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I have been playing around in the world of radio over the past few years. It all started with WinoFM. A Pirate (or low-power) FM station here in the Napa Valley. This project took about a year to assemble and was broadcasting for about 9 months before the FCC came by and asked me to stop. I then played around with a VERY low power setup, which by definition should fall under the Part15 ruling for radio emissions. When the World Cup Mountain Bike races came to town I decided to fire the station back up to full power. I really wanted to broadcast the races, so the fans could hear what was happening at the event. As luck would have it, the FCC was in town on the day I was testing things out. Once again they told me I had better shut it down before things got ugly. I did. I was really bummed since I was so set on broadcasting the races. In a stroke of genius I decided to take the whole rig with me to the event and broadcast at the very low power setting, right from the parking lot. This worked out really well. I could reach my target audience without having to run illegal power.
Move forward a few months to my contact with Russ. He wanted to do a similar thing at Motocross events. I was his man, I had already tested the idea, I had the equipment, and was also familiar with the racing. We teamed up to form MotoRadio. My racing involvement this year will be from a slightly different perspective. I will be wearing headphones, and playing with patch cables instead of a driving suit and helmet.
I have also done a few other small local broadcasts over the past year or two at various events, usually lasting from a few hours to a few days. One event was in San Francisco called the 24 Hour Community Spacewalk. As Superhero Megahurts I did roving commentary from the street during this 24 hour art event. In conjunction with the Spacewalk I produced a silent "Radio Wave Rave(tm)" where he participants all had walkman type radios and danced to the music in their heads (or in their headphones). This was a great way to have a dance party without the risk of noise complaints from the neighbors. |
