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Extending the range on wireless

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230RN:
^ Yes.  Well, maybe I should have said visible light just to emphasize the effect, but that would have been too technically limiting.

My bathroom has no windows, but I can maneuver around in there with the lights off just from stray light bouncing around the house . I couldn't read a newspaper, but I could find my toothbrush just from miscellaneous photons be-bopping around.

Typically, the human eye can detect wavelengths from 700 to 380 nanometers, red to violet (ROYGBIV).

Nanometers, 10minus nine. get it?  Nano, nine?

For a reference point, the wavelength of a 1 GHz signal is about 0.3 meters, just about a foot.  Your microwave (µwave) oven generates energy at a little less than half a foot.  (Most I've seen were 2450 MHz, or 2.540 GHz.  Note the decimal point shift of three places.)

I remember that in the first car we had with an FM radio (88-108 MHz) at certain speeds and locations, the signal would cut in and out very rapidly.  The phenomenon was called "picket fencing." With today's higher sensitivity receivers and better AGC*, this rarely happens any more except maybe at the fringes of the broadcast station's range.  OTR truckers might still notice this.

Oh well, 'nuffa that.  Kind of a long walk from FM radio at 3.41 Meters (88 MHz) to 380 nanometers (Ultraviolet light).

Terry. 230RN

* Added: "AGC" = "Automatic Gain Control"

kgbsquirrel:
*counting* I've got instrumentation for: radio, long infrared, short infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma.

Still need a microwave receiver of some sort.

RocketMan:

--- Quote from: kgbsquirrel on October 21, 2021, 08:46:50 AM ---*counting* I've got instrumentation for: radio, long infrared, short infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma.

Still need a microwave receiver of some sort.
--- End quote ---

Get yourself an RTL-SDR Blog V3 R820T2 RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA Software Defined Radio USB Dongle.  For just $30 bucks you get a USB software defined radio that can receive from 500 kHz up to 1.75 GHz. 
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/

Among other uses, I've been using one to sniff out adjacent channel interference to our wireless microphone system at church.
Coupled with open source SDR# (or SDR++ if you prefer Linux) software, it works very nicely for aircraft, public safety, land mobile and ham band reception throughout the VHF and UHF spectrum.  I've been using SDR# on a Windows 10 laptop with mine.

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