A young teenager reaches out and up with a science experiment

As a child I read extensively. Not only the classics, but being intensely curious and living way out in the middle of rural farm country Virginia, reading kept me connected to the wider world. Read not only the classics but books on all topics. The great classics of literature. Books on the sciences from physics to biology. Lots of history and politics, especially the history of wars and battles. Books on different religions. Thrillers! Mysteries! Horror! And lots and lots of science fiction, especially stories set in Outer Space with the characters using amazing gadgets and fantastic inventions. Also read lots of books on what we called “Aliens and flying saucers” back then. Today we use the terms UAP and NHIs for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena and Non-Human Intelligences. At the same time I watched as much science fiction on television as I was able to in a rural area where we were lucky enough to pick up two or three channels really well and sometimes four. At some point I developed the madcap idea of wiring a walkie talkie into an old black and white TV to see what would happen. Wanted to communicate with and track flying objects overhead … and maybe even find UFOs!

I don’t remember when my little science experiment occurred, but I do recall what I did, what happened, and where. This took place upstairs in my bedroom, the nice, new one my father had recently converted from a spooky, old attic with wide boards to crawl upon laid across wooden beams, plats of insulation, and electrical wires. One had to pull down folding stairs from a well in the ceiling to go up into my room.

There was also the influence of certain family members. I grew up in a farming family rooted in academia. My father was a practical farmer gifted in the trades from plumbing to carpentry and electrical wiring, and as a dairy farmer studied the weather, biology, veterinary medicine, soil chemistry, machines and mechanical repairs, welding and brazing, forestry, animal parasites, and sundry other subjects. His dad was a botanist who worked with the Virginia Department of Agriculture. Had a knack for grafting roses up into apple trees. My dad had a distant cousin who lived nearby who was both a dairy farmer and a chemistry professor at Hampden-Sydney College. Apparently at one point he might have been engaged in the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, TN, but we don’t know for certain.

My mother’s father was a physicist who taught, well, physics, at Virginia Tech. He was deep in his studies of light, and once around 1976 guided me on a tour of the nuclear reactor in the department he worked in. During his time off he loved to sit next to a really large, beautiful shortwave radio and listened to broadcasts from around the world. Grandad would fiddle with the knobs and dials, and I would hear dozens of different languages from numerous countries. Once he tuned it to broadcasts in Russian coming out from the Soviet Union. Felt a chill as back then the Soviets were the enemy. My mother had a maternal uncle who operated one of the largest construction companies in the Southeast. My great-uncle Edwin Jone’s construction company back then was engaged in building nuclear power plants and skyscrapers. During the Second World War was involved in the Manhattan Project and building warships. He also attended the Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests of the Early Cold War and observed Saturn V launches during the Apollo program. My mom’s youngest sister was a mathematician and computer scientists who once took me fossil hunting to show me the Appalachian Mountains were so ancient they were once the bottom of prehistoric oceans.

There were others who worked in science and engineering as well. Science was hardwired into both sides of my Family of Origin. Most of them expected me to grow up to be a scientists myself. I didn’t become one for various reasons, primarily due to the then-undiagnosed Severe/Complex ADHD, Dyscalculia, and other learning disabilities. Plus I was profoundly hard of hearing in both ears, nearly deaf, and wore two hearing aids. Back then the hearing aids were large analog ones I nicknamed my “Frankenstein bolts.” Despite my mix of disabilities, I engaged in numerous science experiments as a boy inspired by both popular media and the scientists and science-users in my life. 

This particular experiment began, I think, sometime in 1973 when I was 14 years old. It could’ve been 1971 when I was 12 or 1974 when I was 15, but I don’t remember. It was also during a time of what we kids called the Nokkyanic Wars, a confusing run of covert, highly politicalized, local childhood gang wars where one of the organizations I led seceded from the United States and fought with and against similar small groups. No one died. These conflicts were influenced by and grew out of the intense, chaotic political violence and socio-cultural turmoil of the 1960s. Indeed the period of fragmented domestic violence across the USA from the 1950s thru the 60s into the 1970s can be described as an almost-civil war or almost-revolution. It was really an intermittent, low-intensity conflict. Basically the Nokkyanic Wars were battles between kids, mostly preteens and young adolescents the adults considered “play wars” and pretend battles that sometimes got out of control. Those same kids, however, of which I was one of the ringleaders, considered these to be real wars. The one overarching rule is no one is ever be killed nor injured so bad as to need medical care. Killing and maiming was forbidden. Perhaps that made them play wars, but they were real for us at the time as rocks, spears, ash bombs, throwing stars, fireworks, BB pellets, and a mix of homemade weapons flew back and forth between our little factions we called “armies” as we sought to conquer territory for our secessionist mini-states.

There were thus two goals in this experiment. One was to track aircraft overhead including military aircraft so one could determine what was happening. Didn’t want any government to spy on us. Also thought it would be cool and fun. Another was to discover and track UFOs and find out what “the Aliens“ may be up to. Also thought to find flying saucers with an old TV and a radio would be wild fun! OK, I was indeed a bit of a nerd back then, a nearly deaf country bumpkin farm boy nerd who read lots of books and built forts in the woods to engaged in battles with rocks and spears, and still a nerd.

