Radios and Antennas in Popular Culture - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / rf-microwave

author: mcckevin
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2018, 04:06:01 pm
content: Hi all --I'm teaching a radio class this semester and I'm using short video clips to get the students through the dreaded after-lunch drowsiness. I'm looking for popular culture (movies/TV shows/whatever) that feature radios, antennas or radio issues in their plots. So far, I've found:Contact (1997)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film): Memorable visual: Jodie Foster running up stairs, shouting about the LO frequency. Accurate science. Lots of oppertunities to talk about filters, searching for signals, antenna beamwidths, etc.The Dish (2000)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish: Character-based drama at the Parkes Radio Dish in Australia, set during the 1969 moon landing. More antenna stuff, period-appropriate equipment, frequencies visable. Enables discussions on searching for signals with a high-gain (narrow beamwidth) antenna.60 Minutes (American TV news show) did a piece on the US Military's Active Denial Systemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System. Shows people getting zorched by microwaves. Can discuss skin depth, EIRP, beamwidth vs. gain, mechanical precision required in high-gain antennas.PBS's Nova did a show on the Cassini/Huygens Saturn probe. The probe took a round-about trajectory to get to Saturn, where it would drop the Huygens probe into Titan, one of Saturn's moons. The trajectory took the probe past Earth, which allowed the engineers to run some tests which showed that the Cassini-Huygens link wouldn't have worked. We disuss the problem and fixes in some detail.I've looked at A Bridge Too Farhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bridge_Too_Far_(film), in which radio failure contributed to the problems but there wasn't enough there to work with.I've also considering that damned white radio from Gilligan's Island but haven't found an episode where they've discussed it in any detail.So, anyone got any other ideas? I'm looking for enough material that I can condense into about 10 minutes, then talk about the technical issues.Thanks.Kevin

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 21, 2018, 06:10:21 pm
content: The Listening (2006) (US Title)This movie's theme is about mass electronic surveillance (ECHELON) but the later half involves considerable effort to contact a specific satellite by scaling the Graian Alps between Italy and France to gain line of sight over the horizon to the satellite. The technical accuracy of this underrated movie could have been better but it gets the idea across.

author: mcckevin
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 01:39:39 pm
content: Thanks. Will definitely look this one up.K

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 02:12:45 pm
content: Rocky climbing the antenna tower of the RKO logo in the finale of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, itself a reference to King Kong climbing an antenna tower in the eponymous RKO produced movie.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 03:44:35 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on August 22, 2018, 02:12:45 pmWhile it's an excellent film (The original 1975 version, we should never ackonwledge the existence of the 2016 'parody') I suspect that even though there are life lessons to be learned from it they may not be quite the lessons intended.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 08:07:45 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on August 22, 2018, 03:44:35 pmThe dangers of electromagnetic waves in the form of directed energy weapons?

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 08:27:07 pm
content: ET phoning home..Really a classic.

author: chris_leyson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 10:21:52 pm
content: Popular culture hasn't got a clue about real world radio comms. Deep space radio comms documentaries are the best you're going to do for real comms, but is that "Popular Culture" ? Good luck with that one man."Independence Day" David Levinson, an ex-scientist turned cable technician, discovers that the aliens are going to attack major points around the globe in less than a day. If your link budget doesn't work out you could always blame it on aliens."Contact" Dr. Ellie Arroway, after years of searching, finds conclusive radio proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, sending plans for a mysterious machine."SETI" A bunch of numpties pretending to be radio astromonmers listening out for aliens.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 10:45:02 pm
content: Remember that the man's looking for some 'light relief', it's OK if it's nonsense as long as it either offers a useful hook to hang an amusing correction on, or a straight out joke at the expense of the nonsense.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 11:02:20 pm
content: Quote from: Cerebus on August 22, 2018, 02:12:45 pmI didn't spot Tim Curry doing that in the Rocky Horror Show.

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 11:19:57 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 22, 2018, 11:02:20 pmWell, he didn't do it in the Rocky HorrorPictureShow either, as he was slung over Rocky's back at the time in the latter.Mein Gott you must be ancient to have seen the stage original.The latest possible for a Tim Curry stage performance would be, I think, 1975.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2018, 11:25:31 pm
content: man I watched this campy 80's movie last night, it had fuckin everything from eevblog, I felt like this would happen if dave jones was a cop in the futurehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/directed by Michael Crichton

