To Kill An Atomic Subwoofer or How I Blew Up My Noisy Neighbor's Car Stereo

TO KILL AN ATOMIC SUBWOOFER or HOW I SOLVED MY NOISY NEIGHBOR PROBLEM BY REMOTE CONTROL

Robert Koch, a 19th Century German bacteriologist who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1905 stated not long before his death in 1910, “The day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague.”

How much pounding from a loud, booming car stereo can one take over a period of months or even years from the dregs of modern society?
My redneck neighbours across the street do not mind at all that their booming car stereo, which blasts its obnoxious, dreadful sounding tripe is being broadcast all over the neighborhood every Saturday and Sunday afternoon for the past year. It’s absurd enough that the vehicle my redneck neighbour, Carl, is blasting rap and country music from is a 1980 Toyota: an orange, beat up truck that should have given up the ghost and gone to a junkyard back in 1985. Just to see that old truck pull up to his front door with DJ MuffinPuff or Ma and Pa Roach Stompin’ Two Steppers rattling my eardrums and shaking my windows was enough to make me want to set his truck on fire until I came up with a better and safer idea. I was going to remotely destroy his radio.

First, I had to figure out a way to do this. After over a year of having to listen to this horrible thump, thump, thumping going on weekend after weekend, I decided I had to do something, and do something creative, subversive, and electronically devious before I went out of my mind.

Calling the police was not an option, considering that I live in the city and city police are worse than county cops. Besides, they wouldn’t care that someone was disturbing the peace with a booming car stereo week after week, month after month, unless of course, that stereo was right next door to the cop’s house. I knew that calling the cops in the middle of the day over a stereo being too loud just wasn’t going to be a priority for our city’s finest.

I knew I had to do this right and I knew there would be a risk I would get caught, but I was at my wit’s end. Even though my city had enacted a new ordinance stating that a car stereo could not be heard further away than 25 feet from the car itself, I knew it would be futile to try to enforce it. I also realised that the city has done little or nothing to stop this horrible menace that has become a plague on American society.

So, I decided it was time to set up shop or as they say, crap or get off the pot. I had a little electronics experience building FM transmitters and a couple of amplifiers for the transmitters, as well as repaired a few other electronic devices. I was no stranger to a soldering gun. That’s right, even women can use those things! The problem was I had no idea what I could do to stop this redneck from ruining my weekends at home.

I knew I had a lot of research to do before I could come up with the proper tool to end this assault on my eardrums. There were many options I found after doing some internet research. I also procured help from a friend who was a tinkerer involved in laser research and electromagnetic studies.

The first was completely obliterating the car stereo with a Directional Microwave EMP Rifle 50 kilowatt X-band military microwave magnetron. I’d found this machine online and was instantly intrigued. This device can be reduced to the size of the Super Soaker™ squirt gun. A machine of this magnitude could possibly cause semiconductors to burn out, microprocessors to malfunction, create radio frequency noise, cause ionization of air or gases, or even erase computer data on hard drives. In all essence, a machine this powerful would probably be illegal, too dangerous, and possibly kill small animals in the area, so I decided to nix the EMP. Besides, how could I afford one of those?

Then I came up with another idea that had nothing to do with destroying his car stereo, but had to do with annoying the complete crap out of him and his entire redneck family. I’d recalled reading a couple of years ago about how to make a wire resonate an entire side of a wooden building by inserting a nail into the wood and attaching a wire to the nail. Then you would begin to rub the wire back and forth between your fingers and it would start vibrating so intensely that it would begin to resonate against the side of the building, creating an unbearable noise inside. My vision was of them all running outside holding their eardrums in pain like I do when I start to hear Master Jeezy Louizeey playing in his truck. Then I realised that wouldn’t work either, because their house is made out of cinder blocks.

A better and more effective idea must be concocted. My friend who shall not be named suggested we build a remote controlled taser type device that would send a burst of electromagnetic energy to Redneck Carl's stereo that would short it out, if not causing even more damage to other electronic parts in his truck, like his ignition coil or any sensors, or maybe even blast his battery and send his car hood flying up in the air. It would have been hilarious to see his driver’s seat explode through the roof, but that would have only been something one could see in a Roadrunner cartoon. Besides that, no ACME company was available anywhere nearby with all of the handy dandy parts pre-assembled for me to use.

The basic theory was the same as a remote control that uses infrared transmission (the signal is transmitted using pulses of infrared light). The good thing about infrared light is that it is invisible to the human eye (including the eyeballs of my redneck neighbours). I was confident that my electromagnetic signal using a remote type transmitter would be invisible to them as well if I could figure out how to construct such a device.

I’m far from being a Nikola Tesla,[1] a Michael Faraday[2] or even a friendly neighbourhood electronic tinkerer. I just wanted that joker across the street to silence his stereo.

