 Friday the 14th
 Being a repairman of any sort has always
resulted in a wide variety of customer responses. Of course poor technicians deserve
all the derision they receive, but
good technicians often catch a boatload of grief whether or not their efforts
result in success. Nobody wants to pay more money than he has to, but too often
the owner of a property who is in desperate need of knowledgeable help has a sudden
change from gratitude for the technician's willingness to take on the challenge
to maniacal repulsion when informed of the cost. I have always endeavored to perform
as much needed labor myself as possible, whether it be car repairs, home maintenance,
appliance fixing, electronics troubleshooting, etc. However, there are some things
you simply cannot do for yourself either because of a lack of knowledge, lack of
necessary equipment, or government licensing. On those occasions, I try to remember
be as polite and gracious as possible, even after being presented with a bill including
$90 per hour for a car mechanic...
 "DARPA is working on the next leap forward
in energy distribution by leveraging
wireless power beaming
to create a dynamic, adaptive, speed of light wireless energy web. The goal of the
POWER program is to design and demonstrate airborne optical energy relays. These
relays are a critical component necessary to allow ground-sourced lasers to be coupled
with high-altitude, efficient long-range transmission. Additionally, such relays
will enable future multi-path wireless energy networks. 'This is the internet for
energy - harnessing resilient, multipath networks to flow energy from abundant sources
to energy-starved consumers,' said Col Paul Calhoun, POWER program manager in DARPA's
Tactical Technology Office. 'The military faces particularly acute energy challenges,
which are driving this innovation. We often must operate far from established energy
infrastructure and rely on liquid fuels that require precarious supply lines..."
 This Regency TR-1 transistor radio and leather
pouch will probably have been sold on eBay long ago by the time most people see
it, but there seems to be an ample supply available for collectors if you are willing
to either pay a small fortune for a well-preserved copy like this one, or accept
some wear and tear on a lesser copy. Not surprisingly, there is a website dedicated
to only the Regency TR-1 transistor radio and its history from development through
retail sales. As reported in this January 1955 issue of Radio and Television
News magazine, the TR-1 was the world's first commercially available, fully
transistorized portable radio. A complete schematic and functional description is
provided. It used four germanium transistors and operated on a 22-1/2 volt battery,
which provided about twenty hours of listening pleasure. The unit weighed eleven
ounces and cost $49.95. It had just been released to the public the previous year...
 As a communications systems integrator (CSI)
for the Air Ground Air Transition (AGAT) project lead by BAE Systems,
Rohde & Schwarz Australia has completed its scope of work in 16 months,
despite challenges imposed by the global health crisis. "Working to a tight project
schedule, our team has again been equal to the task," says Managing Director Rohde &
Schwarz Australia Gareth Evans. "This work included provision of over 300 CERTIUM
radios and ancillaries, CERTIUM VCS-4G as the backup voice communications system
and CERTIUM management systems for 12 defense aerodromes across Australia." "To
set up a team and design, deliver and integrate these systems to achieve the factory
acceptance test milestones in under 5 months, and subsequently deliver the systems
for 12 sites over the next 11 months..."
 Declaring any kind of straight LC tank circuit
to be high stability is a bit of a stretch when compared to the Q available simply
by adding a crystal, even in 1958. Tone modulation was an early method for achieving
remote control of model airplanes, boats, and cars. The number of channels with
these
tone modulation systems is two times the number of modern proportional systems
in that moving the rudder left took one channel and moving it right took another.
Up and down elevator likewise took two channels. Therefore, this four channel system
is only two channels by today's terminology. Technology evolved into fully proportional
systems on crystal-controlled 27 MHz using pulse position modulation (PPM),
then to 72 MHz, and today nearly every every R/C uses a combination of frequency-hopping
spread spectrum (FHSS) and direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) in the 2.4 GHz
ISM band...
/jobs.htm" target="_top">
 RF
Cafe's raison d'être is and always has been to provide useful, quality content for
engineers, technicians, engineering managers, students, and hobbyists. Part of that
mission is offering to post applicable /jobs.htm"
target="_top">job openings. HR department employees and/or managers of hiring
companies are welcome to submit opportunities for posting at no charge. 3rd party
recruiters and temp agencies are not included so as to assure a high quality of
listings. Please read through the easy procedure to benefit from RF Cafe's high
quality visitors...
