As we near the end of this long, strange journey towards achieving superluminal communications, I want to take a moment to congratulate you on making it this far. Almost everything that needs to be said has been said… almost. Our journey has been anything but simple, filled with surprises and twists. Superluminal communications are no exception, and there is one final twist I must share. It is the main reason I put further development of my system on hold over a decade ago.
At the beginning of this journey, I promised that if you stayed with me until the end, you would have enough understanding to build your own FTL radio. I have done my best to fulfill that promise. Now, as you read these final pages, which are perhaps the most difficult for me to write, I hope you will understand why I felt the decision to pause the development of the QTEC system for the immediate future was necessary. Some things which involve human destiny are more important than fortune or fame.
Now that you have been fully exposed to my idea, and even if you feel you can proceed based on the knowledge you have gained, it is my sincere hope you, too, will choose to do the wise thing and pause development as well.
When I began developing Quantum Transition Event Communications, it was sparked by a powerful vision. Before it had a name or a defined purpose, it was driven by a dream that inspired me to push boundaries. That dream fueled my ambitions and never abandoned me. I can honestly say that it was something I was prepped for literally from the womb. Growing up around commercial radio broadcasting gave me a firsthand look at the industry, from sales through management and engineering.
My dad held various jobs at radio stations, starting with sales and culminating in management positions. My mom loved being the friendly face people would see first, holding various secretarial and receptionist roles. By the time the 1970s rolled around and I was in junior high school, I had a unique insight into most aspects of commercial AM and FM radio stations—an insight my peers couldn't imagine.
Keeping any commercial radio station running required a lot of versatility, and I absorbed many facets of the business from my parents. However, the area I was most interested in happened to be the one area my parents couldn't help me with: the actual operation and tuning of commercial broadcast equipment. This was the domain of the Chief Engineer. The Chief Engineer (CE) had extensive experience in electronics engineering, having spent years working with and designing transmitting equipment. This expertise was complemented by his possession of a First Class Radiotelephone Operator License, showcasing both his technical proficiency and elite access. This unique combination ensured he was well-prepared for any challenges that arose, seamlessly bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application. And I have to admit, it was the CE's job that most held me enthralled.
The transmitter unit, the electrical heart of any radio station, was a large rectangular metal enclosure housing dual 4-1000A power tubes connected to a pair of AM antenna towers. The CE, Al, had the job of keeping this beast running smoothly—a job he took very seriously. I can still remember the blue glow these tubes emitted when they were in operation, which was always—they were never turned off. Though they seemed magical to me, I recall how annoyed Al became whenever I mentioned the magic of watching the machinery in operation.
"It's not magic, David," he would say. "It's engineering. Scientists develop the theory, and engineers apply that knowledge to build things we use to make our lives better. That blue glow in the transmitter tubes, for example, is called fluorescence. It's pretty, all right, I'll admit. But that's because the radiation from those tubes doesn't get out. That's what that open-air metal grill is for. It keeps the dangerous EMI* inside the console while allowing air to pass through for cooling."
Well, for a precocious 13-year-old boy, it might as well have been magic. But I understood what Al was telling me. I wanted to know more. Al told me to study 'electronics'. At the time, I didn't dare ask Al what 'EMI' stood for... Al was normally a nice guy, but he didn't suffer fools gladly, and I was afraid I'd strayed too far into that territory already.
*For the curious: Even though the grill has holes for air flow and visibility, similar to the grill on a microwave oven door, it's designed to manage and contain EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) generated by the transmitter, including stray RF fields and microwaves, which could damage other components and pose a biological hazard for anyone who gets too close — like a 13 year old curiosity filled kid, for example.
From the spark of curiosity to a pioneering quest, this was the start of everything. When the time came, I took every electronics class available at the local high school - which was actually quite a lot. In the process, I became pretty good at it. Eventually, I even got my Ham radio license. What motivated me wasn't so much talking to others all over the world, although that was a fascinating experience. No, my main motivation for obtaining the amateur license was that it gave me the ability to legally create and operate my own homebrew transmitters and experiment with various designs.
Then came college, of course. The local junior college in Modesto, California, had an excellent electronics program, and I split my time soaking up every electronics course I could get into, as well as taking the pure science prep courses I'd need for an eventual Bachelor of Science in Physics at the local University, CSU Stanislaus. Heck, it was stuff I'd need for both my degree and my growing electronics hobby... I had a fun time, for sure!
Then came QTEC. Slowly, I went from theoretical first principles to working examples of homebrew superluminal communicators. None of the initial designs worked very well, as I've detailed on this web site. But the first successful data transfer in the late 90's proved it could work. I knew how inefficient my first designs were and how far I would need to go before something commercially viable could be produced. Little by little, I characterized different types of parameters and how they interacted with each other. Eventually, I realized how instrumental the actual noise produced by various stages was in creating an effective superluminal pipeline. This pipeline lasted long enough to transfer test signals across the few inches separating the DMC from the RLB on my workbench. Slowly increasing the distance between the units while introducing shielding to block any conventional signal - and failing - proved something non-standard was happening.
One of the most interesting tests was proving that the actual signal was truly faster than light. Using a homebrew RF transmitter alongside my QTEC device, I designed a circuit that activated both simultaneously and measured the wavefront detection time by their respective receiving circuits. This allowed me to compare propagation delay times. In all cases, the RF signal followed expected propagation times based on the speed of light. QTEC always produced the same results, indicating zero propagation delay from transmit to receive, within the accuracy of my equipment.
