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Light and radio transmissions are the same thing, just using different
frequencies.
How is it reasonable that I can transmit with a radio using the energy
of a low energy light bulb (10 watts), and easily chat with someone
1800km away?
Even if you imagine a perfectly dark world, where the only light bulb
is a 10W bulb in Sweden; How is it even possible that this could be
seen in Italy? It’s not even a spotlight! It’s only vaguely aimed away
from east-west, in favour of up, north, and south.
My little light bulb (radio) could be seen in (approximately) all of
Europe. ~750 million people potentially could have received it at the
same time. With 10 watts.
“Blink blink” — All of Europe can see my little lightbulb.
And this isn’t some specialized super duper antenna, nor was it set up
by an expert, fine tuning everything. I just put up the antenna in a
PVC pipe and connected it. We can’t even credit fancy computers
digging signals out of the noise. This was not FT8, this was
PSK31. I’m sure voice would also have worked.
I also used FT8 with these same 10W to check off Continue reading