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Some many years ago, I was the source of interference. Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bor

Some many years ago, I was the source of interference. Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bored, I decided to go live with a small tune-able antenna inside my hotel room, ground to a sink pipe. Yes, I was an idiot, and still am, but older and wiser. Anyway, every time I keyed, every television in the hotel went green in sync with my keying. Green-green-green. Green green. The cleaning lady ratted me out and I got a deserved earful from the hotel.

saalweachter 6y ago
Do you ever imagine there was someone in the hotel who knew enough morse code to become paranoid that his TV was trying to relay secret messages to him?
korethr 6y ago
> Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bored, I decided to go live with a small tune-able antenna inside my hotel room, ground to a sink pipe. Yes, I was an idiot, and still am, but older and wiser. Being ignorant in this area, I am rather curious now: What exactly was your error, and how did it interfere with the TVs? Did the sink pipe become part of your antenna because of it's size, thus turning what you thought was a tiny antenna into a massive antenna with orders of magnitude more gain than you thought? Did you connecting your antenna to the piping end up dumping a bunch of noise into the electrical grounds of the hotel's wiring, enough to mess up the demodulation circuits in the hotels? Something else?
- cheese_van 6y ago
  Sympathetic resonance with the internal cable network I guess. I merely knew enough to be dangerous, but radio, back in the day, was fun. Having random radio people around the world waiting to talk to another random radio stranger was quite the thrill. And radio was a useful way to learn some basic physics. I was forever disappointed I never got Jordan's King Hussain's QSL card before he died.

saalweachter 6y ago

Do you ever imagine there was someone in the hotel who knew enough morse code to become paranoid that his TV was trying to relay secret messages to him?

korethr 6y ago

> Newly hired by a federal employer who considered morse code an asset, I practiced in my hotel room. Bored, I decided to go live with a small tune-able antenna inside my hotel room, ground to a sink pipe. Yes, I was an idiot, and still am, but older and wiser. Being ignorant in this area, I am rather curious now: What exactly was your error, and how did it interfere with the TVs? Did the sink pipe become part of your antenna because of it's size, thus turning what you thought was a tiny antenna into a massive antenna with orders of magnitude more gain than you thought? Did you connecting your antenna to the piping end up dumping a bunch of noise into the electrical grounds of the hotel's wiring, enough to mess up the demodulation circuits in the hotels? Something else?

cheese_van 6y ago
Sympathetic resonance with the internal cable network I guess. I merely knew enough to be dangerous, but radio, back in the day, was fun. Having random radio people around the world waiting to talk to another random radio stranger was quite the thrill. And radio was a useful way to learn some basic physics. I was forever disappointed I never got Jordan's King Hussain's QSL card before he died.