"isw" wrote in message
...

snip


After you get done talking about modulation and sidebands, somebody
might want to take a stab at explaining why, if you tune a receiver to
the second harmonic (or any other harmonic) of a modulated carrier (AM
or FM; makes no difference), the audio comes out sounding exactly as it
does if you tune to the fundamental? That is, while the second harmonic
of the carrier is twice the frequency of the fundamental, the sidebands
of the second harmonic are *not* located at twice the frequencies of the
sidebands of the fundamental, but rather precisely as far from the
second harmonic of the carrier as they are from the fundamental.

Isaac

Whoa. I thought you were smoking something but
my curiosity is piqued.
I tried shortwave stations and heard no harmonics.
But that could be blamed on propagation.
There is an AM station here at 1.21 MHz that is s9+20dB.
Tuned to 2.42 MHz. Nothing. Generally the lowest
harmonics should be strongest. Then I remembered
that many types of non-linearity favor odd harmonics.
Tuned to 3.63 MHz. Holy harmonics, batman.
There it was and the modulation was not multiplied!
Voices sounded normal pitch. When music was
played the pitch was the same on the original and
the harmonic.

One clue is that the effect comes and goes rather
abruptly. It seems to switch in and out rather
than fade in an out. Maybe the coming and going
is from switching the audio material source?

This is strange. If a signal is multiplied then the sidebands
should be multiplied too.
Maybe the carrier generator is generating a
harmonic and the harmonic is also being modulated
with the normal audio in the modulator.
But then that signal would have to make it through
the power amp and the antenna. Possible, but
why would it come and go?
Strange.

--
rb