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From: max@zion.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.humor
Subject: Re: Jamming walkmans
Message-ID: <21952@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 25-Nov-87 18:01:07 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.21952
Posted: Wed Nov 25 18:01:07 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Nov-87 05:08:35 EST
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Reply-To: max@trinity (Max Hauser)
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Xref: utgpu sci.electronics:1584 rec.humor:7813
Summary: The family FM jammer

This does not equal Larry's anecdote but it does give you a true
example of the effective deployment of electronic countermeasures
by civilians against obnoxious FM radio reception.

I have a friend, whom I will call Joe, who a few years ago was a
quiet electronics technician of the old school. Although too 
young to properly qualify as an old fart, he liked to build things
with vacuum tubes. Joe is also a cellist, and a member of a large
local family. He likes to practice his cello, or play the organ,
for relaxation.

Anyway, at the time of this anecdote, Joe had moved into an
apartment in Oakland, California. He did not play the cello or
organ there, out of respect for his neighbors (nowadays he owns
a house, and besides, his neighbors like the music). However, in
the apartment building were some Very Noisy People. They would
play FM stations at all hours, loud. They acknowledged but did
not act on requests to moderate the volume. Now hereabouts this
sort of behavior is illegal -- the police call it a 647 violation,
Disturbing The Peace, so Joe could easily have complained to the
police. But his style was much quieter, and subtler, than that.

He built an FM jammer, which came in later years to be passed around
a lot and dubbed "the family FM jammer." (This was very much in
character -- Joe was always building clever gadgets to fill a need.
The family is very handy with things like that, making do -- Joe's
parents grew up, of course, in the Depression.) It was a beautiful
piece of work: built on a block of wood, with open-air coils,
a large glowing VHF tube, and porcelain insulators. It would
have been completely at home in a 1930's sci-fi movie with Bela
Lugosi in a starched white smock that buttoned up on one side.

The jammer used, simply enough, the 60-Hertz power line to 
frequency-modulate the carrier. With characteristic attention to
detail, Joe had made sure that the modulation was just enough
to cover the desired channel without spilling over to adjacent
ones. Yes, it was assembled and aligned with all the loving care
of a commercial transmitter expecting outside inspection.

The procedure was simple but delightful. When the Noisy Neighbors
decided to play loud FM, and this got to bothering Joe, he would
warm up the jammer. Because the jammer needed precise tuning, and
also because the problem had now become a sport, Joe worked the
tuning dial with the fingers of a safecracker, and all the
patience in the world -- I like to think, though I don't really
know, that he had a cigar and a glass of port, perhaps Graham's
Malvedos 1955.

Presently a horrific buzz would replace the (inevitably pounding)
dance beat audible through the wall, provoking vaguely audible
expletives of discontent. Someone would change the station, and the
music would return. It didn't bother Joe; he was patient, and he
was sure of his quarry. Eventually he would find the new station
and they would change it again. Sooner or later there were
expletives of resignation and the receiver was turned off. To his
fortune, they rarely played anything but FM (AM, of course, would
have been even more manageable, but records would have required
a radically different approach).

All of this had the effect of translating a nuisance into good
clean sport, at least for a patient cellist like Joe.

Naturally, as a law-abiding citizen, not to mention a commercial
licensiate of the FCC and bound by the statutes of the Communications
Act of 1934 as amended, I would have been horrified and obliged to
report this behavior had I not learned of it well after the fact.