U.S. warns about Canadian spy coins (AP)

Oh, Canada.

I used to have one of those coins, way back in the early 1960's. when just a wee lad. would not that coin be a Faraday Cage? .. Put your mobile phone in a closed tin, and see how many calls you get.

But if the case of the coin is the antenna, then it works just fine.

Hah, I bet you've still got it!

I should have, but I think my own lad Harry is in possession, or one of the daughters? They used to make them from 'foreign currency'. Quite a good way for an engineer to earn pin money in his spare time. Two worthless coins turned (Litter ally) back to negotiable currency.

What's the sense of planting transmitters in coins anyway? Is it not that coins are round, and as the saying goes that "money rolls".

How long will a specific coin be in someone's possession before they hand it out? The Canadian Secret Service may end up sending a smart-bomb up some poor bum's (hobo) alley.

Bulletjie, dit lyk vir my asof die Kanadanese Gehieme Dienste vat n blaai uit die ou BOSS se boeke.

Geniet jou dag verder en mag die Sharks die Super 14 wen die jaar!

Absolutely right!!!

Wangito.

Hi wangito, for other readers of CR4, this might help:-

http://www.freedict.com/onldict/afr.html

An African to English Dictionary.

Can someone send it back, I want to track how my wife spends my money,

sorry

It would be simpler to use the software within a mobile telephone as most contractors wear one. One is never alone with a mobile phone.

Very good point, have you see the comment by bulletjie. My change usually ends up in a donation tin at a corner cafe(I guess that would be equivalent to a drug store in the US). I suppose the answer would be that if the little corner shop gets nuked sometime.....well. I still have a problem with the logic of this one, well what I mean to say is that device could just as easily end up back in some home base!

Nothing like a little blue on blue to stimulate anger and resentment, ask the British troops in Iraq just how deadly (no pun intended) an American Apache Gunship is?

Ah "Q", you should have picked a shilling. I never carry Canadian coins. And besides, old fellow, now that your secret is out I'll get rid of all my coins well before I bag Miss Moneypenny.

Hmmm, well I know that when I get back to the States, my Canadian coin goes into a little section of a drawer in my home so it doesn't get mixed up with American coins. Contractors with high security clearance theoretically won't be talking shop at home.

Not to mention that if I've got change in my pocket, I'll usually dish it out at the nearest "Tim Horton's" if I'm up in Canada.

That said, I guess it's not so much the coin as how it got planted on the contractors that's the bigger issue. Oh well, no sense getting paranoid ... I think I'll go get some coffee now ... hmmm, Canadian quarter - wonder if they'll take it.

Aha! So that Canadian coin buried at centre ice in the Salt Lake City Olympics may have affected the gold medal hockey games after all.

We replaced that years ago with a commemorative Fry Sauce Pin...

T-Rex in Salt Lake City

www.iscifi.tv

Reportedly, the coins are only 85% as effective as similar US Dollar based coins, as depicted in the accompanying photo.

ROFLOL

Seriously, have you seen the "toonie"? This Two Dollar coin is made in two parts, an outer ring of 99% nickel (makes a nice loop antenna!) and a center slug of 92% copper with 6% aluminum and 2% nickel. Early production was defective and the center easily popped out! Wikipedia says:

"Many toonies in the first shipment of the coins were defective, and could separate if struck hard or frozen, as the centre piece would shrink more than the outside. This problem was quickly corrected, and the initial wave of "toonie popping" blew over a few months after the coin's introduction."

I'll bet with the right tools and enough force you can still pop out the center, substitute a ceramic duplicate, painted to match, with electronics encapsilated, et voilá, spy coin! It would have almost the same weight and someone holding the edge would not feel any difference at all. Casual observation of the center would probably not reveal it as a fake either. Since the mostly copper center of the real coin would oxidize and discolor over time, there would be no consistency of appearance that would help separate the imposter.

These things are 1.8 mm thick. Two US nickels ($.05 piece) are only 1.5 mm thick! I can see Americans picking these up and keeping them as souvenirs, rather than spending them. I did the same thing in Europe a few years ago with a few French 20 Franc pieces that had a similar construction. Ooh, I wonder if they were FRENCH SPY COINS!

Yikes! The new French-made 1 and 2 Euro coins are also bi-metallic.

Hmmmmmmmmmm......

