For more detail-and how we made this experiment safe(ish), see: www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/talking-hot-dog-gives-new-meaning-ham-radio

If you use two hotdogs, you could have stereo AM radio

Reminds me of those stories of people detecting powerful AM signals with their teeth fillings. My physics prof told about when WLW was broadcasting with an effective radiated power of a half-million watts: 1) Ohio drivers on US 42 would go past the tower, and start detecting AM via rusty junctions between body panels of the vehicle. Imagine cresting a hill late at night and hearing a radio hellfire preacher. 2) ionospheric skip propagated the signal to rural Canada whereupon chicken wire would catch the signal and rusty contact points would detect the signal. This interfered with egg production...

Try using a pickle. The electricity will excite the sodium ions and cause it to emit orange light.

Does it speak German if you use a bratwurst?

I've heard of RF burns referencing HAM equipment, but I didn't know it could be that bad from a broadcast tower. Damn.

I always thought it’s called ham-radio, not sausage-radio 🤭

Talking to food is harmless, when food talks to you it's time to seek help. Seek help! 😁😆

This is amazing, guys. It's funny but also shows the dangerous reality of RF burns, which a lot of folks new to radio might not understand. I should forward this to the local Ham club to use as an example for test prep!

"Standard hot dog, nothing special". My god man, It's a talking hot dog! The implications, the knowledge we can learn from them! ........ ( I was kinda high when I watched this.)

Electrical discharge machining, but with a hotdog as the element.

Back in 2002, I made my professional practices at a radio broadcast company here in my hometown. I visited one of the company’s AM transmitter facilities… was my first time inside of an AM transmitter facility. Then I noticed the antenna area was surrounded by a second fence… so I ask the chief engineer if I could have a close look to the antenna, but he told me about the danger of being near and if I touch the antenna I could get fry…. Didn’t believe him until he took a test rod and approaching a large leaf with the rod, the leaf started to get burned as talking…. A talking burning leaf touching a 50,000 W AM antenna…. Just amazing! Was the XED 1050 kHz AM in Mexicali, Mexico…. So, friends and viewers… the talking hot dog is not a trick… just as the talking leaf I saw ( and heard) it is true. Regards! 👍👍

Technically this is a so-called plasma speaker. The amplitude-modulated electric arc on the hot dog rapidly heats up and displaces the air around it, which creates the sound. Plasma speakers are commonly built out of old TV flyback transformers.

I have a feeling ElectroBoom would find a way to touch it. (Or *APPEAR* to :P) Also rip dogs harmed in the making of this video.

Certainly an interesting way to show how modulation works! It does illustrate how those stories about fillings in people's teeth picking up radio stations could actually be true.

Surely this is the start of a new channel called Cooking with the Geerlings!

This hotdog complies with Part 15 of the FCC rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this hotdog may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this hotdog must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.

That fence is waaaaaay to low haha

AM towers are terrifyingly impressive. As always thanks for giving us this peek at why they're dangerous!

This was one of the most dangerous, but peacefully so videos I've seen on KZfaq. No car crashes, no gunshots, no yelling, but still... pure tension

I'm so glad I saw this. I never thought you could get seriously get hurt just by touching a Antenna tower! Seems like they should be fenced off better than this..

I love how well the hot dog demodulates the AM.

Need a taller fence!

My father was an Artillery officer in the 60/70s . It was quite common for lads to use the packet Radio antenna to warm mres. Foil wrapped ones would get hot in seconds.

Is that a ham radio, or an all-beef radio?

LOL I love how he starts off with "well I've never done anything like this before" I don't think anyone has ever done anything like that before 😂

I've got a tiny, cauterized hole through the skin of my right elbow that I got while taking an AM tower base current reading at my first station forty-two years ago. It was raining, and I wasn't paying enough attention. Good lesson, but I wish I'd seen this video beforehand.

