Radio won't stop playing Christmas music

[Jimmy]

Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:

mzen...@eskimo.com (Mark Zenier) wrote:
William Sommerwerck <grizzledgee...@comcast.net> wrote:
A radio cannot play when it's switched off. You can't pick up enough energy

If "off" is really "off", and not "on, but waiting for the remote
control".

Yes, this radio has "soft" on-off buttons (momentary switches on a
circuit board).

Also, the noise stops when I unplug the radio.

Jimmy

 

[Jamie]

Jimmy wrote:

Jimmy <JimmyGeldb...@mailinator.com> wrote:

mzen...@eskimo.com (Mark Zenier) wrote:

William Sommerwerck <grizzledgee...@comcast.net> wrote:

A radio cannot play when it's switched off. You can't pick up enough energy

If "off" is really "off", and not "on, but waiting for the remote
control".

Yes, this radio has "soft" on-off buttons (momentary switches on a
circuit board).


Also, the noise stops when I unplug the radio.

Jimmy
Get a 1:1 transformer and isolate the power with that.. That will

get red of the ground.. Shouldn't effect reception that bad.. The
transformer will act as a filter.

Another trick you can do that may work, at radio shack, they sell a
iron core you can wrap your electrical wire around. This may do the
trick, or try coiling your cord up now with something iron in the coil.

Jamie.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

The only place I saw that was worse was the VOA Bethany
plant (Morrow Ohio) with 10, 50 KW HF transmitters on
various short wave bands. You could hold a fluorescent lamp
inside the facility and it would light from stray RF.

Michael, I know you well enough to know you almost know what you're talking
about, and you're /not/ a liar, but I find that hard to believe. How could
the field strength be high enough to ionize the gas without also ionizing
one's brain (or other bodily parts)?

The rf voltage is developed over the length of the lamp. The
facility was built during W.W.II, and was in the middle of an upgrade
when I visited. They had a small screend RF tight chamber for some
repairs, but the control room and engineering areas were being updated
and included sheilding. This was around the start of 1970 and they were
replacing the original '40s hardware. The original transmitters had
large windows in the doors, and other 'features' that were no longer
used in broadcasting.

You do know that there were a number of lawsuits over brain cancer in
broadcast & microwave communications engineers over the years?


--
For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 06:15:48 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Fri, 24 Dec 2010 22:22:45 -0800 (PST), Jimmy
JimmyGeldburg@mailinator.com> wrote:

When I turn the radio on, I hear several stations at once if it's
switched to FM. It works reasonably well on AM.

It's not coming from the radio. It's coming from the fillings in your
teeth.
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/fillings.asp
To make an FM ratio detector or discriminator, you need two diodes and
therefore two fillings, probably on each side of your mouth. If
you've had recent dental work, this is a possibility. Try gargling
with something alkaline and see if the music goes away.

Snopes has never heard of 'Slope Detection'?

Slope detection works with some sort of frequency to amplitude
conversion contrivance. That might be possible if Jimmy's mouth or
head were a fairly high Q resonant cavity with the FM station on the
filter skirts. If true, he should be able to open and close his mouth
to affect the tuning. Perhaps lining the inside (or outside) of the
mouth, or possibly the head, with aluminium foil might improve the Q
and therefore the selectivity. Inserting a megaphone in the mouth
might be useful for having others share the experience.

Resonant frequency of the human skull (about 400MHz):
http://books.google.com/books?id=NNqCbnToEYYC&pg=PA97

Slope Detector:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=V11hAAAAEBAJ
Patented in 1929. Uses one or two diodes.

More on "cavity" detector technology:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=367925

Jeff, I have used slope detection for FM for about 40 years. My
Sadelco TVFSM had a built in audio monitor that was slope detection. You
tuned to the aural carrier, and pushed the 'audio' button, then detuned
it to hear the Aural signal. As long as the FM signal is wider than a
tunable AM receiver's bandwidth, you can recover the modulation.


--
For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!

 

[Jimmy]

Jamie <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1l...@charter.net> wrote:

Get a 1:1 transformer and isolate the power with that.. That will
get red of the ground.. Shouldn't effect reception that bad.. The
  transformer will act as a filter.

   Another trick you can do that may work, at radio shack, they sell a
  iron core you can wrap your electrical wire around. This may do the
trick, or try coiling your cord up now with something iron in the coil.

