OT: What can you "do" with your radio?

[Max-trac]

At O'Crack thirty heading to the Ham fleamarket, my buddy stopped at the Bank ATM for cashola.
We were chatting on 6m FM.
I heard the PD rolling to a 211 alarm at his bank!! (robbery in progress).
He got his cash and rolled before they arrived, luckily the bank was closed or they would have had to do their "real" robbery proceedures!

[jban]

Back in the 80's I went to the storage room at the FD for something and replied to a call on our HT220 VHF radio and the box of Floruesent bulbs starting glowing. Thought to myself this is cool. Pulled out a bulb and stuck it under my arm on the side where my portable was and went to the day room and bet the guys I could make the bulb light up by talking to it. Made about $20 off this. A couple guys just could not figure it out.

[Brandon314159]

In my younger days (not too terribly long ago!) I spent equal amounts of time in the high school chemistry lab as well as the physics department. At home, playing with a retired microwave magnetron (home-brew waveguides, protective shielding, etc. etc) was interesting. I quickly decided to stop playing with that kind of RF and go for something a little less...high exposure.

HF causes all sorts of interesting things. CODAN gear will trip my outdoor motion lights on anything above 15Mhz and cause quite a bit of noise on the neighborhood speaker systems. Stealth is required in that operation! Running HFN soundings every hour might get annoying for some with low-end unfiltered stuff.

Interesting experience when I was traveling with the 200W HF gear freshly installed into a vehicle using a roof mount loaded coil type antenna. Tuned up on 40M using about 50W and the car (a jeep cherokee) stalled. Un-keyed and the car took back off again. Turns out a little grounding was in order as that metal roof rack wasn't metal all the way to the body.

Up on pikes peak with the same antenna off the back of a camper traveling with my family as a kid, I started hearing a consistant popping sound...about once a second. Seeing some storm clouds roll in, I decided it might be best to unplug the antenna from the radio (lighting was hitting the ground below us on the hill!) and just as I did...the popping got louder. It was jumping from the center pin to the other shield of the PL-259 connector and was speeding up. I threw it in the bed. The antenna being lower than the roofline of the camper, not too worried about a direct hit of it specifically, but better safe than sorry. We were evacuated off the mountain about 5min later.

In high school, found a box of old "coach" style RF headsets. Operating on/around VHF high. Crystal controlled...bit long extend-able whip for the TX side and a short stubby for the receive. We used to wear those around campus talking to one another getting all sorts of looks. We're talking like 4ft antennas.

Sigh...and now I do this stuff and get paid for it

Thanks for the stories.

[RADIO]

only real story i have happened a few months ago i was getting out of my car at work and talking on my 900mhz radio, as soon as a key up after i get out of the car i set off the BMW next to me is car alarm, owner comes running out, who wants to go to the bmw dealership and look at cars with me, dont forget to bring your 900 so we can communicate

[W3MOT]

my radio will buzz a few seconds before my cell phone rings.

You have a Sprint/Nextel or a Nokia.

Speaking of Nextels, back when I had Nextel as my cellphone service, I keyed up my Nextel near my TV and I wound up blowing it out... It would turn on and make a weird ticking sound afterwards with no picture or audio.

[tvsjr]

my radio will buzz a few seconds before my cell phone rings.

You have a Sprint/Nextel or a Nokia.

Speaking of Nextels, back when I had Nextel as my cellphone service, I keyed up my Nextel near my TV and I wound up blowing it out... It would turn on and make a weird ticking sound afterwards with no picture or audio.

Fail. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation.

Any TDMA system (my GSM Blackberries, for example) will generate pulses due to the transmitter cycling, which is detected by cheap audio amps (like the ones found in most consumer electronics) and then converted to audio. A typical GSM phone transmits about 216 times per second (577uSec/timeslot, 8 timeslots per frame).

[motorola_otaku]

Speaking of Nextels, back when I had Nextel as my cellphone service, I keyed up my Nextel near my TV and I wound up blowing it out... It would turn on and make a weird ticking sound afterwards with no picture or audio.

Fair warning: keep Nextel phones at least a couple of feet from a computer whose hard drive is in the process of being formatted. I learned that the hard way a few years back, and ended up having to replace the hard drive.

[Tom in D.C.]

Since this "Lounge Like" topic has now reached the point of discussing overt
malicious interference it's being locked.