You should of, would of been interesting to check out. Did you pick up anything else interesting at all at, the amount of power that comes out of kurrajong heights TX site could maybe block out a lot out
Both the pirate on 91.5 and the Arabic TCBL on 91.6 are on air at the moment. I wonder if the TCBL will complain about the pirate on 91.5.
Edit: Looks like the Arabic TCBL is on-air early, since their licence doesnât start until tomorrow.
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Are TBCLâs not allowed to have a day or two of test broadcasts before going on air? Because if they were, AFTRS probably wouldâve gotten into trouble on several occasions when test transmissions of Show Radio (complete with clean music beds - great listening for media branding enthusiasts like yours truly) have aired on 107.9 a day or two before their licence kicks in!
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More likely the pirate will realise 91.5 is being clobbered and change frequency accordingly, perhaps even to 89.5 
We may have a sword and cutlass battle between two pirates. Shiver me timbers!
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Kind of casually strolled here on a whim, itâs been a long time between drinks, was an active user here many moons ago, in the old media spy. I have to say wow, didnât know the pirate radio scene in Australia, particularly Sydney is so active, which if you can forgive me for a moment, I would like to ventâŚ
Like many of the broadcaster aspirants, I once tried my hand at a radio station and âtriedâ being the key word in setting up and legally attempting to do the right thing, both in licensing for spectrum space, and covering APRA/AMCOS fees. I wanted to broadcast a format that would have had over 20,000 tracks (all from lossless sources for sound quality), pretty much top 40 from the 50s 60s through to today, a complete random mix station. Ultimately I was trying for a HPON license or MPON license. But 20 years of getting doors slammed in ones face almost got me into pirate radio with a friend, and as much as he wanted to do it (wollongong, you almost had another pirate), I talked him out of it. As much as it would have been a real thrill, in my opinion it wouldnât have been worth the sweat and effort. As to my mere surprise of all the activity on this thread, starting up a pirate broadcast is equivalent to being a duck on an open pond, ready to be⌠use ones imagination. 
(grin)
24 years of radio has been a rather, letâs say interesting adventure, from euphoric highs to deep disappointing lows, and by 2016 I had enough of it. The politics, the toxic energy, the competitive nature, and ultimately the dibby dobber mentality if something youâve done is not quite right, one really had to keep there guard right up, and keep their eye to the ball with rules and regs. By the time I got out of radio, such things were changing literally from month to month, and admitfully being a little naive through the process, I had unintentially stepped on a few toes. And these things⌠you donât find out in a particularly nice way either, letâs say someone who didnât take to what I was doing almost ruined my life. You donât want to touch the big boys in anyway, which is leading to what I originally wanted to ad to this thread about pirate radio.
As someone who tried doing such a thing legally, I have mixed thoughts on those who go pirate, as for one thing it interfiers with other services, such as emergency and marine. How much of this is true or ACMA spin I donât know, and I donât have much interest in disspelling or proving otherwise anymore; Iâm now completely out of radio! However conversely I strongly feel that the airwaves for the individual small man in AUstralia have become next to impossible to access, aside from a low power community station. Generally these stations have a low listenership as many such stations have a incoherent program schedule/nature; a dance music program smacked right up against a religious wershipping bible reading. With the industry being so competitive, many HPON and LPON licenses are bought by unknown parties, possibly by larger networks to prevent any competitors gain spectrum space, I know this is true, but how much or how little, Iâll leave for others to debate over. What I will say though is that ACMA, the Government, and the so called political donors are all very closely tied, and itâs a very close knit network between these three entities thatâs unbreakable, and is why radio is so screwed up in this country. Maybe now with the advent of digital streeming platforms like spotify and Tune-In, itâs making the big radio boys even more protective of their territory.
As a finishing note, after five years of being out of radio, I now sadly see two commercial stations that still were the hold out against all the other FM excrement; Gosfords 2GO, and Newcastleâs KO FM swollowed up by SCA, who have now turned them into the same prefabricated puppets of their sydney counterparts. Radio in itâs legacy terrestrial form has now become a dead specimen. Thank god at least there was an era when 2SM was the rock of the 80s, 2WS played its Hits and Memories, and 2Day FM was owned my mike willisee and Graham Kennedy.
If I was the government, I would at least try and reduce the red tape between ACMA and APRA/AMCOS, and try to pull interest for creating a combined license that would cover both spectrum and copyright requirements. I donât really know if all pirates are in it for avoiding paying the costs of copyrights and royalties, but I would imagine a huge proportion would just have a resentment for the amount of redtape. Well in at least my experience, thatâs the way I felt, if a government needed to make cuts, then cutting the staff and bureaucracy from ACMA back by at least 90% would be a great saving for holding up a budget surplus.