So I hooked a walkie talkie, basically a wireless, hand held, short range, analog radio, into an analog television set attached to a rooftop antenna array. Rooftop antennas at that time supplanted rabbit ear ones, those adjustable even telescoping ones people had to jiggle around to capture clear reception of TV station transmissions. Rooftops were much superior to rabbit ears as they were outside the building and thus enjoyed far less interference. They used both VHF and UHF broadcasting frequencies. VHF is short for Very High Frequency with UHF means Ultra High Frequency. UHF can also penetrate walls and building barriers better than VHF as well as work well outdoors. Analog walkie talkies from the 1970s used primarily UHF altho today they may use both. 

What do I mean by “hooked” such a small radio into a TV set? Took a strip of metal wire, used both aluminum and steel, and wrapped them tightly around the end of the telescoped-out antenna projected from the head of the walkie talkie. Then I connected it to the antenna port terminals in the rear facing side of the TV. 

I don’t remember what brand and model the walkie talkie radio or the TV were we used. By the way, “we” referred to my little brother Joe helping me, or sometimes one of my friends or fellow “soldiers” from our children’s liberation army gang. Sometimes I conducted these experiments and subsequent monitoring of the skies alone. Most of the time, however, I had someone helping me out.

What happened? A lot of noise! Often static with strange whistling and shrieking sounds. There were times, however, we could hear human voices. We couldn’t always make out what they were saying, although most of the time the spoken language sounded like English. A few times they were clearly speaking in English, but none of us listening could make out all of the words. We were unable to discern if they were all airplane pilots or someone on a radio nearby.

There were moments I squeezed the PTT or push-to-talk button on the walkie-talkie and attempted to speak with whomever was on the other end. I felt nervous  and didn’t want to get into any trouble or reveal my location. Curiosity, however, always won out over fear. Usually I would say “Hello” and ask if they were piloting an airplane and where from and to, or even if they were able to hear me. Often there wasn’t any response, and a few times there were. I remember one time the person on the other end identified himself as a pilot, sharply asked who I was and what was I doing, and for me to stop and get off the radio before he disappeared into a haze of static. Another time there was a garbled message about licensing and if I was licensed as breaking into the airways like that may be illegal or something similar. Don’t clearly remember all of these  events. Sometimes my little brother would grab the walkie talkie and shout, “Hello? Hello! Anybody there? Somebody say something!”

We attempted to use the television screen as a form of radar, too, after connecting the walking talkie to the TV set. We would turn the channels to get staticky gray scale screen with black, white, and gray lines filling the background like a storm of ground salt and pepper. The few times we heard human voices and especially when they identified themselves as pilots, the lines would jump and spike and shape into something vaguely resembling geometrical shapes. These shapes moved across the screen during those times. One time the shapes even morphed and appeared like a small arrowhead or spearpoint, and we wondered if the signals were attempting to form the shape of an aircraft. That didn’t make sense as we thought back then any airplanes would appears as blips of light moving across a darker array field of some sort on the TV screen.

A few times I would disconnect the TV and wire the walkie talkie radio directly into the wires leading to the rooftop TV antenna. Being in the former attic, those antennas were literally feet away on the other side of the bedroom ceiling upon the roof of the house. We usually got clearer voices that way, and, obviously, weren’t able to track any aircraft or UFOs on the homemade radar.

I didn’t know enough to know at the time. We definitely were not licensed in any way nor were we even aware any licensing existed. In hindsight, we probably were in violation of certain federal and state regulations, and we may have interfered with proper communications somewhere. Just glad no one was injured or worse and no accidents occurred. At least no airplanes crashed in the news in our greater Virginia area nor were any complaints lodged in local media outlets I was aware of. 

We did search for UFOs. At the time I thought they were extraterrestrial spacecraft. My entire family had a significant UFO encounter on our family fair farm back in the mid-late 1960s. We saw an enormous, silent, metal sphere without any visible signs of propulsion, heat, or stability. We experienced electromagnetic disturbances in our home and in the car, missing time, and fantastical flight maneuvering capabilities. Years later, my parents seemed pressured by the FBI to deny everything about the event. I write about these experiences in other articles on the topic, including “UFO Encounter in Virginia.”

Despite seeing odd images noticeably different in their geometry and static intensity on the black and white TV screen we didn’t ever see anything remotely similar to spheres, flying saucers, or any other type of Unidentified Flying Object. There were a few short moments when we heard the most bizarre electrical type sounds coming through the speakers, yet we couldn’t determine what any of them were. Nothing sounded remotely like what we imagined an “Alien from another planet” would sound like if speaking in our atmosphere. Besides, I am profoundly hard of hearing in both ears. So, no NHI voices were ever discerned.

Searching online across the World Wide Web shows a number of fellow Earth humans have and do search for NHIs using HAM radios, weather and satellite radar data, and other homemade, self-engineered monitoring systems. Who knows what has and will occur? At least with some of these devices such as HAM or amateur, noncommercial, and nonmilitary personal radios are not censored by government agencies although they must be licensed. I am not currently engaged in any such practices. Haven’t been since those long ago days upstairs in my attic bedroom playing around with old analog equipment. 

What odd, strange, or mysterious anomalies have any of you picked up on homemade, do-it-yourself telecommunications equipment? Any Vast of Night experiences out there? So far, thankfully, we haven’t had anything remotely like Orson Welles’ dramatic radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, H. G. Well’s novel about an alien invasion of Earth and the human response to it back across Halloween 1938.

William Dudley Bass
Saturday 18 April 2026
Monday 20 April 2026
Shoreline/Seattle, WA
USA
Earth
Sol

Copyright © 2026 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.