I got to work. The internet helped tremendously with ideas and supported my research plans quite well. Some old capacitors and a few IC chips, resistors and solder and my old FM radio transmitters with their transistors were still lying in cardboard boxes in one of my closets, so I dug them out to see what I could work with. I knew the transmitters could send out a signal of a “whopping” (I say this with sarcasm) 100 milliwatts but I was looking for some real power. I wanted the transmitter to send a signal to the stereo that was powerful enough to fry its contents and silence DJ MuffinPuff and Ma and Pa Roach Stompin' Two Steppers for awhile. I also knew I had to get within about 100 feet of that old, orange, Toyota rust bucket to do my evil duty.

My friend estimated that with 2 transmitters and the amplifier running at the same time, along with changing the resistor values to get the maximum output, I could zap the stereo easily, or blow up both transmitters and the amplifier, or shock myself, or all three. A visit to a friend of a friend who had gotten some military surplus electronic parts was also placed for extra parts that will not be named in this article.

An old remote control from an expensive remote controlled car was borrowed from another cohort to use to turn the transmitters on and off. The transmitters and amplifier would have to be keyed on and off quickly to keep them from burning up due to the intense, short bursts of electromagnetic power they were going to send to his orange rust bucket.

For the next three weeks at night, we spent soldering and de-soldering, burned my fingers, making little lights blink and IC chips get hot while we assembled my little project. I tested and retested, blew capacitors and resistors and said more curse words than a trucker on a CB radio.

An antenna also had to be built and tuned to the exact frequency I was going to use to obliterate the redneck’s stereo. The frequency also had to be in a high enough range in the spectrum in order to deliver the type of damage we were looking for. It had to be extremely directional, and small enough to not be too obvious. I had to go out for more parts and another special piece of equipment to figure out how to make this antenna. I knew I had to be extra careful because I could easily burn myself or cause myself a shock if I did not build the antenna properly. A PVC pipe casing was used to cover the innards of the antenna, painted dark green to camouflage it from prying eyes. After a few tries and some tweaking, I felt I was ready to try out my new “invention.” This was 5 weeks after I began the project.

The devices were contained inside cases about the size of a CD case, but 1 inch thick. The cases were already black so I did not need to worry about them being too noticeable.

One evening about 11 p.m., I went out in my backyard to try to zap some old electronic devices I had lying around the house. The friend in crime had to go home, so I just decided I couldn’t wait any longer to try out our new invention. My first victim was an old Nokia cell phone. I powered it up and placed it on the deck, its little green screen illuminated the wall. Then, I assembled my projects into a triangle and set the PVC pipe antenna up to aim directly at the cell phone, about 25 feet away.

Nervously, I sat there for a minute, shaking, holding the remote control in my right hand and hoped I wasn’t going to electrocute myself to oblivion.

Being the pessimist that I am, I couldn’t imagine that I was going to affect this cell phone in any way. I sucked in my breath, aimed the antenna at the glowing Nokia, quickly keyed up the transmitters with the remote control, and saw a bright flicker actually shoot from the phone! It was just a flash, and I thought that it might have been a coincidence that it flickered just as I hit the remote. I thought the screen had just flickered a white line but I wasn’t close enough to see the screen clearly. Once again, I hit the remote, letting it stay on for 2 seconds longer than the first, and several flickers and a crackle came out of the phone’s speaker! I was shocked.

Then I said that was it, I was just going to zap this bastard into oblivion! I thumbed the remote button, the Nokia buzzed and crackled, when I heard a loud pop and smelled some electrical burning. The Nokia died on the deck, with smoke coming from its innards. I’d killed it. I just stood there in disbelief. I picked up the phone and it was smoking hot. So I stood there and started laughing. I also had an old Hypercom T7P 257K credit card terminal that no longer felt like working, so I put it up on the deck. It too had a green screen.

I walked 50 paces backwards and thumbed the remote, taking aim after a slight adjustment of the antenna. Nothing happened. Again, I shot at the terminal, moving the antenna and one of the transmitters a few inches. A crack and weird smell emitted from the terminal. Walking over to look at it, I could see the screen had cracked and the liquid crystal inside had spilled its guts, and 2 of the buttons had actually melted into the body of the terminal!

We were on to something really good, me and my nerd friend. I shot him off an email explaining what had happened. He was very eager to see the results of my tests. I was proud of him too. He’d spent most of his time working in a shipyard on electronics for the past 15 years and I knew he was never allowed to think about building any device like this while he was working there.

The next day was Friday, and we agreed to meet early Saturday morning at about 2 a.m. to get set up to drag our equipment across the road. I told him that this would be the night. No longer was I going to be disturbed by his “Oh me so horny” music coupled with the blasting of Toby Keith or Travis Tritt. It was time for his car stereo to die a deserving death.

Across the street, shielding part of my view of the redneck family’s house was a large group of trees with thin trunks, nestled next to a chain link fence. It was in a corner and made a perfect hiding place. I knew all we’d have to do would to move the equipment across the street and pile it near the trees to get set up quickly. I’d found a great spot to erect the antenna, pointing directly at the truck which was parked a little too close to their little cinderblock house. Most of the equipment was already across the street, lying in the grass, waiting for my friend to arrive. He just had to see this. After all the help he’d given me, I knew he’d want to see just what was going to happen.

