Hand Capacitance

Ever notice that when you touch the radio the volume changes and/or the station gets clearer? Isn't that completely infuriating? It's caused by hand capacitance. It is the power behind that phenomena and also he way we play the Theremin. The effect is actually very subtle and really interesting.Here's the basic idea. Your hand has a certain measure of resistance, as all matter has a certain amount of resistance. It's a relatively high amount of resistance, but also varies. You can even use yourself as a connector between two components and allow the current to pass through you. Your hand can be used as the dialectic of a capacitor. This would be unsafe at high voltages of course. This part of the idea is pretty intuitive.

Here's how that works: A capacitor is a passive electronic component. In it's simplest form consists of a pair of conductors separated by a dielectric. A dielectric is just an insulator. So on a touch pad you may be the dielectric between two copper conductors. Chemically the human body is about 75% water, that H20, Oxygen and Hydrogen. Water is not a good conductor of electricity. That's why we are a good dielectric.

1. Oxygen (65%)
2. Carbon (18%)
3. Hydrogen (10%)
4. Nitrogen (3%)
5. Calcium (1.5%)
6. Phosphorus (1.0%)
7. Potassium (0.35%)
8. Sulfur (0.25%)
9. Sodium (0.15%)
10.Magnesium (0.05%)

Less intuitive is how it can work at a distance. In this application an antenna is essentially a proximity detector. The capacitance you provide drops off as you move away. Even though we're measuring this effect in picofarads the change is audible. Variable capacitors and whip antennas are particularly vulnerable.

What's happening in this case is that you are in the magnetic field of the radio. The antenna is an electrode. Electrodes are conductors that make contact with non-metallic parts of circuits. This can include dielectric even a vacuum through induction. Your proximity to the electrode changes the amount of current moving through the circuit because your body has less resistance than the air space between you and the radio. That changing distance is a change in coupling capacitance. The other part of the circuit is the Earth itself.

WNXX minus KNXX

They have been a fixture simulcast since 2003. In September 2003, WZRB 104.5 FM dropped Urban AC and became WNXX simulcasting KNXX 104.9 FM The X. They were an Alternative Rock powerhouse for Baton Rouge blanketing downtown and both the northern and southern suburbs. On January 4th 2010 at 1:00 PM that stopped. Someone is doubtlessly updating their Wikipedia entry right now.

KNXX plods on with Alt rock as the X as they have been for most of a decade. The story starts back in 2000. New Radco LLC sold 104.5 WBJJ to Guaranty Broadcasting Corporation. WBJJ used to be an eclectic Rhythmic Oldies station which sported odd dashes of zydeco, and blues with the calls WUXN. But WBJJ was pretty much standard Urban AC fare. Guaranty nixed Urban AC and went alternative rock. Many rags identified them as a "rock" station and this is absolutely not the case, not by playlist not by branding.

In 2003 the WNXX/KNXX simulcast began and it ran until just 2 days ago. The simulcast ended abruptly in the middle of a sing without any preamble or apology. After a 6 second interval of silence WNXX became an ESPN sports talker. The audio is below.

Transcription Mystery Disc # 62

Notice the Goodwill sticker on this Voice-O-Graph disc. I want to point out that these should not be on Ebay at $20 a pop. The audio is always bad, the condition is always bad and the subject is almost always anonymous or at least pedestrian. This one was 99 cents.

This disc is of the Voit Family singing "It's a sin to tell a lie". The song was written in 1936. A cover in 1955 by Somethin' Smith and the Redheads made it onto the Billboard charts. I suspect it's this popularized version they are covering as the early Fats Waller version is pretty different. I was able to easily filter out the pops and crackles, but the bednoise is beyond my meager means to filter out.

Johannes Steel radio commentator

Johannes Steel, a newspaperman and radio commentator whose career was marked by controversy. He was pro-labor, and some called him a communist. Ironically, he self-identified as an Eisenhower republican. He is an interesting newscaster in WWI so interesting in fact you'll see marked differences between his listing on the German Wikipedia page and the English one. To American history he was a crank. A commie, a pro-union loud-mouth. To the Germans he was a Jew, a socialist that fled Germany when the Nazis took power to fling stones at them from afar.

In 1940 Sam Romer wrote a memo to Sidney Hertzberg about anti-war network commentators. Johannes Steel was listed as an "anti-interventionist." His commentary was listed as 7:45 PM daily on WMCA. Of course in Romers thoroughness most of the WMCA staff was listed including: Burnett Hershey, Sidney Mosley and Bruce Oliver were all listed as well. The inclusion is dubious as steel was notoriously anti-Nazi. His 15 minute program was sponsored by the Monarch Wine Company and Simon Akerman clothes.

It was programming like that which put WMCA on the chopping block with the FCC. they fell on the wrong side of the fairness doctrine. I find it interesting that conservatives rail against it today in hyperbole, but in the past they used it to railroad liberals. In 1939 they were even accused of treason. More here.

"Last week station WMCA, New York City, was asked to show cause why its license should not be revoked for violations of the federal communications act of 1934. The Manhattan station allegedly picked up, decoded and broadcast messages by German and British governments to their respective forces. Officials of the station denied the charge but will have to prove the denial in a public hearing in Washington..."

Steel escaped Germany knowing that his membership in the SPD could have led to his demise. He went to France and eventually America where he later became a citizen. He became the foreign editor of The New York Post and a columnist for the Daily Compass. He did news commentary on the Mutual Radio Network. In 1939 he began on air commentaries at WMCA. Sometimes this is listed in his biographies at WHN, but the WHN calls only came into use in 1962. In 1948 he was fired, probably because the Red Channels report tied 34 commie connections to him; more than any other broadcaster. He attribute the firing to pressure from the Catholic Church. In 1949 he took a job commenting for WLIB.

Later in his life he wrote a syndicated financial column in The Waterbury Republican-American newspaper. He died in 1988, at 80 years old.

Próspero Año Nuevo!

January first, 2010.
Taking the day off.
See you next week.