What a load of brilliant observations STL, also great pictures, I bet the early version of those 'toonies' are now collectors items. Not so long back we were inundated here in the UK with of all things 'Glass' replicas of our £1 coin. They were used to fool the slot machines. Exactly the same 'bounce' and 'weight' that slot machines used to rely upon to detect duff coins. They were sputtered with a thin coat of metal to look just right......untill it wore off ....or you dropped it on the pavement and it broke. That ring antenna could transmit a long way. The Q.R.P. club here in UK had a competition to transmit to Australia at under a watt. The late King Hussein of Jordon was an honorary member of the Q.R.P. Club, and most members had picked up his Morse signal at some time, many had long sessions with him. All with a tiny ring antenna.

Alastair,

You refer to the "Q.R.P. club". Just FYI, but QRP is not an abbreviation or acronym, and so not Q.R.P. but QRP. Your QRP club was/is probably affiliated with the Radio Society of Great Britain (R.S.G.B.), a member of the International Amateur Radio Union (I.A.R.U.) along with our American Radio Relay League (A.R.R.L.) of which I am a member. QRP is a radiotelegraphy code meaning reduced power. These codes, known as Q-signals, are a kind of shorthand. In use they can be either a question/request, if followed by a question mark, or an answer/statement. An example would be, "QRP?", meaning, "Can you reduce power?" and the answer could be, "QRP 5W", meaning "I am reducing power to 5 watts." Conversely, increased power is QRO. Many other Q-signals relate to location, frequency, code speed, interference, identification, message handling, etc.

King Hussein was not the only well-known Radio Amateur (or "Ham Radio" operator). Here in the U.S. the late actor Arthur Godfry and Senator Barry Goldwater were famous "Hams". TV Journalist Walter Cronkite is also a Ham and narrated a recent video, "Amateur Radio Today". Mr. Cronkite enjoys operating Ham Radio from his sailboat. Rock Star Joe Walsh (formerly of The Eagles) is also a famous personality who is a licensed Ham operator. Along with collecting vintage guitars, Joe enjoys collecting rare antique radio equipment.

Along with being an excellent pastime or hobby, Amateur Radio is often a vital communications link during disastors or emergency situations when normal communications have been disrupted, overloaded, or even demolished. Hams often operate mobile and portable stations which they put, along with themselves, at the disposal of local authorities. Very often, Ham Radio is the only way emergency services can pass messages between each other, because their own communications remain incompatible with each other. The International Red Cross and Salvation Army relief efforts rely on Ham Radio volunteers to keep in touch with teams in disaster stricken and/or remote areas of the world.

It is amazing what some of the Morse operators using CW (Continuous Wave transmissions) can do on very little power, but what is not so well known is how fast a message can get through. Not very long ago there was a contest held on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" pitting a team of two very good CW operators, using very low power amateur radio equipment (the distance was very short, in the same studio) against a team of telephone text messaging champions using the latest cell phones. The CW team won handily.

Encrypted Morse code transmissions have long been used by many governments and their intelligence operatives to transmit information and instructions back and forth, precisely because very little power is needed, and it can be sent and received clandestinely, i.e. no speaking or obvious keyboarding is required. Some sending keys are as simple as very small switches and even touching bare wires together has been used in a pinch. The electronic keyer, often built-in with newer radios, allows high-speed operation because a string of dots ("dih" in radio parlance) or dashes ("dah") can be sent automatically by touching a small paddle or pair of paddles left or right, instead of having to form each "dih" or "dah" manually. A top operator can send and receive between 50-60 words per minute as compared a novice who starts out about 5 w.p.m.

Although voice and digital (keyboard) transmissions now predominate, many Q-signals and other telegraphy short-hand continue to be used as slang or patois by Ham operators. We often end our radio contacts as a CW operator would, by saying "73", which means "Best Regards".

73 de KC0JBJ

QRT

Sitting in my ham shack, looking at my wonderful homebuilt (mostly) radio equipment, and having almost nobody to talk to.... old Friends are leaving and new ones aren't coming in... isn't this why we both made a QSY♣ to this frequency?

How sad.

♣QSY?- Can you move to....

73's

Wangito

CE3AM, ex CE3NSW, ex 4X4SW

What is your favorite (best) band and mode for contacting US stations?

Are you familiar with HFpack? International group of non-power mobile (bicycle, rowboat, walking, etc.) and portable (off main power) operators. Always looking to make contacts, chat, DX, etc. even with non-HFpack stations.

Favorite band was 20M but it is totally dead for the past few years. I can hear the states here and there, provided they have 1 or 2 gallons at least. forget QRP. So for the moment as said b4, am looking at my old dependable rig, and that's about all.

Wangito.

