What if I wanted to run a radio broadcast station on a commercial SW band? Say, I am on a boat in international waters. Or say I am in a free country. I monitor the frequency for months and I check the records seeing nothing is assigned to it. Then I start transmitting. I know there are all these draconian laws by the governments, but when I am out on a boat I am subject to no government. And when I'm in a free country and I'm not stepping on anybody's toes, what's the harm?
What are the practical risks? Realistically? Are the governments really wasting that much tax payer money to be monitoring the waves and triangulate you and hunt you down for speaking your mind on the mostly deserted commercial SW bands?
A corollary question would be how much it would cost to put up an SW broadcast station legally? Searching the FCC directly brings up exactly nothing: https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/how-to-apply the only mention is AM radio in the MW band. So, that might mean that the commercial HF bands are essentially abandoned by the FCC?
PS: It seems I am having a discussion with myself. I wish that others chimed in. But people down voting my question or not responding doesn't deter me from researching and discussing it.
PPS: I think I need to clarify, even for myself, a little better what the purpose of this thought exercise is.
- I am asking out of curiosity
- Ham radio is fine and all, but you are constrained on just idle private chatting, what if instead I wanted to speak my mind to a larger audience, and do on SW what many people do on YouTube?
- Imagining life without Internet, how could we recreate the format of world wide citizens interactions? What about a YouTube live hangout on air (literally) using a group of Hams discussing but with the ability of commercial SW radios listening in?
- A full blown radio program on SSB with music and all? "Amateur radio" rules are too restrictive for that.
- Clearly, a 50kW or highers transmitter is a piece of massive engineering effort so probably out of reach, but who knows, I've been picking up old big iron computers decades ago, which previously sold for millions, I might come across a government auction that sells a 10 kW RF amplifier which I might use as a SSB broadcast station and reach quite far with it.