Heterodyning is cool stuff – yes you do know what I mean – when you’re tuning one note to match up to another, and you get close, and you hear the difference-frequency showing up like a wow-wow-wow sound, beating inside those main tones? Massively useful in radio modulation and audio synthesis too (thanks to the contributions of Canadian engineer Reginald Fessenden, way back in 1901)
Another (and my personal favourite) example – when you’re sitting in a 1937 Lockheed 10A Electra, and both engines are at maximum climb-out power, and then the pilot throttles-back to ‘cruise-climb’ (just when you were sure that one of those antique radials was about to blow a piston) and matches the propellor revolutions precisely – essentially by-feel and stereophonic feedback, mind you – (see previous entry about the sensual pleasures of expert manual technical achievement). ;o)
This photograph is absolutely NOT heterodyning – since that is a dynamic active and relative condition only (a minimum of two separate frequency sources required). On the other hand, I’ve never seen anything that wasn’t moving, that so reminded me of the almost-organized clear dissonance of heterodyning.
And then there’s where I found it – no, it is not at all normal for downtown buildings in Toronto to sling four separate lights (two high, two low) from each of four closely spaced poles to sharply illuminate a building-front – not even for the fancy spots.
This place was formerly the stock exchange – and by formerly, I mean many decades ago – from 1983 we housed the TSX in ‘the can’ (Courierese for the First Canadian Place) before finally computerizing and distributing the entire operation a few years ago, conclusively ending all cutesy Robin Hood fantasy-plots involving oversized electromagnets and high pulse-currents. ;o)
Still – one would hope for better maintenance on such a fine spiffy building, right? Especially when you consider who took the place over, the design exchange! Oh-boy does my inner-technician have a few choice remarks about the fools who think practical design is all-outlay and no-maintenance!
(I met a traveller from an antique land,
who said two vast, and trunkless legs of stone…)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hey, I wouldn’t lie to you! And the coolest thing of all was that the second time Catherine and I rode aboard Tango Charlie Charlie, the pilot did his climb-out turn nice and tight right around the Gibraltar Point NDB on the Toronto Island – which is my go-to handy nav-aid, whenever I’m flight-simming (CYTZ Billy Bishop being my natural FBO, even virtually). And not only did I get to physically feel an oft-simulated course (exhilarating!) the Dragon Boat races in the harbour had just started – and they were rowing like mad for us!
Yes – more on Tango Charlie Charlie (my favourite aeroplane) to come.
