Greetings:

For some reason I happened to think of a humorous event from back in 1989 when I was working for General Electric Aerospace Division, in Utica, NY. It was not quite so funny at the time.

I was assigned to design the front end for a multi-channel L-band airborne electronic warfare receiver. This being my first job after having recently graduated with my BSEE, I was scrambling trying to come up to speed on all the new terms and formulas for receivers with their attendant filters, amplifiers, limiters, couplers, switches, etc. An experienced engineer from another GE division lent some expertise on building a simple power level detector for the ALC circuit, using a couple Schottky diodes. The schedule was getting a bit tight, so he volunteered to part with a handful from his own stash and put half a dozen of them in the mail for me.

Well, a few days later the much-anticipated diodes arrived in the mail... in a standard business envelope... with no padding. They were all pulverized into sand-like particles, with the readily identifiable black diode specs and gold bond wires mixed in.

He was genuinely surprised when I call to tell him of the damaged diodes.

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- Kirt Blattenberger 
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster