By Ben Charny
STAFF WRITER
BERKELEY -- Pirate radio broadcaster Sparrow is really out on a limb for her cause.
She and her broadcast partner, the Birdman of Berkeley, were tied to a tree limb 60 feet above Willard Park on Tuesday, in the middle of a marathon, not to mention illegal, radio broadcast.
The micro-power broadcasters plan to stay aloft and on the air for at least another day to protest what they say are unconstitutional Federal Communications Commission rules.
Calling themselves Tree Radio Berkeley, the two DJs are part of the pirate radio set. These stations broadcast without an FCC license and use radio frequencies that sometimes interfere with signals from licensed radio stations, the FCC claims.
The broadcasters say the FCC licenses are so expensive that only large corporations or the wealthy can enjoy broadcasting on what is supposed to be a free and open forum for everyone.
"We want to put the FCC on notice, this will not go away," Sparrow said Tuesday, between naps and her turn at the microphone.
Tree Radio Berkeley began its marathon protest broadcast on Monday afternoon about 50 feet up a redwood tree in Willard Park.
"We want to do this as publicly as possible," said Marcus Kryshka, who is supplying ground support. "But, we can't do this in public. It's so ridiculous, we decided to do it in a tree."
Willard Park crews say they aren't going to interfere. The only concern in the neighborhood seems to be whether the ropes, batteries, and humans are harming the redwood.
At 2 p.m. Tuesday, the station had been on the air for 24 hours, the longest broadcast of its type since a federal judge's order shut down pirate radio station founder Stephen Dunifer's Free Radio Berkeley earlier this year.
It took several hours for three platforms to be hauled up the 60-foot tree, followed by hundreds of pounds of car batteries to run the compact disc player, tape player and mixer.
The broadcast has been the usual mix of music, with a heavy dose of taped broadcasts of other pirate radio shows to fill the time when the DJ sleep or are just too tired to broadcast. But there are unusual moments, such as minutes of "dead air," in which nothing is being broadcast.
"Excuse the dead air," Birdman of Berkeley tells his listeners. "But there are many technical difficulties broadcasting from a tree."
For an hour on Tuesday, Willard Park's trees had two pirate stations. SPURT Radio (Solar Powered Urban Radio Transmissions) held a solidarity simulcast about 50 feet away, in a tree.