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2018, 03:24:53 am
content: Runaway is a great movie but does not feature antennas or radio. If you are looking for other underrated science fiction movies of about that age, Brainstorm is also good.Mcckevin's post covered most of the ones I would have recommended except for The Listening.The scene in Lord of the Rings where Gondor signals for help could be considered relevant. The visible light produced by the signal fires is electromagnetic and the fires have a radiation pattern and were placed for maximum line of sight.What about Independence Day (1996) where the aliens use our satellites to coordinate their attack? It could always serve as a stupid example.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2018, 07:06:00 am
content: Quote from: Cerebus on August 22, 2018, 11:19:57 pmShutup you nasty personI was in the 6th form at the time.Anyway, I saw it twice, at the Kings Rd Theatre in 73 or 74. Watching Tim Curry stomp down the aisle between the audience was quite a sight.I still have a poster, and can still fit in the (poorly printed) T shirt - but it is becoming a little fragile.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2018, 02:04:15 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on August 23, 2018, 03:24:53 amMovie list (you will find what you are looking for here):Atomic BlondeFireflyThe AmericansJerichoMost Zombie MoviesAliensThe ThingVarious James Bond filmsThe Arrival (not to be confused with Arrival, I mean the 1996 one)BattleshipThe ConversationDr. StrangeloveFail-SafeMan from U.N.C.L.E.****heavy spoiler alert for the rest of this post, I hate reading spoilers, pointing out the RF tends to spoil these movies***I certainly thought the trackers and the tracker detectors were RF related. They were little rod antennas that the hunter killer drones used for aiming, and the villians shadowed the cop crew with them.The machine in the police station clearly used some kind of RF field scanner to find the trackers with their harmonic emissions or something. They also used what looked like some kind of bug sweeper on the cars. It also touched on the psychological consequences of tracking devices, people become rather hopeless when they feel like they cannot hide.I thought of them as retroreflectors.The recent movie Atomic Blonde also had a fairly big plot segment related to high end spy bugs.The kinda campy movie "gangster squad" had a big plot point about bugs/RF in the tube era too.Also the fire fly movie was big about communications systems (the wave guy).And there is that old movie about the private investigator with the saxophone (thought it might be a movie about paranoid delusions)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_ConversationIt has all sorts of spycraft and faraday cages and all that good stuff.The book Congo had alot about satellite communications but it was not really featured in the movie, the book had alot of ideas about what optical communications can do to the world (the whole idea of why they were looking for those blue diamonds).There is that crappy paranoid will smith movie that had something to do with RF too, but it was more about a buncha old geezers having panic attacks about the internet.The killer in the first scream movie was known to use some high end equipment too (though this is mostly left to the imagination, I imagine he had the entire community completely fucking wired), he certainly used delay lines with video equipment but I imagined he must have certainly had developed some kind of wireless network to get away with all that killing and avoid the cops etc.Also the spy thriller show "The Americans" has some episodes where they setup antennas in the woods to communicate messages, I am still watching it only on season 1. They also show the encryption equipment.And one of my all time favorites, UHF (ok maybe in title only but I would not mind watching it in class after a exam)They also have 'the cable guy' with jim carrey but that's hardly related to physics, it does have alot of shots involving satellite dishes though.Oh yea, and if you like the scifi ones like Contact, there is The Arrival, it is set in New Mexico, where a researcher using one of those large dishes finds a conspiracy about aliens. It's a great movie. There is alot of usage of test equipment and some nice action sequences in RF labs. I don't remember if the sequel was any good though. Similar setting to the end of goldeneye.And the movie Aliens has some bits about antennas, where Bishop has to align some antennas and ghetto rig a communication channel to remotely pilot the dropship because their main equipment got destroyed.There is the movie Battleship too, where the alien invaders use some fancy new military communications satellites to send a signal after their gear gets trashed due to a bad landing. The main RF plot points of this movie is aliens being physically assaulted with test equipment and PTSD soldiers driving jeeps into RF feedlines. I believe a rhode&swartz portable spectrum analyzer is used to clock an alien, by some nerdy white guy. I think it was more educational then independance day however.The Thing also has some plot points about HF radio, the interference of the radio plays a big role in why the movie played out the way it did. I don't remember if it was also in the new "the thing" remake, I need to rewatch it.Also, you won't find a zombie movie where radio does not play a very important role. The older ones usually have some kind of important radio operator character. Day of the Dead comes to mind (1984) but my memory of this is really fuzzy and I don't really like super depressing zombie movies.The movie Jericho (and show) highlights the need for putting filters inside of things and the consequences of EMP on communication systems, it is a central plot point about how EMP was used to destabilize a country.There is also the new James Bond movie if you are interested in ELINT and expensive installations being trashed. Goldeneye too.Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe are also movie heavy about RF in the plot, because jamming systems.Man from U.N.C.L.E.Tons of bug/rf direction finding stuff

author: mcckevin
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2018, 02:07:39 am
content: I'll have to rewatch that one. Been ages!Quote from: cdev on August 22, 2018, 08:27:07 pm

author: mcckevin
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2018, 02:10:14 am
content: Quote from: Cerebus on August 22, 2018, 10:45:02 pmExactly!

author: Tomorokoshi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2018, 04:50:08 pm
content: 1. In "2001: A Space Odyssey" HAL lies about the impending failure of the radio.2. In "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" V'GER burns the coaxial cable to the radio.3. In "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" they transmit the plans from the datatape using the radio transmitter on the tower.(Is there a theme here?)4. In one of the NASA Apollo 8 mission films, there is a rather poignant scene when the CSM is behind the moon, and Mattingly repeatedly calls, "Apollo 8, Houston" for two and a half minutes.http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2421/1