 Alliance Test Equipment sells
used / refurbished
test equipment and offers short- and long-term rentals. They also offer repair,
maintenance and calibration. Prices discounted up to 80% off list price. Agilent/HP,
Tektronix, Anritsu, Fluke, R&S and other major brands. A global organization
with ability to source hard to find equipment through our network of suppliers.
Alliance Test will purchase your excess test equipment in large or small lots. Blog
posts offer advice on application and use of a wide range of test equipment. Please
visit Allied Test Equipment today to see how they can help your project.
Thursday the 13th
 According to Radio-Electronics magazine
editor Hugo Gernsback, 1955 marked the 50th anniversary of "home
radio." You would be excused for maybe thinking the world's first home radio
set was one of the early "tombstone" style tabletop radios in a stylish wooden case,
with a dial on the front for tuning one of the relatively few (at the time) AM stations,
and sometimes even shortwave. In actuality, it the TELIMCO Wireless Telegraph Outfit;
the only audio signal it emitted was fixed tone indicating a dit or a dah. Music
and speaking came a couple years later. Pittsburgh radio station KDKA is famously
the first commercial radio broadcaster, which began operation in 1920. Here are
some KDKA articles: Photographic History of Radiotelephony, Half a Century of Electronics
Publishing...
 This
"Capacitor
Design Techniques for EMC" article is a whole year old - practically an eternity
in today's environment - but it is still relevant and useful. Author Min Zhang begins:
"A discussion on the subject of capacitors could easily become a book or a dictionary.
To start with, there are different types of capacitors such as electrolytic, film,
ceramic capacitors, and so on. Then, within the same type, there are different dielectric
materials. There are also different classes. As for physical construction, there
are two-terminal and three-terminal capacitor types. There's also an X2Y type capacitor
which essentially is a pair of Y-capacitors packaged in one2. What about supercapacitors?
The fact is, if you sit down and start reading the capacitor selection guide of
major manufacturers, you could easily spend a day..."
 Who among us has not purposely hooked up
a power supply to an
electrolytic capacitor and turned up the voltage until it popped? It was a ritual
for new guys in the shop. Admittedly, the ones I've blown up were insignificant
compared to the one shown in this January 1947 Radio News magazine photo where the
staff at Daven Labs reproduced a test failure and was sure to be rolling film during
the process. Hopefully, no one was in the room either time. The Daven Company made
passive components for radios and other types of electronics. An eBay search turns
up some of their vintage equipment. The newspaper clipping (below, right) reporting
the purchase of the Daven Company in 1960 was retrieved using my Newspapers.com
subscription...
 Antenova Ltd, the UK-based manufacturer
of antennas and RF antenna modules for IoT and M2M, is releasing a new, compact
and very efficient
antenna for the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee frequencies at 2.4 - 2.5 GHz. This
new antenna is named Invicta, part number SRFW082. The Invicta antenna averages
efficiency of 70% across the 2.4 GHz band. Consequently designs using this antenna
will operate better, over longer distances and through walls and obstacles, thus
extending the coverage and performance of wireless devices using Bluetooth, Wi-Fi
and ZigBee. Invicta is a Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) antenna, which is easy to
place in a design. It connects directly to the PCB via a cable and IPX MHF (UFL)
connector...
 Did I ever tell the story about a manager
I had at a major defense electronics firm who thought he could make an
NPN transistor by wiring two diodes in series with the anodes tied together?
He reasoned that since a bipolar junction transistor consisted of three alternating
layers of n-type and p-type silicon, the device could be affected per his scheme.
That was in the mid 1980s when I was still a technician (working diligently on my
BSEE degree at night). Needless to say the engineers who worked under him were not
too impressed with the guy's technical prowess (nor his managerial prowess, as I
remember it). I didn't consider myself qualified at the time to judge him one way
or the other, so the fact that he was a good guy made him OK in my book. This article
from the year I was born reports on the advancements during the first decade of
the transistor era. It was just before Christmas of 1948 that Mssrs. Brattain, Bardeen,
and Shockley announced to the world their universe-changing invention...
