Has anyone ever considered this or have had any experiences with illegal radio stations?
I hear they have a lot in England. Does anyone here work for the FCC or DTI?

I have a couple of friends who were involved in radio of dubious licencing. To be honest, it's not worth the hassle.
When people think about pirate radio, images are conjured up about how it would be really cool (like that horrible film with Christian Slater, 'Pump up the volume' I think it was called). Where as in actual fact, they're a pain in the ass to do properly.
You really need to live in hi-rise block of flats to propagate a good signal.
No body will ever listen to you because they don't know of your existence, especially if you're having to frequency hop or site hop to stay one step ahead of the DTI.
Your coverage area will also be rather crap, most stations outputs are in the range of kilowatts going into expensive aerials several hundred feet up a purpose built mast. Your's will probably 100 watts feeding into a piece of damp string if you're lucky.
Your output will sound absolutely terrible (there's a reason why proper transmitters cost upwards of £100,000).
When I lived in London, I couldn't listen to most stations at the top of the dial after dark, because some idiot nearby was running a station playing over-modulated Dub Reggae into a badly set up transmitter which bled over everything from 102 meg and upwards.
After you've done all this and set your pirate station up, the DTI (or FCC if you're that-way inclined) will come and confiscate all your gear and probably prosecute you as well. I had a friend at Uni who had been caught running a pirate station and his criminal record (yes it was that severe) has mean't he's had all sorts of problems getting a job in radio and even if he did get a job and promoted up, he could never become station manager.
After all this, don't think I'm trying to put you off. But I guarantee you'll be bored within the first hour, and the first complaint the FCC gets, they'll be down on you like a tonne of bricks.

Anyway, enjoy!!!

The best part is that, at least in the US, you can't even get a license to run a low power station anymore. They used to be fairly easy to get, but now they're essentially also outlawed, unless you've got the money to run a real radio station, IIRC.

I imagine with 100 watts in a tall tree over flat land you should be able to get at least a 25 mile radius.

I wonder what tools the FCC uses to find transmitters? I'm sure they can do triangulation with the signal strength and narrow it down to a certain area. But if someone sticks it way up in a tree in the middle of a swamp running 24/7 on one frequency, could they find it. Maybe infrared to look for the heat of the amplifier? Even so, I think you could get around that.

But I guess sound quality would be another problem....

could they find it

Yep. They can triangulate using mobile vans, meaning that they can get closer and get more accurate bearings. The swamp might cause a problem, but if they cared enough (and they might), they'll just load the gear onto tracks or hovercraft.

A bigger problem would be how would you power it when it's in the middle of a big swamp and up a tree
A long extension cord running into the swamp might be a bit suspicious looking... And if you used a generator then some poor sod has to go and refuel it.

- Trevor

One solution for evading capture is to use some sort of wireless link. In Manchester one of the tricks when the studio is in a cluster of high rise flats is to find an empty flat in another building and put your transmitter in there. You can then use a low power radio link, lR/Laser or SHF link from the studio to the main transmitter site. Once the DTI raid the flats, you power off the link and allow the DTI to make off with the transmitter. They would be so busy finding the origin of the main frequency they wouldn't have time to track down the origin of the link as you would have powered it down. I'd only try it a couple of times though before they put someone on the case of tracking you down full time.

Pirate radio is *very* big in the larger UK cities - the Radiocommunications Agency has trouble keeping up shutting them down, as a lot are well funded.

Even getting a low-power license is very difficult, there are limits to the number/power in a region and there has to be a need for the kind of station proposed. Much easier is a Restricted Service License (RSL) which usually has a power limit and can run for up to 28 days I think. www.radioauthority.co.uk has details of currently running RSLs.

There was a good interview/review I read a few months back about pirate stations - I can't find it right now but I'll try and dig it out.

There was an excellent three-part series on TV about five years back which showed both sides of the story very well. There was also another one a few months back - can't remember the title though. The trend used to be to have a satellite LNB on a pole on the side of the tower block feeding the transmitter which was bolted to a car jack which was wound out 10 feet down a narrow shaft in the roof of the building. The Ra.Agy. used to pour concrete down the hole to disable the transmitter The transmitter was a standard Sky satellite dish and LNB fed with the microwave signal.

Many No.1 "alternative" artists started on pirate radio, and Invicta the first commerical radio station was pirate for a long time and then "reformed" to get a license. It was co-founded by the late Bob Tomalski (did he ever see an empeg? Being a major gadget man he would really loved it!)

A good site with lots of info and links is http://www.pir8radio.co.uk/

Gareth

I was an engineer on several Low Power FM RSL's when I was at Uni so I know the problems of pirates. We were scheduled to start an RSL when a pirate station started up about .5 meg off our centre frequency. We had to delay our launch for 2 days, we lost advertising revenue (rather important for a student station) and more importantly, 2 days of our licence. So I'm not really the No.1 fan of pirate stations. When I worked in Birmingham I remember there being a few pirate stations but I've only really heard one or two since I moved back to Manchester. As far as long-term LPFM (Low Power FM) licences go, there is zero chance of getting one anywhere else than the middle of nowhere and LPAM (Low Power AM) is worth bothering about unless it's a speech based station.