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You arenât MB from 2PR FM perchance? (The PR stood for Pure Retro, not Pirate Radio!) If you wish to remain an anonymous broadcaster, you can just flick me a message
Thanks for the post @anonymousbroadcaster and you make some very valid points, particularly re the allocation of narrowcasting licences. Here in Brisbane we have the ridiculous situation where the same program that is available on a citywide AM narrowcast is rebroadcast on numerous LPONs in the 87 MHz band scattered across the same area. It would be really great if some kind of test was applied to these licences, maybe to ensure the content is unique to the broadcast area at the least? Or better yet, that they cannot be hoarded by a small number of owners in the way that they are, and allow some smaller players to gain access to this part of the spectrum
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tamago_otoko⌠during my processing of getting my own station licensed, I tried (in my somewhat clumsy way) to advocate for other smaller broadcasters, as essentially thatâs who I was as well, and one of the points I tried pushing forward was what you noted, the problem of so many duplicate services. I bought this forward in my submission to ACMA that many of these broadcasters should be combind / consolidated to save on spectrum space. The magical word that pretty much saw me thrown into the ring of fire, was ârestackingâ. Obviously these people who hold multiple licenses are very very protective of their well established spectral real-estate, as an analogy, itâs the kid whose got the toy, and for the heavens down to the devil in the deep blue see, theyâre not going to share it with anyone. It is downright mind-blazingly amazing how such preditory child-like psychological greed is running both ACMA and the radio industry.
As for any pirate radio station, well for me anyway, the consequences of having ones entire physical music collection confiscated was always a rather frightening and scary reality. But now in the era of laptops and duplicating hard-drives, I guess it wouldnât be too hard to basically have ones music library on a mobile device and a portable transmitter and broadcast away. As soon as one is hinted about any ACMA enforcement activity, turn off and quickly move elsewhere. This was rather common in the UK pirate radio scene of the late 90s into the 2000s. Now, any confiscated equipment can be replaced relatively easy; as far as music, recompiled or restored from an off site master copy. Jail and large fines unfortunately are now the more dominent stick that ACMA love enforcing with a cast iron fist.
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To keep going for as long as he did thatâs an acheivement. Guess if he needs a break he needs a break.
none of the radio transmissions from any said âpiratesâ did not in anyway shape or form interfere with anybody elses frequencies or FM transmission or frequencies of âessential servicesâ something that was diligently monitored. This is just ACMA spin to protect those whom hold the keys and interests of the said âfrequency spectrumâ.
Not the case at all. Can elaborate if you wish to reach out.
You sir are %100 on the money.
Can be challeneged in the high court and it can, ACMA doesnât have a leg to stand on. That in itself is an act of Perjury.
Fear is how they control people, Fear has been drilled into peoples head that their lies are now are reality in the eyes of the people they have bestowed their fears upon. How can they control someone or a collective of like minded individuals who have no fear of them. They canât.
I bought a little FM transmitter from a spy gadget shop in the Sydney CBD in the 1980s. It was just a bit bigger than a USB flash drive and had a range of about 1km. I remember plugging it into the headphone jack of my cassette recorder and broadcasting that. I could pick it up on my portable radio at least two blocks away. Iâm guessing that I probably wasnât a âpirateâ.
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@littlegezzybear Classic, your comment reminded me of this.
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Yep, absolutely agree. When I was trying to get a license for my station, it seemed that I was told this Ad nauseam, and when something is stated so often and often, you somewhat as reluctant as one is, start believing it to a degree. Unwilling or subconsciously taking things literally, is one of the attributes of having aspergerâs syndrome, and as I was what you could say on the moderate side of it, maybe I did take this in the literal sense.
When discussing the pirate option wiht my friend, my main hesitation came from the fact that I would not forgive myself, if somebody needed to be rescued, and because of our operation, they died from such crews not being able to reach them from failed communications. This is far fetched I KNOW, but it is the kind of stuff that typically goes threw an Aspergerâs persons mind, you just automatically go through all the consequences and responsibilities of what you are about to do, what ultimately could happen in both a best case and worst case scenario.
Another attribute of someone with Aspergerâs is that they want certainty in what they are doing, kind of clear cut lines on what may happen and may not. In reality, life is not like that, itâs pretty messy, and people come in hundreds of shades of gray.
Neither my friend or I have any real knowledge in electronics, he would be the kind of person to just by a transmitter from China / Alibaba, plug it in, and go, and be a shining beacon for ACMA. 
So with this in mind, we would both probably need to involve a third-party person, like someone to verify that your transmitter is not splattering and spilling over other frequencies, and is modulating correctly, thatâs another person the aspie would need to trust, itâs just trust, trust, trust, because from what I understand, that is the whold nature of pirate radio, itâs all unofficial. Iâm saying this, because Iâve already been burned hard from someone who I thought was a friend of over five years. Thankfully what I lost was replacable, but huge fines and prison are not avenues one wants to face if what one thought they trusted turnes out to be an adversary.
As someone who has Aspergerâs as well I can relate to that.
Is 91.5 still on air? Can imagine itâs interfering with the licensed 91.6 TCBL
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Iâve been trying for it the past few days and heard nothing, so maybe a weekend broadcaster?
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Maybe I missed it, but when there was discussion on Penrith Valley Bangers and Starter FM, it kind of crossed my mind that I was pretty sure one of them was on the same frequency as Cambpelltownâs C91 fm owned my WIN?
PVB used 89.5. I think they may have used 91.7 for a brief period before this as it was mentioned on their FB page. This shouldnât have cause problems for C91.3 though.
Also- I think Starter FM is a (legitimate) online broadcaster and never had its own pirate station; the Starter FM stream was aired on PVB though, as in my recording.
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