I must defer to your experience STL, A local Rochdale Vicar past President of the "QRP" club also said 'Q' = Low Power & 'RP' stood for Radio Propagated Signal. For myself, I much preferred the 'paddle' type key. Back when I had short trousers and a muddy face, you could send secret messages with a 4.5 volt torch battery and bicycle lamp. The battery had two springy brass terminals. mount the headlight in a long blackened cardboard tube and point to the other one half a mile away, best with a dud battery (also free) as then it was less visible. Sadly I have all but forgotten my Morse code, but like riding a bicycle, I am sure I could get back in the swing of it again.

If you got hold of a 'carbon granule' microphone, you could insert it in series with a car headlight, and with the paint stripped off a Mullard OC71 transistor (made of glass) at the focal point of another scrap car headlight , with a bit of amplification, you could send and receive voice signals. A shop in Dulwich even sold Wood's Glass coated black light bulbs....so you hardly saw the beam. What fun we had.

Alastair,

All Q-signals start with the letter "Q", hence the name, so the Vicar could hardly be right about 'Q' = Low Power. In electrical terms, "Q' is a quality of a tuned circuit or resonant antenna system. "RP" is remembered by some as "Reduced Power", whether or not that is the origin. As mentioned QRO is to increase power. QTH is location. QSL is to acknowledge receipt of a message or transmission (hence the QSL cards exchanged between amateur stations who make contact). QSY, as noted above, change frequency. QRT, go off the air. QRM, man-made interference. QRN, natural interference. QRQ, send faster (Quicker?). QRS, send slower. QST, calling all stations, or calling all Radio Amateurs (also the name of the ARRL journal). QRZ, who is calling (Identification). QPC, Quarter Pounder with Cheese....no,no, just kidding about that last one! Anyway, those are some of the most common Q-signals, there are a lot more, some with rather obscure meanings that must go back to the days of the landline telegraph or early maritime radio.

Regarding clandestine signalling with light, absolutely. The US Navy used it extensively in both World Wars, referring to it as "Semaphore", or more commonly "blinker". I am guessing the RN did so as well. "Coast Watchers", intelligence agents on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific used blinkers to communicate with Allied submarines and surface vessels at night,and so pass messages about enemy troop and ship movements. They may have even used a primitve set-up such as your bicycle light and cardboard tube!

The term "Semaphore" however predates Morse code, and was used for many different long-distance visual messaging techniques. The US Army used a "Semaphore" two-flag system extensively in our Civil War and up through more modern times, based on 8 arm positions, similar to reading a clock with two hands. I learned this code in Boy Scouts and we were able to easily send messages from hilltop to hilltop or from one end of a valley to the other. The Army also used Morse code with a flag by twirling and dipping it to one side or the other representing dots and dashes.

In another parallel, to your headlight voice signal system, in high school in 1973 my partner and I were interested in lasers and tried in vain to produce a quality hologram. Not wanting to fail our project, on the advice of our teacher we changed from holography to communication. By using a simply audio circuit with microphone, amplifier and speaker, with a small mirror mounted onto the cone of the speaker, we were able to bounce the laser beam off the mirror to a target "receiver" at the end of a long hallway. The "receiver" was a simple photo diode connected to another audio amplifer and speaker. The beam would dance around slightly, depending on the intensity and frequency of the audio vibration of the speaker. In this way we used amplitude modulation of the laser beam to send our voice to the receiver. The photo diode acted as a detector, sending an audio frequency signal to the amplifier. Little did we realize that intelligence services were spying on each other, particularly the Soviets on the American Embassy in Moscow, using very similar techniques. By bouncing a laser beam off of window panes, doors, or even thin walls, spies are able to listen in on conversations inside a room or building, without planting any electronic "bugs"! Of course, countermeasures can be taken, but often are not, so this is probably still a very convenient method of "eavesdropping".

Hedy Lamarr.....The genius who devised the 'frequency hop' for Naval Ordnance. You are perfectly correct about 'bouncing laser beams' off windows. My first job taken in a gap year was involved in just such an area. It was a division of Fort Halstead....Here is an old trick, take a length of wood and use a saw to cut triangular notches in it. Make a sort of compass. i.e. nail at one end. Then lay up wet plaster on a wall...smooth off flat.....when the plaster is at 'cheese'...you reminded me of that, 'QPC'.....you proceed to inscribe a Fresnel lens into the fresh plaster. then fill the dints with expanding foam, the stuff in aerosol cans....shave the set foam flat with a razor sharp spatula ..re-plaster a thin screed over that.....Microwaves will be focused by such a lens....both ways.....I have no idea for what purpose.....perhaps to charge a battery?....or send 'Hedy Lamarr frequency hopping instructions?.... Wouldn't we all liked to have worked with Hedy.

