[liberationtech] Creating a Pirate FM Radio

[Walid Al-Saqaf]

Dear friends,

I'm not sure if you are following the news from my home country Yemen.
Demonstrations there have been increasing in number and area and have
reached a stage where demonstrators occupied areas of over one square
kilometer in strategic areas in main cities. I have been approached by
demonstrators who wish to broadcast what is being said at the main stages.
This includes announcements, speeches, songs, etc. A suggestion was to use a
low-budget pirate FM radio solution. I have heard before that this type of
technology is widely accessible but ranges are quite limited. Some
experiments took place in Belarus as far as I know. But if there are ways to
place amplifiers in strategic locations in main cities, I think it could
have a tremendous effect, especially for a population that relies on radio
and TV in receiving information.

Any clues or ideas of where to get information to help in this area? There
is a budget of $5000 for such a solution. Is that enough? This is one of the
websites I found about recently:
http://hubpages.com/hub/pirate-fm-broadcast-transmitter and it mentioned the
ability to broadcast to a range of 2km. That would be a good start.

Thanks in advance, and do keep a close eye on Yemen as there may be some
surprises in the near future!

Sincerely,

Walid

-----------------

Walid Al-Saqaf
Founder & Administrator
alkasir for mapping and circumventing cyber censorship
https://alkasir.com <walid.al-saqaf at oru.se>
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