Matt Roberds wrote:
Definitely [sacrifice] a cat [to appease the radio gods].

Even though I like cats, I have to agree. However, for transponder problems
a parrot is preferred.

Attributed to Albert Einstein:

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull
his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you
understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send
signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that
there is no cat.