I had heard of the 'Cat's Whisker' radio before, but is this known as a 'Dog's Wiener' radio?

Irony. Cooking said hot dog, whilst a commercial for Oscar Meyer or a restaurant plays over the air.

😂 Finally, a PSA worth remembering!

This might be the WURST video I have ever seen. Good job. The thought of my finger playing raido while its being cooked off is terrifying.

Ive heard stories from old school tower climbers that they would do a running jump on to live AM towers for painting and whatever other maint needed done. They assumed it was safe as long as you didn't create a path to ground.

I watched the video before I read the description above and I would have thought it was way more than 10 KW, My local AM radio station is 5 KW and it has 2 antenna connected they did this years ago. This is a local radio station 3NE in North East Victoria down under. I was amazed you could hear the Modulation of the Carrier when you cooked the snag.

Cooking chicken was mentioned in an introduction course into radar. Nice to see this for real.

The Hot Dog detector was never as successful as Fessenden's Electrolytic Detector, though variations of it were attempted in the early radio years, such as the Frankenfurter Detector, and the Kielbasa Detector, as it was just too impractical to keep changing out the cooked ones just to get through a fifteen minute show, though having on hand a dozen of the "foot longs" did help, but only somewhat. The main problem was that all of the stores ran out of hot dogs and sausages of any form during The Amos n Andy Radio Hour, or during one of FDR's fireside chats... All the Best! 73 DE W8LV BILL

This was too dangerous for even Red-Shirt Jeff to want to try

In the 1970's ish era , Westinghouse Appliances and others had a hot dog cooker that was two metal prongs stuck into each end of the hotdog. You then closed the drawer and it applied 110 V non isolated house power across the prongs.

So much power/danger, and such a small fence!

Imagine touching the tower and then suddenly your hand starts playing let it go as it burns to a crisp.

I've cooked a hot dog with RF. Of course it was _microwave_ RF in an oven designed for that purpose... 🙂 I've actually heard a radio station on an old steam radiator, located across the street from a multi-story building with a college radio station antenna and tower atop it. Very low volume, very sporadic, conditions needed to be just right.

Thank you for this! The sound coming from the hotdog was magical. Can you guys do that with a steak next haha

Being able to hear what is being said is impressive!

Really makes you wonder about that "stolen" AM tower in Alabama

The sharp edges on the cut end of the wire are "grounding" to the air without arcing. I forget the principal why, but that's why basic spark plugs have a little puck with sharp edges that evenly wears, and you have to replace them once it's slightly rounded. Arc gaps and TIG welders control this with a sharp pencil shape at different angles.

I love the “ sorta safe enough way” followed by strong electrical sounds haha 😂 I’m dying lol glad he didn’t.

This is probably the coolest thing I've seen on youtube in a while

That's crazy. Just this morning, I was in the tower enclosure at the company I work for. I know now not to touch the tower. 🤔

Never thought hot dogs would talk, let alone demodulate AM at that! A good warning.

Many, many times when I was a child and even into my Teen's I was "ALWAYS TEMPTED" to climb the fence's and the tower's just because they were there! Thank God I listened to my "Guardian Angel" because I wouldn't be here at age 67 to thank you for letting me know that my intuition was correct!

When I saw the headline, I knew this wasn't about camping lol

The world needed this and I salute you. 🎉

Another interesting phenomenon I have observed at AM transmitters (specifically in the P&M hut) - if you use zip-ties with a metal locking tab, the induced RF can heat the tab enough to melt through the tie and release it.

This is... AWESOME!

This is why the radio goes in and out I bet. Someone cooking hotdogs.

I worked at a 5 kW AM when I was in college in the 1960s. We did climb on active towers to change bulbs, etc., but the carrier was cut long enough for the victim to get up onto the tower, away from anything grounded. RF exposure? Not a thing then (and probably it shouldn't be today, at AM frequencies anyway).

