StayAlert/KIXP's FM broadcast mission is to serve the San Juan Islands community by engaging and supporting the Arts, Public Service and Public Safety. Being hyper-local means constantly playing local music and broadcasting public service/safety information.

Our broadcast content is the Community.

We are on the Air July 5th 2025

The antenna on the roof of the studio

Kids from the Funhouse test the equipment

2025 - 2026 We spent out in the community, immersing, helping, promoting many events, activities and local non profits.

Some of Our First Year Collaborators

Since our founding In 2023 we have been focussing on celebrating music created and performed in and around the San Juan Island Islands. Ultimately Bruce Harvie's donation of the Radio Free Olga archive tipped the scales with 7,000 songs, the core of our music archive.

Just recently we produced "On the Rock", a live variety show at the Orcas Island Grange.

Inspired by NPR's "Prairie Home Companion" we featured local talent:

Clint McCune (Host)
Actors Theater of Orcas Island
Caleb Klauder (Musical Guest)
Minnow Creek (House Band)
Liz Doane (FX)
Tish Knapp (26 year veteran school teacher and poet)
Coral Miller (Child Prodigy)
Dave Roseberry (Local Hero)

The standing room only audience loved it, we plan to produce four a year.

Liberte Pedicini and Allen Hartle at the San Juan Preservation Trust's celebration of the acquisition of Turtleback Mountain

KIXP Studios in downtown Eastsound

About the Founders

35 year broadcast engineer Allen Hartle and Liberte Pedicini moved to Orcas Island in 2019. Upon arrival, noticing the island's infrastructure vulnerabilities, Allen began laying the StayAlert groundwork by partnering with one of the commercial FM's operating on Mt Constitution to "Broadcast" StayAlert messages on their high power FM. More than enough power to reach all of the islands.

In 2023, we and many other people were pleasantly surprised when after 10 years, the FCC announced it was possible to apply for an FM radio station for Eastsound!

We summoned the necessary lawyers and technical consultants to create our application for 102.3 FM and submitted it.

Even before the FCC had approved our application, after realizing the amount of work and time needed to construct radio studios, we took a leap of faith and began converting Liberte's Eastsound Beauty shop into the KIXP Studios!

One year later, in 2024 we were granted an FCC construction permit!

We are so grateful to our island community for the overwhelmingly positive response to our StayAlert/KIXP project.

It is so rewarding to be in the center of town and interact with our friends, neighbors, tourists and even an occasion celebrity. It's a well known fact that visitors can stop by and see the facility, record a station "shout out", take home a KIXP button or a lollipop for the kids. Suzanne Olsen from OPAL paid us the greatest compliment when she said: "You're becoming Eastsound's Living Room!"

Mission Accomplished!

Looking forward, in our second year, some of our goals include:

Expanding the KIXP FM signal to cover Orcas road all the way to the ferry
Broadcast local news via a relationship with The Sounder
Implement our StayAlert technology to key public gathering places
Keep diversifying programming to include Chamber, Classical and Jazz.
Participating in Senior Center events.

Thank You!