Haitian Pirate Raided

[Sid Schweiger]

"Please educate me!
> I can understand a pirate being shut down in terms of interference to
> other stations on same freq,
> but 91.7 being interference to Air Traffic control confuses me, sounds
> like a "cover" reason. (not that the FCC needs a reason).
> Possibly excessive power, (harmonics that affect Air Traffic freq's)
> and/or signals in flight paths could explain this."

It's not a "cover reason" and it has happened before.  You can't and shouldn't assume that pirates use properly constructed transmitters with adequate filtering.  They usually go for doing things cheaply.  Such equipment is inadequately filtered and can easily spit spurs almost anywhere, especially if mistuned or overloaded.

> "The legal stations on 91.7 in Boston area [SALEM, NEWBURYPORT (kinda
> distant), MARSHFIELD]  are not reported to interfere with Air Traffic."

...which has nothing whatsoever to do with the pirate.  Licensed facilities don't generally buy their transmitters off the back of someone's truck (figuratively, of course).