Additionally, when measuring the time it took for each circuit to actually work—the time it took from pushing the 'on' switch to measuring a signal appearing at the other end—then subtracting that result from the total, it didn't alter the final result for either circuit. When both transmit devices were placed inside grounded Faraday cages, the RF transmitter was completely shielded, as expected. The DMC, however, remained unaffected. Even placing the RLB within a grounded Faraday cage made no difference to signal reception.
At the same time, I needed to do whatever I could to increase the pipeline efficiency. If I couldn't detect the signal, for all intents and purposes, it didn't exist. This was measured by the number of electrons undergoing the quantum transition event (QTE). With only a few electrons making the transition per second, the effective bandwidth was severely limited. As I mentioned earlier, every attoampere of current corresponds to only six electrons per second. Good luck detecting just six electrons per second... I knew it could be done, just not within my budget. So, I was forced to work blind, trying various techniques to raise the pipeline efficiency into the high attoampere to low femtoampere range to get meaningful data. Eventually, I was successful, raising pipeline efficiency well into the femtoampere range. This was around the time I began to realize how critical noise was to circuit operation and, surprisingly, how things sometimes worked better when there was more noise rather than less.
Looking back on what I've just written, it all might sound like everything went smoothly. While that makes for a neat narrative- A follows B follows C- the reality had its bumps. Generally, the development process did progress smoothly. But there were personal hiccups - recovering from surgeries or being confined to a hospital bed. Then there was COVID, shrinking our world down to masks and toilet paper shortages. Beyond that, there were unexpected issues with QTEC's development I couldn't have foreseen or predicted... storm clouds on the horizon...
The phrase "storm clouds on the horizon" resonates with anyone facing a significant moment. It captures that gut feeling of something major approaching—whether it brings challenges or breakthroughs. These "storm clouds" can lead to disruption or enlightenment, often reshaping our understanding and driving progress. It's a phrase that perfectly embodies the mix of excitement and apprehension that comes with exploring the unknown.
My 'storm cloud' began to develop around 2012. It started with a literal pop! and my circuit died. Through a mix of strategic thinking, more brute force than I'd have liked to admit, along with a hefty dose of pure luck, I had finally managed to increase the pipeline efficiency into the low picoampere range. Those were exciting times, and I was convinced that if I could refine the noise parameters effectively, the sky would be the limit.
Instead, I was conducting a post-mortem on a dead circuit. It was clear where the trouble had started: TD 7 in the tunnel diode matrix located in the DMC had fried, along with TD 4 in the RLB. Alongside the tunnel diodes, some low-voltage control circuitry had also failed. Whatever had happened, it began with TD 7 and TD 4, then spread from there.
Examining the other diodes in both matrices revealed strange results. Before using each tunnel diode, I had created individual current-voltage curves for each unit, showing their negative resistance regions. On inspecting them, I discovered their curves had changed. They had all been damaged by what I assumed was some kind of voltage surge that affected the entire section of the circuit. They all had to be replaced. This was a real setback. In all, eighteen tunnel diodes worth about three hundred dollars had been destroyed—a heavy hit for a no-budget operation.
As for the nature of the instability, I couldn't find any malfunctioning equipment. The power supplies to both devices were still working correctly; they were low voltage, low current supplies derived from DC batteries. This shouldn't have happened. The fact that both the DMC and the RLB were involved, despite running on separate lines, indicated that the FTL connection was involved. It was as if I had tried to send a kilovolt spike through it instead of a microvolt sine wave.
When I examined the data logs showing various parameters such as pipeline efficiency and signal strength, I pieced together enough information to reveal that something extraordinary had occurred within the pipeline. Looking at the number of QTEs per time interval, everything appeared to be normal. I was running the efficiency at around 80 picoamperes, which was a new record for me. The next instant, the graph went vertical and then flatlined. My data logger had tried to follow what was happening, but it didn't have the resolution or speed to capture anything useful. It was as if I was running the pipeline a thousand times more efficiently than I possibly could have, and some kind of energy surge had occurred, frying everything in its path.
But where had this surge originated? I knew nothing I was running could cause the level of destruction I had seen. QTEC is a process that involves miniscule, carefully controlled power levels. There was nothing in the entire system that could generate such an out-of-bounds condition, especially where it had occurred. The DMC and the RLB were isolated systems. Any short circuit capable of taking them out would result in equipment damage I could easily detect - like needing a fire extinguisher.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results... So, after thoroughly reviewing my now-repaired circuit, I decided to tempt fate and switch it back on. 80 picoamperes, fingers crossed, and—no magic smoke. Guess insanity takes the day off sometimes! Whatever it was, I hoped it had been a one-off event. Perhaps it was just a defective component, or a bit of dust where it didn't belong... I found myself leaning towards denial. Much like Ebenezer Scrooge, who tells the ghost of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" when he first encounters him "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" Scrooge's disbelief mirrors my own reluctance to accept that my brainchild could throw an electrical tantrum...
Then, two weeks later, while running the pipeline close to 100 picoamperes, I heard another familiar pop! and then things died. It had happened again. I remember saying, "Damn. Mister Popper paid us a visit again." I realized I had given a name to my foe. Mister Popper. Funny. And probably expensive. I was right.
This time, the surge was more severe, with more destroyed components. A multimeter I had attached directly to the RLB died as well. The surge was powerful enough to take out my CAT 3 rated Extec multimeter, which could handle up to 600 volts. I had nothing near that voltage level. This wasn't a static discharge, which would fry circuitry in either the DMC or the RLB, but not both. This time, TD3 and TD5 in their respective units were casualties. The information cost me dearly: a trusted digital multimeter and hundreds of dollars in components.