Bell Kite Project Blog

One component of the kite project that I haven't talked about so far is telephony. I want the kite to function as a telecommunications devices in addition to looking like one. However, there are still many details that I need to work out.

There are lots of historical precedents for using kites as communication devices. Early kites were used for surveillance, and later kites were used to lift meteorological instruments. In 1901 Marconi used a kite to raise an antenna that received the first transatlantic wireless communication. Alexander Graham Bell did a lot of pioneering telephone work, however, to my knowledge he never combined his kite and telephone work.

As an experiment I've built a simple telephone intercom from this circuit design. It works great. It could be used for ground to kite communication, or ground to ground communication. I'm also thinking about incorporating a light weight radio scanner such as the this one. Scanners can receive many kinds of transmissions including analogue cellphone signals (this is apparently legal in Canada, though not in the US). I have a bunch of other unformed ideas as well.