Sounds like a good way to start a fire inside a building (or cook a person!) if the microwave energy is high enough. I would hate to be sitting at the focal point. Even low energy, focused on one's head, over time could give someone a brain tumor! Perhaps that is why Hedy is holding her head like that.

I have heard of microwaves being used in the same way as the laser, reflecting off of some large metal surface inside, like a filing cabinet, that was resonating (vibrating) in harmony with voices in proximity to it, and therefore modulating the reflected microwaves. Perhaps the lens is just a way to concentrate and increase the energy density of the incoming microwaves and consequentyly of the reflected beam. Knowing the floor plan for location and angle of the metal cabinet or other vertical metal surface, would allow the spies to place their receiver for best effect. Horizontal surfaces could also be used, but the angle would be much shallower and the receiver would have to be on the opposite side of the building, with possibly more rooms for the energy to pass through and dissipate in.

Sounds very scary, the way you put it STL .....When big office blocks are due for painting and decorating, there is often a 'Holiday' roster. If you happen to be on a floor that is being 'done'.... and you don't want to take your holiday that week, whatever, you have to move to another office for the duration of the renovation. Most of this work is done at night. The management do not want to see painters and decorators all over their big office......You would hardly notice we were there, if we were the firm recruited to do the job. Rest assured no 'Fresnel' plasterwork in the dead of night.

Another interesting note about the "Toonie":

When the coins first came out, people are popping them intentionally to make ear rings and jewelry out of them.

MidniteFighter

I guess if you wanted to 'pop' a 'Toonie' Nickel has a Coefficient of Linear Thermal Expansion of 13.3 x 10-6 C. and Copper 16.6, Aluminium 23.9 respectively.

I guess if you placed it in a small container ....out of doors!.....and vented some lighter gas, till it was covered in liquid butane then pull it out freezing cold, and it would 'pop' quite easily. The copper insert would have shrunk more than the ring. I guess the way they 'Fixed' them was to insert the plug at a much lower temperature.

The Canadian Mint is located in Winnipeg and manufacturing of Toonies is done during the winter for just such a reason.

I hear tales of Canada's cold winters, 'Spit Bounces' and "Don't touch bare metal with bare hands"......Sounds very sensible to me. Thanks for the information 'thermo'

Several other methods may be used to securely join dissimilar metals together. A brazing material may be used which has a co-efficient of thermal expansion nearly halfway between the two metals. Then the two pieces are brazed together using this material. In that way there is less variation between the pieces and the material between them at extremes of temperature. The brazing is also more secure than a simple friction fit.

Another method is to score one or both mating surfaces with parallel serrations or a criss-cross "knurl". In this way, when the two parts are mechanically pressed together there will be more friction than there would be with two smooth surfaces. Also, the metal will deform slightly as it is pressed, being forced to "flow" slightly into the gaps in the surface of the other material by the pressures exerted, thereby forming more of a mechanical bond between the two surfaces.

These two techniques may even be combined for a more secure fit.

You must be a mind-reader STL. I was thinking a 'Cold' high expansion insert...rapidly inserted with rotary-vibration....with a hot insert tool. I did not think of an intermediate 'brazing' alloy, but that would be very helpful in countering the ubiquitous 'metal fatigue' at the interface.

Back in the 1980's we were working to improve the bending moment of Bi-Metallic strip material. The non-corrosive Bi-Metals also tended towards 'Low Activity'

The solution we discovered, (ME..te he) was to make the 'join' or 'weld' between the low expansion alloy i.e. Invar (Fe64/Ni36) which itself was practically 'stainless' and the high expansion alloy (Too many to mention) a 'wavy line' this nearly doubled the bend in the material. and if you do the maths, that can increase the force exerted by the 'square' i.e. nearly four times the 'clamping' force/whatever.

Folks you can do this at home.....just bend a piece of regular bi-metal into a tight wavy line....and place in front of a steaming kettle. one with wave, one without. 'Fractal maths at work'

The trouble was 'economics' as regular bi-metal just starts of as two gigantic blocks of red hot metal, that are slammed together and rolled into sheet of the required thickness......an almost standard procedure in a steel mill.

Then even if one could profile two mating waves into sheet material and say friction weld the two, ....ahah that intermediate brazing alloy might do the trick...plasma spray it on perhaps......but also add to the cost....boo hoo.

Most brazing alloys are applied as a paste, made by grinding the metal into a powder and adding a fluxing agent, like rosin. The flux serves both as a binder to allow the powder to clump and act as a paste, as well as its primary mission, cleaning/preparing the surfaces of the joint, helping the now liquid metal to flow by reducing surface tension, for a good strong bond.