Electrical engineering student demands his entitled neighbor turn down her loud radio in the early morning, after she refuses, he jams the signals to the radio, ensuring she has no choice: 'Suddenly silence from the neighbor’s radio'

Advertisement
  • 01
    Man pushing his earphones inside his ears
  • Advertisement
  • 02

    Thin Walls and a Frequency Generator

    I number of years ago I lived in Montreal in a rather thin walled apartment. My neighbour's kitchen was against my bedroom
  • 03
    and at some point the absolute delight of a human being started turning her radio on shortly before 6:00am.
  • 04
    I tried to talk to her and asked for her to simply move it away from the shared wall or not use it, no change. I sent a registered letter
  • Advertisement
  • 05
    to the landlord asking for some action to be taken, but again nothing changed. At the time I was studying
  • 06
    Electrical Engineering and learning about how radios worked. Internally to the radio whatever frequency you are
  • 07
    listening to gets converted to what is known as an Intermediate Frequency and then the rest of the circuitry amplifies and filters this one frequency.
  • Advertisement
  • 08
    I had under used frequency generators at work so I asked if I could borrow one for a bit, I got a few strange looks and questions,
  • 09
    Woman dancing in the kitchen
  • 10
    but ultimately got permission to borrow one for a few weeks. I set it up in my bedroom, did the basic settings for an unmodulated
  • Advertisement
  • 11
    frequency matching the intermediate frequency for the neighbour's radio, jammed a rudimentary antenna in the back
  • 12
    and went to bed. When I was woken by the neighbour's radio instead of just jamming in ear plugs and trying to go back to sleep, I jumped up and switched
  • 13
    on the frequency generator. Suddenly silence from the neighbour's radio. I then modulated my signal with a 1kHz
  • Advertisement
  • 14
    tone that was extremely annoying, but my ear plugs filtered it out. Knowing that this could interfere with others and also be illegal I
  • 15
    tested it against my own radio which was about five meters away and it wasn't impacted. Was it better shielding against my attack
  • 16
    or was it the distance? I didn't care the neighbour stopped using her radio in her kitchen and I returned the frequency generator after a couple of weeks.
  • Advertisement
  • 17
    Shelf decor and a vintage radio
  • 18
    GrrrYouBeast Excellent. My petty heart approves of this.
  • 19
    Naive_Figure188 Had a friend in college and they set up their own pirate radio station back in the late 70's. The gave it up when they noticed panel trucks with antennas roaming their neighborhood (they were about 1/4 mile from each other.) It was like a scene out of a movie. FAAFO
  • Advertisement
  • 20
    hrudyusa As a fellow EE, I LOVE this story. Who says that there isn't a technological solution to every problem. When I was commuting via train, I considered getting a cellphone jammer so I can get some peace in the morning.
  • 21
    3VikingBoys Ah, the old unmoderated frequency ploy works every time. Well played Octo23, well played.
  • 22
    Ok-Active-8321 I did the same thing!, except I x-mitted at the carrier frequency. Neighbor couldn't get anything, so he changed the station. I retuned to match. Worked well for a couple of weeks. Sadly, he then started playing records, or it may have been cassette tapes. (Yeah, I'm old.)
  • Advertisement
  • 23
    Tilda Maree Maybe I'm really d b but I've re-read through all that frequency mumbo- jumbo and I still don't know what happened to the neighbours radio. Did it go off? Turn into static?

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article