Official Mt. Airy Website

Melanie and I moved into our new house in Mt. Airy, NC, on April 13 (a Friday!), 2007. Mt. Airy's claim to fame (other than now being the headquarters of RF Cafe) is that U.S. movie star Andy Griffith was born here. If you have watched the Andy Griffith Show that ran in the 1960s, then you will remember references to local areas, the most notable being Mt. Pilot. Mt. Pilot is actual a reversal of Pilot Mountain, a prominent peak to the south of here. Mt. Airy is unofficially referred to as "Mayberry," and it seems like half the businesses here are named after Goober, Aunt Bea, Gomer, Floyd, and the other cast of characters. Even the local mall (very small) is named the Mayberry Mall.

One of the best aspects of most of North Carolina (in regions other than the the largest cities like Raleigh and Charlotte) is that housing costs are unbelievably low. Our 1.3-acre acre house in Kernersville, that had a 4-car garage and an 8-acre lake across the street, just sold for $171k, and we bought this new house, located on a little over an acre, for a mere $130k (we also bought the 1+ acre next to it for an additional $18k). Property taxes are around $1k in both places. Try doing that in just about any other town. An engineer or technician can live like a king in the Piedmont-Triad area (Greensboro/Winston-Salem/High Point) when working for outstanding companies like RFMD, Tyco, or a handful of other high-tech establishments.

Here is the official RF Cafe workshop. It is a combination of electronics equipment and model airplane equipment. See below for the electronics bench. There is not much time available these days for pursuing modeling, but most of what I do anymore has replaced nitro fuel power with electric power. The new lithium-based battery technology and brushless motors have provided power trains that equal, and in many cases exceed, the fuel-powered versions. Here is my Model Aircraft website.

The other side of the workshop contains the household maintenance and project equipment and supplies. Everything is within the modest budget of RF Cafe's proprietor (that's me). Bench top versions of a band saw, drill press, grinder, belt sander, and power miter saw are used both from a cost and available space standpoint. I have a respectable collection of power hand tools like a couple drills (including a hammer drill), a grinder, planer, orbital sander, corner sander, belt sander, reciprocating saw, circular saw, saber saw, etc.

Official RF Cafe electronics workbench. I have sold off some equipment over the years because most of what I needed was available in the labs where I worked. Only the essentials remain, like an oscilloscope, triple output DC power supply, DMM, analog multimeter, and very importantly, a Metcal SP200 instant-on soldering system. After using a Metcal for the first time when working for Xetron, in Cincinnati, OH, I cannot bear to wait for a soldering iron to heat up. It also does a great job of maintaining a constant tip temperature regardless of the heat load (to within reason, obviously).

Almost all of my test equipment has been purchased through eBay. Here is a free tip (not my idea) that will serve you well. If you really want the best chance at winning a bid at a good price, never place your bid until the last possible moment; I normally wait for less than 10 seconds left. That is called "sniping," (not snipping). Doing so discourages the back and forth price increases throughout the auction. Just be sure that the price you snipe with is the maximum price you are willing to pay, since you only have one shot at it, and there could be someone else lying in wait just like you.

Being an amateur weather enthusiast, which is a natural compliment to my interest in all flying things (airplanes, helicopters, rockets, parachutes, etc.), I of course have an obligatory weather station. The official RF Cafe weather station shown is made by La Crosse, and includes a remote wireless anemometer, thermometer, and hygrometer. The inside unit sits on the official RF Cafe work station. Somehow during the household move in April, I managed to misplace the cable that goes between the local receiver and the computer, so my software is not recording a log of the local weather at the moment. For the same reason some people memorize pi (π) to the 100th decimal point, I like to track weather statistics. NOAA has nothing to fear from my efforts, but they are certainly more accurate than what I can get from AccuWeather.com. Sure, I do not have the Nexrad weather radar capabilities of AccuWeather, either, but with my newly acquired vantage point that sports a 180° of the Blue Ridge mountains, I can usually look out the window and see weather rolling in.

I installed this whole-house surge protector (GE Industrial Systems SurgePro™) shortly after moving in. Sitting atop this hill, we receive quite a lot of lightning strikes so the $80 is a small price to pay. I have, and still do, always used local surge protectors at the receptacles, so this is an extra level of protection. We are not the highest point around, but I am seriously considering installing a lightning rod. That wonderful invention by Benjamin Franklin prevented the rampant lightning-induced fires in Philadelphia's tall buildings (where they were installed).

The official RF Cafe UPS (uninterruptible power supply) is an APC model NS1250. It provides surge protection and power backup. Here at the hilltop of Mt. Airy, we get more than our fair share of power outages, too, so this UPS's ability to let my entire Dell XPS 400 computer system to run for about 20 minutes on backup is a really nice feature for riding through the hiccups. One of the most annoying features of the brief outages is that the cable modem and wireless router. They are also plugged into the backup outlet to eliminate that hemorrhoid.

To top off the whole suite, I have a Troy-Bilt, 5550 W portable gasoline powered generator (no, it is not left over from the Y2K scare).