Thanks, but I'd need a more detailed explanation.

What do you think the problem is? How would these two proposed
solutions deal with it?

And where would the 1:1 transformer go -- on the incoming AC power
cord?

Jimmy

 

[Jamie]

Jimmy wrote:

Jamie <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1l...@charter.net> wrote:

Get a 1:1 transformer and isolate the power with that.. That will
get red of the ground.. Shouldn't effect reception that bad.. The
transformer will act as a filter.

Another trick you can do that may work, at radio shack, they sell a
iron core you can wrap your electrical wire around. This may do the
trick, or try coiling your cord up now with something iron in the coil.


Thanks, but I'd need a more detailed explanation.

What do you think the problem is? How would these two proposed
solutions deal with it?

And where would the 1:1 transformer go -- on the incoming AC power
cord?

Jimmy
You obviously are getting RF (Radio Frequency) that your electrical

cord is helping with, as ground point of the radial, maybe..

By taking the zip card (assume it is), and wrapping it around some
form of iron or ferrous metals, it will give you what is called a
common mode choke. Actually, you may be able to buy a noise filter
from places like the shack that plugs into your outlet and then you
plug the radio into that..

Some better types of power strips come with noise filters in them.

You may want to check on that.

http://www.smarthome.com/4845ACF/ACT-AF120-15-Amp-Plug-In-Noise-Filter/p.aspx

Something like the above..

 

[Mark Zenier]

In article <if7g3s$dkd$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

The 1950 ish console my parents had did pick up the local
AM station with the radio off. There was no long antenna.

I'm curious as to what the mechanism was...

The station was located bout 3/4 of a mile away and the
console was all tube with a transformer that fed the speaker.

By "mechanism", I meant what was going on electrically. How was the signal
picked up, demodulated, and fed to the speaker at sufficient level to be
audible?

One example, back about 20 years ago, a friend on the Olympic Peninsula
had an old Knight Kit tube stereo amp. It was able to pick up both
KGEI near San Francisco (a religious shortwave broadcaster, specializing
in Russian Language, who had a really strong signal in the 6 Mhz band)
and the Soviet's "Woodpecker" over the horizon radar that used HF.

His (long) speaker wires were probably a good half wave dipole at that
frequency, and the feedback circuit provided a good path from the speaker
wiring back to the low level input circuitry.

Mark Zenier mzenier@eskimo.com
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Sun, 26 Dec 2010 05:29:45 -0800, "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

The only place I saw that was worse was the VOA Bethany
plant (Morrow Ohio) with 10, 50 KW HF transmitters on
various short wave bands. You could hold a fluorescent lamp
inside the facility and it would light from stray RF.

Michael, I know you well enough to know you almost know what you're talking
about, and you're /not/ a liar, but I find that hard to believe. How could
the field strength be high enough to ionize the gas without also ionizing
one's brain (or other bodily parts)?

The difference between those that know, and those that claim to know,
is in the numbers. I dunno, let's do the math.

Let's start with an analogy. The voltage difference between the
ground and a passing lightning storm is about 120 volts/meter.
Therefore, a 2 meter tall person would have about 240 volts DC between
their head and their toes. Why are they not instantly electrocuted?
Ben Franklin and his wet string kite experiment should have been fried
with about 10 Kv. Connecting a wire between your head and foot does
not throw a spark. Hint:
<http://en.wikipedia.orgwikiSky_voltage>

Let's grind the VOA transmitter numbers. I need a review of field
strength calcs anyway.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America>
Note that the field strength calcs do not require knowing the
frequency. I'll assume 50kw, that transmitter building is about 600ft
away from the antennas, and that the antennas about 6dB gain.

At 3 meters (the FCC's favorite distance), the power density for an
isotropic radiator is:
Pd = Power / Surface-Area = Power/4*Pi*r2
and the field strength is:
V/m = sqrt(377*Pd)
= sqrt(377*Power/(4*PI*r^2))
= sqrt(377*Power/(36*Pi))
where 377 is the impedance of free space = 120*Pi
Plugging in:
V/m = sqrt(377 * Power/(36*Pi))
= sqrt(377 * 50*10^3watts / (36*Pi))
= 408 V/m at 3ft.

