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Miami Pirate Radio History

JSanchez

JSanchez

I know there are numerous articles on Miami-area pirate radio stations, but I was wondering if anyone has any information on a station that was operating in the early 90s.

I believe it was unlicensed and it operated somewhere on the low end of the FM spectrum in the 87-89 range. It called itself "The Bomb" or "Da Bomb" playing mostly hiphop and rap. I remember hearing from someone that it had some connection with Jackson High, but that may have been untrue.

Any leads would be appreciated.
 
I remember a station with that name operating in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was audible on a car radio in south Broward and the signal was strongest around Little Haiti if memory serves. I don't know who operated the station but they did play hip hop.
 
That the signal was strongest around Little Haiti sounds right, and I'm glad it lasted so long! It was definitely on the air as early as 1993 or 1994. Hopefully more people have some memory of this!
 
I remember reading this story in the Sun Sentinel about a Pirate in Hollywood that inadvertently jammed keyless entry systems on some vehicles about a decade ago:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2012-12-28-fl-pirate-radio-hollywood-20121229-story.html

The Pirate in this story had his antenna and rig on a building about a block away from Hollywood's Police Department, but I seem to remember reading in Radio World magazine about another pirate in South Florida who was actually broadcasting from the roof of a PD.
 
Mikey Radio said:
I remember reading this story in the Sun Sentinel about a Pirate in Hollywood that inadvertently jammed keyless entry systems on some vehicles about a decade ago:

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2012-12-28-fl-pirate-radio-hollywood-20121229-story.html

The Pirate in this story had his antenna and rig on a building about a block away from Hollywood's Police Department, but I seem to remember reading in Radio World magazine about another pirate in South Florida who was actually broadcasting from the roof of a PD.
Click to expand...

In the late 90's I was flying in to Miami from LA, and late in the approach (after flying over the turnpike) the pane made a sudden very sharp turn to the south and ascended really rapidly. They then went out over the Everglades and approached again and finally landed. The pilot came on and apologized for the sharp maneuver saying "we had a pirate radio station interfering with the airport tower, so we aborted the landing and came around again using an alternate radio channel. This is common here, so don't be alarmed. The roller coaster ride is not going to be charged extra. And welcome to Myyyyyyy-ami".
 
Back in the mid 90s someone got their hands on a STL transmitter and were riding up and down 441 near the tower farm shouting obscenities on WSHE. The studio had to move to the transmitter site until they were able to get a handle on the problem. They ran promos at the time that said something like 'when we catch the guy jamming our signal we're going to tie him to a chair and make him listen to Yanni for the rest of his miserable life.'
 
Unrelated to the title of this thread, but building on the previous post..Several years ago a station noted an interruption to their STL signal at around the same time each afternoon. It didn't happen at the same time every day, and some days it'd affect them for a longer period of time than others. I don't recall how they finally figured it out, but a guy was angry about the amount of people using their cell phones while driving, so he installed a signal jammer in his vehicle to affect those in traffic around him. Turns out, his jammer was also interfering with the signal to that station's transmitter when he'd drive through a certain area. They reported him to the FCC. I've read about other cases where people would use signal jammers or even GPS jammers and they ended up causing some serious headaches and encountered stiff fines as a result.
 
DavidEduardo said:
..."we had a pirate radio station interfering with the airport tower...
Click to expand...
A friend of mine told me about his STL link from his UM dorm to one of the taller rooftops on campus on 108.?
within the aircraft Nav band and I told him to "get that DAMN thing off the air immediately...NOW!
Undocumented stations are one thing but transmitting in the aircraft navigation band brings it to an entirely different level.
 
Those cheap Chinese-made FM transmitters are well known for spewing out tons of spurious crap all over the spectrum.
Apparently, they didn't bother to include low pass filters on the output of the devices.
I've hear a number of reports of those transmitters interfering with aviation frequencies.
 
Another Source of Aviation Band Interference is...

CATV systems. Channels A-I (14-22) are smack on top of aviation frequencies. If you remember, about 20 years ago or so, the FCC shut down some cable systems till they could "clean up" their act.
AND since aviation band is AM and so was analog TV (at the time) the interference was a real problem.
Most of the problem was identified to be drop problems such as loose fittings, etc. The hard line on the poles is pretty reliable.
 
kf4rca said:
CATV systems. Channels A-I (14-22) are smack on top of aviation frequencies. If you remember, about 20 years ago or so, the FCC shut down some cable systems till they could "clean up" their act.
Click to expand...
Back in the day, a repeater which outputted on 145¼MHz got clobbered everywhere by CATV channel E-18 except for when I drove into HRC areas where the video carrier frequency was reduced to 144.0 MHz.
CATV systems were still reluctant to use channels 98 (A-2) and 99 (A-1) which co-occupied RF real estate with the aircraft NAV band from 108 MHz to 120 MHz.
 
Even More

Some time ago some pilots were complaining about top band FM broadcasters (who were operating legally) getting into their radios. So, the FAA and FCC decided to conduct a study to determine what the problem really was. (Our tax dollars at work!)
The result of the study was that some receivers had "compromised designs." Believe I read about this in Radio World.

Back to crappy Chinese equipment. I've got a flat screen that puts out SO much garbage on the power line, that it drives the digital clocks in the house crazy.
 
kf4rca said:
Some time ago some pilots were complaining about top band FM broadcasters (who were operating legally) getting into their radios.
Click to expand...
Since the NAV band uses VOR stations between 108 and 118 MHz, and FM receivers oscillate 10.7 MHz above the stations to which they are tuned, an FM broadcast receiver on board an aircraft which is tuned between 97.3 and 107.3 MHz could conceivably interfere with the aircraft. Tuned to 107.5, 7, or 9, it could interfere with voice communications which extend from the top of the VOR band, up to 136 MHz.
 
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