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All the News Fit to Link™
-Archive-
Freescale Semiconductor
Has 20 Employees on Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight
EMphobes Move to Greenbank, WV, Radiotelescope Town to Escape Radiation
(those nuts will probably ruin the radio silence of the
area)
Industry Canada Rolls out Updated Ham Radio Question Pool
World
Wide Web Turns 25 Years Old
FCC Looks to 5 GHz Band, 600 MHz Guard Bands for Unlicensed Wireless
Here's Why Bitcoin Matters
Excalibur Brings High-Energy Lasers Closer to the Field
Free Wi-Fi Hotspots
Pose Data Risk, Europol Warns
Spin
Waves Cut Logic Power
Out of the Shadows, a Tech Hub in Luxembourg
IBM Factory Strike Shows Shifting China Labor Landscape (harder
to oppress & exploit with world's eyes on you)
Considering the History of Electric Cars...
Pentagon Drone Spending to Reach $2.45B
Daylight Saving Time Can Be a Danger to Your Health
(time to do away with it)
EU's 5G Plans
'Falling Far Short'
Fed Ruling May Bring Flocks of Buzzing Drones to U.S. Skies
By 2020, There Will Be 10 Web-Connected Devices per Human
 This
is scary. Believe it or not, there is a group of scientists who think it might be a good
idea to beam very low frequency (VLF) radiation into the upper
atmosphere to erase the
Van Allen
radiation belts. I kid you not. An article in the March 2014 edition of IEEE's Spectrum
magazine describes a plan to clear out the proton cloud residing in the inner belt
(1,000 - 9,600 km altitude) and the electron cloud hovering
in the outer belt (13,500 - 58,000 km altitude). Both Van Allen
radiation belts, particularly the outer ring, are hazardous to electronics, i.e., satellites,
because of the circuit-frying potential due to a build-up of electric charges that can,
under certain conditions, penetrate an imperfect Faraday shield...
 Since
1961, MECA has served the microwave industry specific to passive components in the DC to
20 GHz frequency range. MECA serves all areas of the RF/Microwave industries including
world class network
 providers,
and supporting supply chain infrastructure. We have long been the "backbone" of high performance
wired and air-interfaced networks such as in-building applications, satellite communications,
radar, radio communications, telemetry applications, mobile radio, aviation & air traffic
communications.
 You
will want to see this. Collecting thousands of QSL cards and photographs of their Ham radio
operators and radio equipment is a monumental accomplishment today, but it was even more
of a challenge in the early and middle part of the last century. You must actually make
contact with the station to legitimately collect a QSL card, and then the remote operator
must be willing to absorb the cost of mailing you a card. Mail service, particularly from
some overseas locations, was no guarantee of successful delivery. A large portion of radio
installations were cobbled together by their operators from scrap parts and had marginal
functionality, even into the 1960s and '70s, so contacts were more difficult. As early as
1924, Don Retzlaff's grandfather,
Thomas "Tom" Russell Gentry (W5RG) began the process where
over a span of more than half a century he acquired more than 5,000 QSL cards from all over
the Earth...
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Radio Control News
Printed Circuits & Capacitors
 1954
was just a decade after World War II, during which time the Army Signal Corps introduced
a method of printing - or etching - metallic circuit conductors on an insulator substrate,
and thus was born the
printed circuit board (PCB). The first boards used a phenolic-paper
laminate, which is the shiny brown substrate material that is still found in some industrial
applications like motors and control panels. Ferric chloride was used to etch away the copper
foil not masked off with photoresist chemicals. I made many crude PCBs using a resist ink
pen to draw circuit traces and component mounting pads, then etched away the exposed copper
with ferric chloride...
Physics & Engineering
Crossword for March 9, 2014
 Every
Sunday I create an
engineering-
and science-themed crossword puzzle using a word list that I personally created and
added to during over a decade of making puzzles. All of the words are related to engineering,
science, mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. There are no numbnut clues about movie
stars or clothing designers. Enjoy.
Thanks to Dow-Key Microwave
for Their Support
 Dow-Key
Microwave is the world's largest manufacturer of electromechanical
switches for RF and microwave applications.