6dB gain is 4 times the power, and therefore 2 times the voltage.
Power density varies with the square of the distance, but field
strength is linear. So, at 600ft, the field strength is:
V/m = 2 * 3/600 * 408 V/m
= 4.1 V/m

A 1 meter long fluorescent tube is not going to light up with 4 volts
between the end terminals. However, if you hold onto one end, or
attach some building wiring to one end, the antenna formed is much
longer than the 1 meter tube, and picks up much more voltage. To
light the lamp, one needs about 90v, which would require 22 meters of
antenna wire.

With just the fluorescent tube as an antenna, 90v can be achieved at:
meters = 2 * 3m * 408 V/m / 90V
= 27 meters

By holding onto one end, raising the total length to about 3 meters it
should light up at about 54 meters.

The accuracy of such field strength calcs at HF frequencies are
horrible. Ground conductivity, ground reflectivity, reflections, and
other oddities can result in huge variations. I've seen corona
discharge in the fog off the building rain gutters with a bootleg BCB
transmitter, so I know that it's possible to generate considerable
voltage across a conductor. I've also lit up fluorescent tubes on
broadcast mountain tops, but not reliably. I had to pick my place
carefully.

More on field strength calcs:
<http://www.maxim-ic.com/app-notes/index.mvp/id/3621>
<http://www.maxim-ic.com/app-notes/index.mvp/id/3622>


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[JW]

On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 08:19:08 -0800 "William Sommerwerck"
<grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in Message id:
<if55id$sp6$1@news.eternal-september.org>:

The 1950 ish console my parents had did pick up the local
AM station with the radio off. There was no long antenna.

I'm curious as to what the mechanism was...

In this case, the station is FM. Hearing the signal would require slope
detection, an implausible/unlikely occurrence.

I remain highly suspicious, yea, even unto total disbelief.

Call me crazy, but when I was a kid I could occasionally hear a local AM
radio station in the springs of my boxspring/mattress. The antenna was
about half a mile from my house.

 

[Brenda Ann]

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
newsr2gh6l0avt6ofenrdve7nscol7divpu47@4ax.com...


A whole bunch of math formulae...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you really want fun.. work at one of those 50KW BCB sites (I did, at the
1520 plant, then KSGO, in Portland). Couldn't run a regular radio there, so
for tunes I set up a 12" two way speaker with a loop and a power diode. I
wasn't thinking one day and dragged a 50' extension cord across the ground
BEFORE plugging it in... When I did go to plug it in, I drew a good 3/8" arc
off the ground lug. My job at the time was reconnecting ground radials after
some building work had been done on the new transmitter shack, and running
audio and control lines. Oh, and putting expanded copper shielding on the
building.

The old TX site was in the back room of a preschool. I still wonder who
thought of THAT brilliant feat of engineering..

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Brenda Ann wrote:

"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
newsr2gh6l0avt6ofenrdve7nscol7divpu47@4ax.com...

A whole bunch of math formulae...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you really want fun.. work at one of those 50KW BCB sites (I did, at the
1520 plant, then KSGO, in Portland). Couldn't run a regular radio there, so
for tunes I set up a 12" two way speaker with a loop and a power diode. I
wasn't thinking one day and dragged a 50' extension cord across the ground
BEFORE plugging it in... When I did go to plug it in, I drew a good 3/8" arc
off the ground lug. My job at the time was reconnecting ground radials after
some building work had been done on the new transmitter shack, and running
audio and control lines. Oh, and putting expanded copper shielding on the
building.

The old TX site was in the back room of a preschool. I still wonder who
thought of THAT brilliant feat of engineering..

How about a CATV headend in a 5 KW AM transmitter site?


--
For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!

 

[Ian Field]

"Jamie" <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net> wrote in message
news:r6SRo.17505$Zf2.7723@newsfe17.iad...

Jimmy wrote:

Jamie <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1l...@charter.net> wrote:

Get a 1:1 transformer and isolate the power with that.. That will
get red of the ground.. Shouldn't effect reception that bad.. The
transformer will act as a filter.

Another trick you can do that may work, at radio shack, they sell a
iron core you can wrap your electrical wire around. This may do the
trick, or try coiling your cord up now with something iron in the coil.


Thanks, but I'd need a more detailed explanation.

What do you think the problem is? How would these two proposed
solutions deal with it?

And where would the 1:1 transformer go -- on the incoming AC power
cord?

Jimmy
You obviously are getting RF (Radio Frequency) that your electrical
cord is helping with, as ground point of the radial, maybe..

