On the Air

how AM, SSB and FM actually work W4BRD
Listening to

Listen to modulation, don't just read about it

This is a complete transmitter and receiver running in your browser. Speak into your microphone or play a sample, and watch a real carrier get modulated, cross a noisy channel, and get demodulated again — while you listen to every stage.

The carrier sits in the audio band (a few kHz) instead of a few MHz, so you can hear the RF. Every equation is the real one.

Headphone users: start with the volume low.

Message the audio going into the transmitter
Modulated carrier what actually goes out of the antenna
Recovered audio what comes out of the receiver's speaker
Spectrum where the power sits on the band
Waterfall the same spectrum, scrolling through time
Phasor the signal as a rotating vector