Founded in 1945, we are also the oldest
 continuously
operating RF / microwave switch manufacturer in the U.S. Dow-Key specializes in customized,
high-performance coaxial, waveguide, and high-rel switches, as well as switching systems
such as RF matrices and system-level rack integration, programmable attenuators, and delay
lines.
White Paper: Close Proximity
Co-Located GPS Receivers
 Parsec
Technologies has published a white paper titled "Low
Noise Amplifier (LNA) Linearity Impacts to Close Proximity
Co-Located GPS L1 Receivers." A commercial low-cost GPS L1 (Fc
= 1575.42 MHz) receiver in close physical proximity to a 2G/3G/4G compliant cellular
handset transceiver FEM is analyzed for performance impacts related to various forms of
electromagnetic interference. A description of how the GPS L1 receiver works is presented.
GPS L1 receiver link budgets, simulation and measured receiver data, and spurious...
Thanks to PCB Material World
for Longtime Support
 PCB
Material World is an independent distributor and market maker of
PCB raw materials, located
near
 Chicago.
We buy, list and sell PCB raw materials such as copper clad laminates, copper foil, drill
backer and entry, among other items. Our objective is to act as a buy-sell PCB materials
exchange; enabling efficiency in materials usage for PCB manufacturing. Our emphasis is
on high end and/or hard-to-find products such as microwave materials, colors, heavy coppers,
and obsolete and other non standard products.
8 New Titles Added to
Book Drawing Selection
 Thanks
to the generosity of Artech House and Cambridge University Press, eight new books have been
added to the selection available to monthly
RF Cafe Book Drawing
winners. There are currently 21 titles to choose from if you are the lucky person. To date,
I have given away more than 90 books, and have paid the shipping cost on all of them. It
is one way to thank the many visitors and contributors to RF Cafe's ongoing success.
 Dean
F., of Suwanee, GA, is the February 2014,
RF Cafe book drawing winner.
Dean selected
Integration of Passive RF Front-End Components in SoCs, by Hooman Darabi and
Ahmad Mirzaei. Each month I select one or two names from a list of people who have
either ordered one of my RF Cafe software
products, or sent me an e-mail asking t obe entered. The book was Graciously provided
by Cambridge University
Press
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 "There
is also the great driving force which we know under the name of religion. From religion
comes a man's purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion
and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers
of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can
be grasped. It is right, therefore, with all our heart to learn what will help us in the
work we want to do, so that when the call comes we can say, 'I am here...
A Few Free Technical Books
(you pay shipping)
 A
few of the
technical
books generously donated by major publishers like Artech House and Cambridge University
Press are not likely to be selected by the RF Cafe monthly
Book Drawing winners,
and have been sitting on my shelf for a year or so. I would never consider selling them,
but they do deserve good homes because the information is very interesting. If you are willing
to pay for me to ship them to you, I will be glad to do so. If you would like any of the
books below, please send me an e-mail with your zip code...
API Intros Broadband
8-12 GHz Limiting Amplifier
 API
Technologies announces a new broadband
8-12 GHz limiting amplifier ideally suited for demanding military
 requirements
and high-end commercial applications such as microwave receivers, microwave telemetry systems,
uplink communications platforms, instrumentation, and military communications systems. It
features excellent output flatness of 1 dB that is independent of the input, and allows
for inputs levels from -20 to -10 dBm.
 If
your workplace is anything like the ones I have experienced, most print issues of magazines
end up in the mail room recycle bin or trash can - they never make it out the door. You
might even scan the TOC and dog-ear a couple pages for later reading, but seldom get around
to it before ultimately chucking them in the can. Fortunately, you can read the articles
online if you know they exist. I post a list like this one about once a week to help you
keep track.
»
Microstrip Antenna Maintains
Low Profile
»
Hall Effect Sensors Measure
Fields and Detect Position
»
Understanding Adjacent
Channel Power
Measurements in Spectrum
Analysis
»
Sigma Delta ADCs : A Non-
Mathematical Approach
 Founded
in 2005, LadyBug Technologies manufactures the PowerSensor™ line of miniaturized
USB RF & microwave power sensors.
LadyBug manufactures high accuracy average, pulse, and pulse profiling sensors
 with
GUI interfaces covering up to 26.5 GHz and 80 dB dynamic range. These sensors
set a, patented industry standard, No Zero / No Cal technology. There is no need
to disconnect or wait for internal zeroing and calibration prior to making accurate low
power measurements.