By taking the zip card (assume it is), and wrapping it around some
form of iron or ferrous metals, it will give you what is called a
common mode choke. Actually, you may be able to buy a noise filter

I'd have thought a ferrite ring would be better.

A nice big ferrite ring can be had from the scanning yoke from a scrap CRT
TV or monitor, some are cast as a solid ring but more often 2 halves held
together with spring clips.

You can put quite a few turns of mains lead through a ring that big.

 

*+- The 1950 ish console my parents had when I was young did pick up the
*+-local AM station with the radio off. There was no long antenna.

My uncle used to make radios that worked on navy ships off hot pipes
with no electricity.

THere also used to be such a design in my 1969 World Book Encyclopedia, too.



- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

 

I used to be able to hear local cab CB radios thru my closed stereo as the
cabs passed my house. I think if you have high enough power you can broadcast
to speakers whose poeer is turned off. I seem to remember someone once played
a gag and broadcast messages to someone he was trying to spook.


- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

 

Some have argued the Biblical Ark of Covenant was in fact designed
to receieve radio signals.



- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
[Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards]
[Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

 

[Brenda Ann]

wrote in message news:ifbh5j$1qk$1@reader1.panix.com...


*+- The 1950 ish console my parents had when I was young did pick up the
*+-local AM station with the radio off. There was no long antenna.

My uncle used to make radios that worked on navy ships off hot pipes
with no electricity.

THere also used to be such a design in my 1969 World Book Encyclopedia, too.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I remember when I was young there were radio circuits in books that used one
or two transistors and ran off of thermocouples. The description used a
candle for a heat source, probably because they were/are cheap and easily
available, but I don't see why one couldn't use heating pipes or other heat
sources for power as well.

 

[Brenda Ann]

wrote in message news:ifbhce$1qk$2@reader1.panix.com...

I used to be able to hear local cab CB radios thru my closed stereo as the
cabs passed my house. I think if you have high enough power you can
broadcast
to speakers whose poeer is turned off. I seem to remember someone once
played
a gag and broadcast messages to someone he was trying to spook.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I know for certain that early solid state audio systems (stereos, etc.)
could be "turned on" by high power RF. A shop I worked at in Astoria, OR had
a solid state Motorola console stereo sitting in the showroom. Whenever one
of our local hams (just a few blocks away) used high power, the signal would
be picked up by the speaker wires, and fed back through the negative
feedback circuit and detected by the output transistors and fed into the
speakers... and voila!.. audio!

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 02:20:21 +0000 (UTC),
vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:

Some have argued the Biblical Ark of Covenant was in fact designed
to receieve radio signals.

Presumably, this was so that an advanced civilization of
extraterrestrial visitors could communicate with Moses, presumably
using some form of amplitude modulation. Just one problem... no
advanced alien civilization would stoop to using AM modulation for
anything useful. More likely, they would use the much more efficient
digital modulation modes. Unless the flying saucer also contained a
few museum pieces, I doubt if they even had a method of generating AM.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

 

[hrhofmann@att.net]

On Dec 26, 7:29 am, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgee...@comcast.net>
wrote:

The only place I saw that was worse was the VOA Bethany
plant (Morrow Ohio) with 10, 50 KW HF transmitters on
various short wave bands. You could hold a fluorescent lamp
inside the facility and it would light from stray RF.

Michael, I know you well enough to know you almost know what you're talking
about, and you're /not/ a liar, but I find that hard to believe. How could
the field strength be high enough to ionize the gas without also ionizing
one's brain (or other bodily parts)?

It's is a known phenomena by radio technicians, and many others of us.

 

[JW]

On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:41:54 -0800 Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com>
wrote in Message id: <v8qih6tm3606u5d7pcs33qc3n16qpam8jo@4ax.com>:

On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 02:20:21 +0000 (UTC),
vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:

Some have argued the Biblical Ark of Covenant was in fact designed
to receieve radio signals.

Presumably, this was so that an advanced civilization of
extraterrestrial visitors could communicate with Moses, presumably
using some form of amplitude modulation. Just one problem... no
advanced alien civilization would stoop to using AM modulation for
anything useful. More likely, they would use the much more efficient
digital modulation modes. Unless the flying saucer also contained a
few museum pieces, I doubt if they even had a method of generating AM.

Only John Winston knows for sure.