointed, I expect. This brings me to an important question. Why has the FCC allocated so much spectrum to amateur two-way communications -- CB, ham radio, etc -- and zero spectrum to amateur broadcasting? If it's reasonable to let ordinary people use the airwaves to babble at each other in non-commerical two-way communications, how can the Commission then turn around and say those same ordinary people must be prohibited from broadcasting at all costs? This, I believe, is the real inconsistency, and maybe the real 14th Amendment chink in their armor... but many activists prefer to keep chasing the pot of gold at the end of the 1st Amendment rainbow. Judge Claudia Wilken finally issued the ruling that she had postponed as long as possible. She granted the FCC an injunction prohibiting Stephen Dunifer from broadcasting without a license. According to one report I've seen, the injunction also forbids Dunifer to encourage others to do what he did. Why didn't they go all the way and forbid him to think about micro broadcasting? The FCC's Compliance and Information Bureau has continued its slash and burn policy, traveling throughout the land trying to terrorize citizens with thinly veiled threats of Tampa-style SWAT raids, bringing in jackbooted thugs to confiscate the hardware of peoples' radio hopes and dreams. However very few AM stations have been busted, and few (maybe zero) shortwave pirates have been hit during the past 11 months of stepped-up federal oppression. Steal This Radio has filed suit against the FCC and the Justice Department. It's nice to see a micro station go on the legal offensive for a change, instead of putting forward some feeble defense after the raid. To read the text of their complaint, follow this link. Pirate broadcasters and other opponents of media ownership consolidation are planning to rally in Washington DC in early October. They plan to protest at FCC and NAB headquarters. My prediction: all the Commissioners will be out of town on "important business" that day.		Medium Wave Alliance presents the SPAT Design Challenge SPAT = Simplest Practical Amplitude-modulated Transmitter The SPAT Challenge is our effort to inspire circuit designers to create a super-simple AM transmitter, a rig that almost any electronics hobbyist can build, a transmitter so cheap that we can afford to give them away in order to increase public awareness of low power broadcasting and help increase the number of ultra-local stations on the air. Here are some of the criteria for the SPAT rig: runs on 12 volts DC RF output 1/2 watt or more easy to assemble able to radiate effectively with a random-length wire antenna no tuning required -- no tweaking of variable capacitors or inductors should be needed to make the rig work; it should be possible for a blind person to operate the rig with confidence circuit can be built on perfboard; use of a printed circuit board must not be required cheap enough that builders can afford to give them away; this means total retail cost of parts should be about 25 US dollars or less. Designing a rig that meets all these criteria is a challenge, and so we present it as a challenge to all radio hobbyists and RF design engineers! See how much power and quality you can get out of two dozen simple components. I wish we could offer a big financial reward for the best design, but all we can offer is fame, the potential gratitude of AM listeners around the world, and a small cash prize plus a winner's certificate suitable for framing.   loggings The DX season has not arrived yet, but there are still plenty of unusual signals on the AM band for those who take the time to find them. Due to the current wave of federal repression we're experiencing here in the US I can't reveal too much about pirate broadcasts, but suffice to say, they're out there, usually in the 1610 to 1710 kHz range and usually aiming at a local audience rather than trying to achieve long distance skip propagation. On July 3, nonstop Elvis music was heard in the Midwest on 1610; I did not see any reports of other unusual medium wave activity associated with the Independence Day holidays. DXers in the Phoenix area have been hearing unidentified digital signals on 666 to 668, 738, and 932. On August 24, another listener in Arizona heard the phrase UAT being sent in Morse code for an hour on 1680 kHz, via modulated AM instead of the CW mode that is popular with MedFER experimenters. The numerous TIS stations in Michigan (most of them on 1630) have been heard throughout the northeastern states. Control has enabled the abandoned wires again but the copper cables all rust in the acid rain that floods the subway with elements of our corrosion cabled in to me...   - Thomas Dolby