You can only listen to someone else’s radio at sunrise for so long before wanting to make it stop.

So, what would you do if your neighbor’s early morning radio blared through the wall every day, even after you asked them to turn it down? Would you keep wearing earplugs to tune it out? Or would you find a more creative way to make the noise stop for good?

In the following story, one engineering student finds himself in this situation and puts his technical skills to work. Here’s what he did.

Thin Walls and a Frequency Generator

A number of years ago, I lived in Montreal in a rather thin-walled apartment. My neighbour’s kitchen was against my bedroom, and at some point, the absolute delight of a human being started turning her radio on shortly before 6:00 am.

I tried to talk to her and asked her to simply move it away from the shared wall or not use it, but there was no change.

Then, I sent a registered letter to the landlord asking for some action to be taken, but again, nothing changed.

He asked his boss if he could borrow a frequency generator.

At the time, I was studying Electrical Engineering and learning about how radios worked. Internally to the radio, whatever frequency you are listening to gets converted to what is known as an Intermediate Frequency, and then the rest of the circuitry amplifies and filters this one frequency.

I had underused frequency generators at work, so I asked if I could borrow one for a bit. I got a few strange looks and questions, but ultimately got permission to borrow one for a few weeks.

I set it up in my bedroom, did the basic settings for an unmodulated frequency matching the intermediate frequency for the neighbour’s radio, jammed a rudimentary antenna in the back, and went to bed.

It only took a few weeks to make lasting changes.

When I was woken by the neighbour’s radio instead of just jamming in earplugs and trying to go back to sleep, I jumped up and switched on the frequency generator.

Suddenly, there was silence from the neighbour’s radio.

I then modulated my signal with a 1kHz tone that was extremely annoying, but my earplugs filtered it out. Knowing that this could interfere with others and also be illegal, I tested it against my own radio, which was about five meters away, and it wasn’t impacted.

Was it better shielding against my attack, or was it the distance? I didn’t care that the neighbour stopped using her radio in her kitchen, and I returned the frequency generator after a couple of weeks.

Wow! What a clever way to get her back.

Let’s check out how the readers over at Reddit feel about his engineering skills.

According to this comment, the FCC monitors behavior like this.

Here’s another electrical engineer.

This reader did the same thing.

Must have been cool to see.

Engineering skills are so useful! He was lucky to have the know-how to do this.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.