I am glad you did this!

good old ohm sausage :D

Time to learn Hot Doggian as a second language

I'm excited. I have to ask our local supermarket if they sell talking sausages too!

This is exactly what I wanted to see and I didn't even know it

A PSA for sure. Thanks!

So that's what the fences are for!

When I was a kid growing up, we lived about 1.5 miles away from a country radio station that was in the 50kw range. This was in the time of the Radio Shack 150-n-1 electronic experiment kits. You could have a naked speaker and a single strand of copper wire attach to listen to the station. :)

This was great! Thanks for sharing!😂

They hear the sounds of the station, everyone on that frequency, hears the thoughts of the hot dog.

When I was in the Navy we used to demonstrate to newbies what a fire control radar could do by using the grounded hot dog crispy critter.

After torturing the hot dog, it revealed where the Death Star is being constructed.

Wow American cousin is presented in your family's video also! Here comes holiday season - maybe I use it in my home? 😅😅😅

Well, it looks like the broadcast tower won't be used to cook hot dogs for the station's cookout.

I love it! I have conducted the required radiation assessment for my ham radio station BTW, and I won't be cooking anything near my antenna (including myself) anytime soon.

Love it!

that's actually pretty cool!

Impressively steady holding that pole....

When CBC had a shortwave transmitter complex at Sackville, NB, people in the neighbouring town reported hearing radio via their fridges and toasters.

Crazy! I had no idea am towers were so dangerous

Woah, now I know why they are fenced off! I wonder if the listeners of that station started having cravings for hot dogs while you 'conducted' that experiment 🤣

We had radio come through our fillings as kids. Did it cook our brains? This is real with toxic metal fillings they no longer use. Mercury is bad.🤔🍻

That's wicked cool!

The medical field still uses this same principle for cauterization. The classic Bovie CSV uses vacuum tubes & spark gaps to produce the RF to cauterize. It is powerful & could even cut underwater.

Reminds me of that video where people put plants on an AM tower and they are acting like a speaker and you hear the radio program.

OK, who put ChatGTP in a hotdog? 😂. You’re modulating the hotdog. LOL “A Christmas Carol RF”. One of my guys got an RF burn working on an HF radio. The burn looked yellow. YUK. Very painful.

Electrically which percentage is being diverted through the hot dog to ground? Enough so that the towers coverage footprint is temporarily reduced?

I think it's hilarious that you can hear the radio in the zapping, like the frequency isn't encoded and just matches the end audio frequency.

To this day, the tip of one finger of my right hand has a scar from a nasty RF burn. Was 12 years old with a Ham licence and my transmitter was a vintage military ARC-5 with an exposed antenna lug on the front panel. Not enough power to pull and arc, but it still hurt like hell!! That was 1972.

DIY Ham radio 😂

GREAT VIDEO !

This seems to be the new crystal radio setup!

The last time I i talked to an AM station engineer I learned all about this and it set off more curiosity for me in the LF spectrum. Having a full standing tower with metal guy wires only separated by small spacers near 500 volts AC modulating at the frequency of up to 1.6mhz seems both extremely dangerous and an incredible feat of engineering. I've wondered how many transmitters exploded due to accidental shorts in the beginning of AM radio.

I love the smell of ozone with a touch of beef flavor….

I wonder what this does to the impedance of the whole system. I think a hotdog+wire is pretty low resistance/impedance, but maybe it matters less at low frequencies like AM?

I live next to one of these transmitters and can confirm it turns EVERYTHING into an AM radio.

Hotdog RF burns are wildddd

That's awesome!

Wow, so much current and voltage!

Wow, now that is nifty :)

Hot Dog modulation…cool!

Yay, new video, love it! 🌭 😂

"A man falls in love with an AM radio antenna, THIS is what happened to his wiener."

One of ours here operates at 50kW omnidirectional, fences would talk and people in houses near it would report that they could hear it in their pipes and bedsprings.

Very cool