At 1:45 a.m. he showed up, passed by my house, turned around and parked up the road a block. I’d suggested him to not park in my driveway because I’m paranoid like that.

As soon as he walked the block to my house, I just looked at him and giggled like a little girl. I couldn’t contain the excitement and nervousness I was feeling. What we were going to do was illegal and risky, but silencing that subwoofer and stereo was going to happen. There would be no backing down. That stereo was going to burn.

By the time we calmed down enough, it was time to get busy. With the destruction, that is. We both walked across the street and squatted down behind the trees in the corner, leaning against the chain link fence. I had a tiny light, but it was still hard to see. I had to feel my way around and he helped me get everything set in the exact position we needed. My comrade bravely stood up and checked the antenna and its position and then we positioned ourselves as comfortably as we could in the weeds and dried leaves and broken branches. He asked if I was ready, and I was, so he subsequently, but seemingly a little hesitantly, handed me the remote. I think in all essence he wanted to blast the stereo himself.

I broke through the trees and scratched the side of my face on a branch which stung but I was so excited by this time I didn’t care. I was on my hands and knees and aimed the remote at the transmitters, a little scared of the antenna above my head. I pressed the button, my hand shaking with nervousness. We heard a ping sound, like a rock had hit a piece of metal. It sounded like it had come from the area near the truck. We looked at each other, puzzled. I tried again, and heard another weird noise, like a grating sound, but not loud, which was good because I didn’t want to wake up the rednecks. The grating sound actually was underneath the truck this time. We both sat there for a couple of minutes as mosquitoes bit us.

By this time, I just got pissed and thumbed it again, holding it down, taking out my frustration on the remote. I saw a small blue flash inside the truck and heard a pop like a light bulb going out. We looked at each other again, and he wondered aloud if we’d actually hit the stereo or did even worse damage to the truck.

I told him we’d better get back to my apartment because I was afraid we might be seen or someone in that cinderblock house would wake up and go outside to investigate. Neither one of us wanted to face a crazed redneck who might have a shotgun.

Hurriedly we grabbed all the pieces of equipment, and I pulled the antenna from the tree and we hobbled across the road to my apartment.

For the next hour or so, we sat in the dark of the living room, discussing the whole experiment, and wondering just what might have happened across the road when we tried to tase his stereo.

My eyes were getting heavy because it was nearly 4 a.m. My cohort decided to head home and I opened the door, and watched him walk down the street to his car.

At 11 a.m. the next morning, I awoke from a strange dream, only to recall what we had done the night before. Panic started gripping me. There was a message from my comrade on the phone to call him.

First I had to see if there was any evidence of our dastardly doings by pulling down a few blinds on the living room window. I saw the Redneck Carl outside with his truck hood up. Then, I saw his wife’s green Chevy with its hood up too. He kept going back and forth from one vehicle to another. I just stood there in shock and said, “Uh oh.”

The best way to get a closer look was to just go outside and pretend to do yard work. With my eyes still sticky with sleep, I stepped outside and grabbed the garden hose, and started to hose off my dusty car. The Redneck’s kids came outside and I heard one of them say, “What happened, daddy? Why won’t the cars start?” My eyes got big. I heard him cursing and he yelled at his kid to go back inside. To get a better glimpse of what was going on, I backed up to hose off the front of my car so I could see across the street. Then I saw him get in the truck and attempt to start it. I heard nothing. He then did the same thing with the nice green Chevy Lumina they have. Once again, nothing. He just kept cursing until his wife came out and he yelled at her and told her to go back inside too.

I went back inside, stifling laughter and fell back on my couch and let go! I think we ended up zapping the ignition coils or sensors and now both cars were out of order. I ran and called my friend and told him what was going on outside, and I swear I never heard him laugh so hard in my life!

Later that afternoon, he was able to get the Lumina started, but the orange truck was still dead. And so was its stereo. A few months later, a nosy neighbor lady told me that Redneck Carl had told her he came out one morning to find his stereo wires with burn marks on them and also the faceplate had been melted in his Toyota truck! I feigned no knowledge of the incident and told her that was the strangest story I’d ever heard!

To this day, no one in our neighborhood has been subjected to the obnoxious ghetto blasting we had to listen to for over a year. Mr. Redneck Carl has remained silent ever since but always keeps his porch light on at night now. Sometimes one just has to take matters in their own hands to get the job done.

Our work was accomplished and the neighbourhood now gets to hear the sweet sounds of mockingbirds and chirping squirrels instead of “Oh me so horny!” 

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By the way, this whole story is complete and utter bunk. Just thought I’d let you know.

[1] Inventor of radio controlled boats, the infamous Tesla coil and tons of other neat little gadgets.

[2] His greatest work was with electricity