Geoff Schultz wrote in
:

Thanks for making me laugh at the absurdity of the above statement!
But
really, what control does the FCC have over a vessel in international
waters?



I know the guy, because he's also a ham operator licensed in St Kitts-
Nevis, who operated a pirate radio FM broadcast station from a large old
sloop off NY City, many years back. The studio was in NYC and they
microwaved the audio out to sea where a big generator drove a big
transmitter beamed back into the USA from INTERNATIONAL WATERS they
THOUGHT would protect them from the FCC.

They thought wrong......

After several attempts to get them to stop, the FCC called in the US
Navy, not a force to ignore like FCC bureaucrats and their lawyers. Navy
sent out a ship, I forget which one, boarded the boat at gunpoint and
ordered all humans off the boat into the Navy ship. As soon as that was
accomplished, they motored away a little distance and used the sloop for
gunnery practice, eliminating some rock and roll from the FM broadcast
band rolling in from sea.

Problem solved....Americans arrested, even though they actually lived in
St Kitts. He returned to St Kitts after the jail term and ended up in
Charleston years later working for Brother RG Stair on his Overcomer
Ministries pirate shortwave ship project at Halsey-Cannon Boatyard,
across from Deytens Shipyard in the Wando River. I got to see the
installation of:
http://www.hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc07.jpg
this transmitter bought from govt surplus after Greenville closed down,
pumping 70KW into a T cage antenna between two big towers fore and aft
fed at the top of the fishing trawler's main hatch over the transmitter
inside the fish hold in the bilge. Two 250KW gensets were welded on deck
to provide power with lots of extra diesel tanks.

To see what 70KW on 7.315 Mhz HF AM, go to www.qrz.com and put my ham
call W4CSC into the ham lookup search box in the upper left corner of the
webpage. I've uploaded a picture of me holding a 300,000 volt porcelain
insulator that exploded right over my head inside the fish hold at full
power after we all glowed blue for 20 minutes just standing in the fish
hold with it running one feeder of the open wire feeders left open at the
bottom of the insulator (balanced line feeders 600 ohm transmitter).
Down the center of that insulator, a threaded rod fed the 70KW of RF
power through the metal hatch to the base of the T antenna, the feed
point. Before the explosion, we were getting about 38 amps of RF current
on the antenna current meter, close to 600 ohms load at 70KW.

I'm only holding the bottom half of the whole insulator, the wide end
went to a big porcelain flange to clamp it to the big hole cut in the
hatch. The top half is actually what exploded first into thousands of
pieces of shrapnel spread across the deck. Noone is allowed outside when
it's on the air because it could cook them like a microwave oven, so no
harm done, except I peed my pants...(c;

The FCC showed up a week later with a floating crane commandeered from
Deytens Shipyard, a Navy contractor across the Wando. They dismantled
the whole ship, taking all the radio equipment with them and leaving Br
Stair with the yard bills and no broadcast station to take to Belize.
The picture in the local newspaper was hilarious. It showed the stupid
FCC engineer holding an old Heathkit DX-35 novice class ham rig for the
photo op for the news, which puts out 35 watts on a good day and is no
threat to anyone unless they're holding the power cord prongs when you
plug it in. I have the picture cut from the paper here, somewhere. My
buddy fled to St Kitts and I've lost contact with him.

The trawler wasn't going to work, anyways. The heavy RF current flowing
through the hull into the sea ground was EATING the hull. The first
indication was when seawater entered the fresh water tankage in the bilge
from a hole in the hull. Other holes soon opened up in the hull causing
minor flooding and constant bilge pump running. They tried to stop it
with grounding plates and zincs but RF is another animal entirely to
galvanic action. We're talking about 38 AMPS, not 30 microamps of DC.

It was fun while it lasted....(c;

The souvenir insulator is in some drawer here somewhere....with a huge
black streak from REAL LIGHTNING POWER down the side of it...burned right
into the porcelain!

Government has a LONG arm if provoked.....even to INTERNATIONAL WATERS.
Ask any Iraqi or Afghan!