Bizarre radio experience

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
news:2007102215193443658-christophercampbell@hotmailcom...
On 2007-10-22 12:26:27 -0700, (Don Poitras) said:

So there I was. 9,500 ft. over Albemarle Sound in NC. Headed toward
Kitty Hawk to meet some people flying up from Myrtle Beach attending
the Beach Aero Club yearly meeting. I'm getting flight following from
Washington Center and being pushed along with a 50 kt. tailwind (I took
a picture of my GPS as proof, 154 kts. groundspeed.)

"Podunk airport traffic, bugsmasher 25B ten miles east inbound for
landing,
any traffic, please advise"

"Ha!" I think to myself, "That Center lady is certainly going to tell
him a thing or two."

"Other-podunk airport traffic, happy 94J, left base, runway zero four."

Hmmm... What's going on...

"podunk... podunk... podunk... ... ..."

It's now so bad that I can't clearly hear what the Center controller
is saying. It's at times like these that they usually want me to
switch transponder code for no known reason...

"Washington Center, 25Q, I'm receiving a lot of 0 on this
frequency, I need to cancel flight following." Actually, I had to say
it about three times as it was very busy. She finally said something
that I couldn't understand except the last words, "... good luck."

Now my powers of diagnosis are put to the test. I set the other radio
to the Center freq and listen to that. No change. Still chatter from
everywhere. I switch to transmit on that. I change the standby freqs.
I shut off one radio. Still I hear voices. Finally, I turn off the
intercom (radios are still on). "Podunk..." This isn't supposed to
happen.
I can bypass the intercom, but I really should need to plug into the
bypass jacks... What is going on?

I turn off both radios.

".... podunk ... podunk ... PODUNK!!!!" (did I say the voices were
loud?)

The whole panel is dark. The hair on my neck is starting to stand up.
There's only one thing left to try...

I turn off my iPod that's plugged into the headset (not "Ride of the
Valkyries", but Amy LaVere)... silence. Wow. Cool. Plug back in,
"podunk..."
Somehow the combination of iPod, wire and LightSpeed 30-3G was acting
as a radio (a very crisp, loud radio) picking up multiple frequencies
at once. I wish I had written down all the airport names so I could see
how many I was hearing, but it was quite the cacophony. I called
LightSpeed
and the guy there had never had that reported before. I said I'd post
to a newsgroup to solicit other reports. Anyone?

You know, that is so weird, that maybe someone over in mac.hardware might
know something about it.

So, for you non-fliers -- translated a little bit -- this pilot reports
that he was hearing radio calls from many different airports and airplanes
which were all supposed to be on different frequencies. He could hear so
many transmissions on so many frequencies that he could barely understand
what was going on. He was wearing a LightSpeed headset with an iPod
plugged into it -- many pilot headsets have a jack for listening to iPods
and stuff.

Now, he tried turning off the airplane intercom and just listen to the
radios, but the problem persisted. Finally, in desperation, he turned off
all his airplane's radios! And he still heard all these transmissions!
Then he unplugged his iPhone from the jack on his headset and he finally
stopped hearing the radio transmissions. Plug the iPod back in, he hears
the radios. Unplug it, they go away.

This has to be almost as good as the story about hearing radios with the
fillings in your teeth. Got any idea what was going on?

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor


Whew! Thanks for clearing that up for us whuffos. I was wondering who
would've given so many airports the same name in such close proximity. I
thought that maybe "Podunk" was some locally famous guy and that everything
was named after him. I guess the two most common names for places are
Podunk and somewhere in Egypt. Most people I know have visited one or the
other. ;-)

BS, TP

On 2007-10-22 12:26:27 -0700, (Don Poitras) said:

.

"podunk... podunk... podunk... ... ..."

It's now so bad that I can't clearly hear what the Center controller
is saying. It's at times like these that they usually want me to
switch transponder code for no known reason...

You know, this alone is reason enough to write up a NASA report. This
is exactly the kind of thing they are looking for.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

C J Campbell wrote:
On 2007-10-22 12:26:27 -0700, (Don Poitras) said:

.

"podunk... podunk... podunk... ... ..."

It's now so bad that I can't clearly hear what the Center controller
is saying. It's at times like these that they usually want me to
switch transponder code for no known reason...

You know, this alone is reason enough to write up a NASA report. This
is exactly the kind of thing they are looking for.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

I hadn't thought of that. You're right though. The PDF file wouldn't
work when I clicked the "send" button, so I printed it out and I'll
mail tomorrow.

--
Don Poitras

It's not bizarre at all. Actually, it's pretty much what one would
expect when some shielding was broken.

On 2007-10-23, Stefan wrote:
It's not bizarre at all. Actually, it's pretty much what one would
expect when some shielding was broken.

But it's an interesting coincidence that it was picking up only
non-towered airfield frequencies, instead of, say, a sport radio AM
broadcast station. Or center's frequency.

My first attempt at doing things with op-amps didn't do anything that I
actually intended, instead I got an unintentional radio for listening to
BBC Radio 5 on AM.

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
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