 Here
is your chance to own a pile of
vintage
electronics magazines for just the cost of shipping. As you are probably aware, for
the past few years I have been buying vintage editions of QST, Popular Electronics,
Electronics World, Radio & TV News, Radio-Electronics, and
Wireless World, for the purpose of scanning and posting articles that I believe
will be of interest to RF Cafe visitors. UPDATE:
All have been claimed. Thanks!
 This
quiz from Popular Electronics challenges (not too much, though)
your knowledge of
energy conversion in common devices. A few of them might be unfamiliar to people born
after about 1990, but even so, you've probably seem them all at some point, especially if
you are a regular RF Cafe visitor (meaning you're probably smart).
Robert P. Balin constructed many of this type quiz for PE. In fact, clicking on the
following hyperlink will find the
Popular Electronics Quizzes for you.
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Nova Microwave
Acquires ISO Certification
 Nova
Microwave, a subsidiary of Electro Technik Industries (ETI),
is now certified to ISO: 2008 by SAI Global. Nova Microwave designs and manufactures
 isolators
and circulators for RF and microwave commercial and defense applications. Nova Microwave
offers a number of different styles from drop-ins to surface mounts. The frequency ranges
from 380 MHz to 23.6 GHz with average power ratings from 2 to 250 watts.
Win This 3-Volume Set
Handbook of Reflector
Antennas and Feed Systems
 It
has been many years since I presented a questionnaire to website visitors in order to get
a measure of what people like or dislike and what new feature(s)
might be useful. In order to qualify as an entry, you must fill out the 15-question form
in its entirety. A winner will be randomly selected. As an incentive for you to
take a few minutes of your busy day to complete and submit the form, I am offering as compensation
a chance to win the 3-volume set titled
Handbook of Reflector
Antennas and Feed Systems: "Theory and Design of Reflectors," "Feed Systems," and
"Applications of Reflectors," published by Artech House. This represents a $627 retail value.
Music Power Rating
- Help or Hindrance?
 Most
of us, long before being introduced to the concept of power in electrical circuits, learn
about it in terms of mechanical power and/or sound power. It takes some doing to abandon
the esoteric nature of power and be trained to grasp the scientific and mathematical
aspects of power in all its forms. When the driving source is steady state or a pure sinewave,
life is relatively simple, but such is more often than not an exception to the system being
studied. Here is a nice, short treatise on the concept of sound power that will augment
your earlier-learned knowledge of
music power rating.
AWR Announces Winners for
Taiwan U. Student Competition
 AWR
Corporation announces the winners of its
2013 National Taiwan University Student Design Competition. AWR partnered with National
Taiwan University in mid-2013 to sponsor the first ever Taiwan Student Design Competition.
The objective of the competition was to encourage students
in Taiwan to become involved in the dynamic profession of microwave and RF engineering and
to apply their knowledge to practical designs using the highly efficient AWR design methodology...
Carl & Jerry: TV Antennas
 In
this episode of Carl & Jerry, the teens ponder a question posed by Jerry's mother upon
looking down their hillside home: "[L]ook at all those
TV antennas down there. Hardly two of them are alike; yet they're all intended to receive
the same stations. How come there are so many different kinds?" That was all the pair needed
to set them off in an investigation to determine the answer. Being avid electronics and
RF hobbyists and experimenters, they discuss the principles of how antennas work, various
types of transmission lines, impedance matching, antenna types, bandwidth, and other topics
relevant to the challenge. As with most Carl & Jerry stories, the intent is to educate...
 This
story appeared on a news website I found while gathering daily tech headlines... in case
you've forgotten where your e-waste is likely to end up. According to German photographer
Kevin McElvaney, the 40,000 Agbogbloshie (near Accra) locals
call their land
Sodom &
Gomorrah, after the Biblical city that was destroyed by fire. This is just one small
part of the world where such activities are daily routine for those living in abject poverty.
BTW, similar sacrifices
are made to build our e-devices in the first place during the extraction of raw materials
and during manufacturing and transportation of finished goods. Many of our clothes, vehicles,
appliances, tools, sports items, food containers, and other items pass through...
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Kirt
