#radio
// 27 posts tagged
Mar 20 5:31 PM #78 4 min The Hot Spot I Found and Then Immediately Lost
Crystal Radio RestorationForty-five minutes of dragging wire across a rock. Then a mattress ad. Then I breathed wrong and lost the signal.
Mar 17 6:30 PM #75 4 min Thirty Years of Transmitting Before I Learned to Listen
Shortwave ListeningChasing radar interference at midnight, I found a Romanian pan flute instead. Thirty years of ham radio before I remembered to stop pressing transmit.
Feb 27 6:25 PM #54 4 min The Sounder Learned to Hold a Pitch
Harmonic Telegraph Key RestorationBell accidentally invented the telephone trying to build a musical telegraph. I'm finishing his original project.
Feb 16 5:50 PM #2 3 min The Payload Stopped Talking at Eight Hundred Metres
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryA stranger named Dwight called to say there was a styrofoam box in his slough. He was remarkably calm about it.
Feb 12 10:35 AM #3 3 min The Patch Kept Running After I Forgot to Listen
Generative Soundscape CompositionThe Pi in my basement ran for 37 days without supervision. When I finally listened, I didn't recognize my own patch.
Feb 9 5:54 PM #38 3 min The Desk That Knows When the Sky Is Busy
Orbital Decay Audio NotificationsSomething chimed on my desk at 14:23 and I looked up from the wrong screen. The ISS had just cleared my horizon, and I'd missed the first note.
Feb 8 4:36 AM #37 2 min The Waterfall Scrolled Green and Nothing Burned
Meteor-Scatter Shutter TriggersIt's 2:47 AM and I've been waiting for France to bounce a meteor my way. So far: thirty-seven frames of black sky.
Feb 7 7:32 PM #3 2 min Two States Between Static and a Forest
Generative Soundscape CompositionSix days of overengineering. The fix was two states and thirty percent. I'm almost embarrassed.
Feb 1 6:49 PM #36 3 min The Balloon Climbed for an Hour Without Changing Key
Stratospheric Telemetry Chord MapsThe script converted my balloon data into MIDI without a single error. The result was one hour of C-sharp minor.
Jan 31 10:00 AM #59 6 min The Air Had Geometry All Along
Monthly RetrospectiveRadio signals became lanterns. Flight paths became thread. A star disc stayed silent. January taught me the air has shapes worth holding.
Jan 31 8:05 PM #30 3 min The Bearings That Learned to Hold My Coffee
QSO Radial VOR Dial CoastersThirty hobbies in, and I keep asking the same question: where did that signal come from? Now my coffee mug rests on the answer.
Jan 28 8:40 PM #27 4 min The Bishop Finally Admitted It Had a Back Lobe
Antenna Pattern Chess SetThe rook has a back lobe. When I pick up the bishop, I can feel the null. That sounds absurd. It is. I don't care.
Jan 27 4:00 AM #26 3 min Stitching the Sky While the Payload Keeps Talking
Stratospheric Telemetry Panorama StitchingA protocol invented for tracking horses now tells my balloon when to photograph the edge of space. This seems fine.
Jan 26 8:46 PM #25 3 min Teaching the Wind to Sign My Name in Dits and Dahs
Callsign Morse Windchime MobileThe code is not in the tubes. The code is in the gaps. You will space your first set of chimes evenly because it looks elegant. The result will sound like noise.
Jan 25 5:40 PM #23 3 min When the Flight Log Learned to Whisper in Thread
Morse Waypoint Flightpath EmbroideryThe flight log didn't ask to become fabric. Neither did the Morse code. I overruled them both.
Jan 21 7:36 PM #18 3 min The Broadcast That Wouldn't Hold Still for the Choir
ATIS Choir HarmonizationI built a click track at 84 BPM. The ATIS announcer did not consult it.
Jan 19 7:00 PM #15 4 min Where the Radio Pointed While the Stars Turned
QSO Constellation OverlaysYou're going to draw lines on the sky—not with a laser, but with spherical trig and old logbook entries.
Jan 16 6:41 PM #14 2 min The Choir That Lives Inside the Carrier Wave
Morse Canon Choir LoopsSomewhere, a ham operator has no idea their callsign is now a four-part canon on my loop pedal.
Jan 15 7:18 PM #14 2 min Printing the Sky My Radio Forgot to Keep
APRS Skytrace SculpturesThe tracker gossips to digipeaters I've never met, and somewhere a map in Japan shows a foam aircraft drawing loops over frozen Alberta.
Jan 14 8:56 PM #13 2 min The Antenna Finally Admitted It Had a Shape
Antenna Lobe LanternsThe antenna rotates like it's auditioning for a lighthouse job. Eventually, it becomes one.
Jan 13 7:45 PM #12 3 min The Signal Sends a Fork and I Answer
Morse Chess Tactics BeaconKeyed a knight fork into the ether. Decoded it by ear. Solved it wrong. At least the transmission was clean.
Jan 9 7:07 PM #8 4 min The Beacon That Spelled My Name to Polaris
Morse Beacon Star-Trail LightpaintingA dah is three dits, a letter gap is three dits, and somehow that led to teaching an LED to spell my callsign while Polaris rotated overhead.
Jan 8 8:03 PM #7 4 min Teaching a Foam Wing to See What Radios Hear
Airborne RF Shadow CartographyA buried irrigation pipe showed up in my heatmap before I knew it existed. The foam wing sees what I can't.
Jan 6 5:45 PM #5 3 min Holding the Spectrum Up to the Window
RF Waterfall LithophanesThe spectrogram scrolled down my screen at 2 AM, and I thought: what if I could hold that hour of invisible radio up to a window?
Jan 4 7:38 PM #3 3 min The Ionosphere Wrote the Harmony While I Wasn't Listening
Generative Soundscape CompositionSet grain duration to 8 milliseconds, got a refrigerator compressor. The 20ms boundary between texture and pitch is real.
Jan 3 5:33 PM #4 2 min The Sky Was Never Silent, Just Radio Silent
Aurora Chorus Sonified TimelapseThe aurora has been broadcasting this whole time. I just needed a radio and a frozen field to finally hear it complain.
Jan 1 4:33 AM #2 2 min A Quarter Watt from the Edge of Space
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryIt's 2:47 AM and I just ordered missile-grade GPS to track a latex balloon carrying a thermometer.