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2018, 06:46:10 pm
content: Although it is not popular culture and is old, you should talk them about the Gibson Girl, as an example of curious and special design aimed at a solving a specific problem: emergency radio for use at sea, hand cranked generator, a long wire antenna lifted by a balloon inflated by an hydrogen generator (with the sea water), fixed SOS code emitted at 500kHz and 300km range. Also when you mention the 'Girl' thing they will pay more attention.http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/46103-gibson-girl-scr-578-survival-radio-transmitter/

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2018, 07:16:00 pm
content: Nothing comes to mind in particular but I think there might be some WW2 commando movies about plots to destroy radar installations. I think the one about the ram raid they did on the nazi-occupied french port with the destroyer had some bits about radio and radar.Red Dawn had some stuff about radio too IIRC. The new one with north koreans has a major plot point about a special radio too.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castles_in_the_Sky_(film)Castles in the Sky is a British fact-based television drama first broadcast on BBC Two on 4 September 2014. The movie shows Robert Watson-Watt and other British scientists' struggle to invent radar in the years leading to World War II.The recently ww2 film about the black unit of soldiers also had a bit about radio and its use to pipe propaganda into the battlefield with speakers.And I forgot the details but there was a few episodes of the show Lost that had some kinda hamshack things in em, I think in season 5 or 6.

author: G0HZU
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 28, 2018, 10:07:50 pm
content: How about the classic 'Broadsword calling Danny Boy'As spoken by Richard Burton in the movie 'Where Eagles Dare'His radio backpack even works indoors. 1000 mile range back to England no problem

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2018, 06:38:48 am
content: To be fair, while those scenes are obviously just faked for the movie, 'back in the day' I made contacts across the Atlantic to the US on a 4W CB with the 'traditional' mobile antenna on a biscuit tin with some 9 foot wire radials in the loft of my house so it's not entirely unbelieveable that the backpack could well have 'made the trip' 5 and 9 back to Blighty...

author: G0HZU
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2018, 12:32:10 pm
content: It's pretty unlikely though...I think the typical army backpacks had <0.5W output power and operated in the lower HF bands. Even if conditions were good it's extremely unlikely that reliable comms to/from Bavaria would be possible with kit like this.However, there were some impressive bits of kit available towards the end of the war. During D-Day the allies were using microwave links for comms back to base. Something like 8 TDM phone channels were possible per link on 4.5GHz using dish antennas on static vehicles. I think the range was something like 50 miles line of sight.The best I ever did was during the sunspot peak in the late 1980s. I manage to contact Japan on 28MHz/10m using a converted CB and the antenna was a 1 metre long G whip bolted to a metal hand rail on a raised walkway. But that was a freak event and probably only possible on a few days every 11 years or so.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2018, 01:11:11 pm
content: It is unlikely I agree and is of course contrived for the film, they'd have probably had more reliable comms via carrier pigeon I suspect but it would be interesting to see if the backpack could be identified.if you've not already got a copy 'Most Secret War' by R.V. Jones is a good read

author: G0HZU
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2018, 08:38:32 pm
content: Some of the stuff used in that film was post war tech so the film has a few goofs in it. So it might not mean much if we knew the model of the backpack radio anyway.However, to give it a fighting chance, the base station back in England could have a huge directive antenna array designed for this type of mission and aimed at Germany. For most reliable comms I would assume they would use a frequency somewhere towards the middle of the HF band. So this would be ideal for contacts deep into Germany. If the backpack was souped up at the expense of battery life it might manage a few watts of Tx power. So if it was used outside and the short (and very narrowband!) whip antenna was properly tuned against a good ground I think it would be possible to make fairly reliable contact if the band conditions were OK. During the day and early evening with average to good band conditions, I've made contacts into eastern Europe on 14MHz using a small (but ultra narrowband) loop antenna and about 30W but I'm not sure I'd have succeeded indoors with just 0.25W and an ungrounded backpack/whip on a table. Maybe someone has already done it though...

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 29, 2018, 08:56:45 pm
content: Quote from: CJay on August 29, 2018, 01:11:11 pmIt was enlightening and inspirational when it came out - and it is still well worthre-reading. Recommended.

author: mojoe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2018, 05:23:43 am
content: RE: QRP and distance.My personal best was 2.5 W SSB on 10 M from a mountain top in New Mexico, to Kiribati in the South Pacific. My antenna was a home made inverted-V on a 20 ft push-up pole. It was a solid 59 contact both ways. There was a DXpedition to Kiribati several years ago. I wasn't even trying to contact him. I just happened to hear him tuning up that morning.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2018, 02:11:02 am
content: During WWII those kinds of services typically used the Rhombic antenna. A huggge diamond shaped broadband traveling wave antenna that was terminated at the far end with a resistor.. Typically they would be hundreds of meters in size and supported on large telephone poles. Aimed at the target area. They used to have an array of them at Point Reyes, CA, dedicated to military communications. Another one on the East Coast, I forget the location. Its a little bit like the beverage antenna.Quote from: G0HZU on August 29, 2018, 08:38:32 pm