 This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, and Baseball Caps. Choose from amazingly clever "We Are the World's
Matchmakers" Smith chart design or the "Engineer's Troubleshooting Flow Chart."
My "Matchmaker's" design has been ripped off by other people and used on their products,
so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. My markup is only a paltry
50¢ per item - Cafe Press gets the rest of your purchase price. These would make
excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids, significant others, and for handing out
at company events or as rewards for excellent service. It's a great way to help
support RF Cafe. Thanks...
 RF Superstore launched in 2017, marking
the return of Murray Pasternack, founder of Pasternack Enterprises, to the RF and
microwave Industry. Pasternack fundamentally changed the way RF components were
sold. Partner Jason Wright manages day-to-day operations, while working closely
with Mr. Pasternack to develop RF Superstore into a world class RF and
microwave
component supplier. RF coaxial connectors & adapters, coaxial cable &
cable assemblies, surge protectors, attenuators. Items added daily. Free shipping
on orders over $25. We're leading the way again!
Wednesday the 12th
 Delay lines are used in electronic circuits
for precisely adjusting the timing of signals. That can be to set times between
events or to adjust two or more signals so that they arrive at some point in the
circuit at a specific time with respect to each other. In a radar system, for instance,
a sample of the reflected signal might be delayed in time by one pulse repetition
period in order to compare it to the current reflected signal so that stationary
(fixed, non-changing) signals can be cancelled out, leaving only the signal that
has changed since the last sample. That is how MTI (moving target indication) functions.
In today's world the samples are stored digitally and then compared digitally with
other signals, but previously in fully analog systems, sending the sample along
a longer (in time) path for comparison was necessary. Delay lines can be electrical
like the ones covered in this 1962 issue of Electronics World magazine,
or they can be mechanical such as with a quartz or mercury delay line...
 PIM (passive intermodulation) is one of
those RF and microwave world topics that is not often addresses, even though PIM
issues can be a deal breaker for system performance or even obtaining operational
certification in the first place. My own experience with PIM testing was back around
year 2000 on high power BTS switching networks. There was very little in the way
of commercial PIM test equipment at the time. At issue for me was PIM caused by
coaxial cabling connections, but antennas suffer from it as well when power impinges
on metal-to-metal interfaces. This Fierce Wireless article by Giuseppe Lipari, entitled
"Why
5G Operators Should Worry About PIM," sheds some light on the subject...
 Here is a little
electronics hobbyist humor in the form of comics, compliments of Dave Harbaugh.
These comics appeared in the January 1962 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine. Dave liked to include amateur radio themes in his comics. For the non-Ham,
QRM is the Q-code for "manmade interference." You don't need to be an amateur radio
operator to appreciate those first two scenarios. The others are more generally
related to electronics. A search of RF Cafe for "Harbaugh" will turn up many more
of his works. As has been my practice of late, I colorized these comics...
 ConductRF manufactures a broad range of
cables using various LMR cable styles from Times microwave. This datasheet shows
the options and part number construction for our series using
LMR Ultra-Flex Cable. LMR-UF is a versatile cable that has low loss, good flexibility,
and great RF performance. ConductRF has made several standards available via DigiKey
in this series for customer convenience, Our standards include N-type connectors
where male options off as standard a hex/knurl coupling nut to aid in torqued or
finger tightening. SMA's are also available as standards and configuration include
straight and right angle male as well as bulkhead options. DigiKey standard include
cable sizes 240 and 400. LMR is the registered trademark of Times Microwave...
 Remember the
TV test patterns that used to be broadcast by over-the-air broadcast stations
that were used to align the electron beam defection circuitry in CRT-based televisions?
That pattern of squares, circles, parallel and radial lines was generated by a special
tube called a "Monoscope" (RCA 2F21) on the transmitter end. Focus, 4:3 picture
aspect ratio, linearity, frequency response, and contrast and brightness were all
tweaked to optimize the pattern on the TV receiver circuitry. Of course not all
sets were capable of obtaining a perfect alignment due to inferior design and/or
a scheme by the manufacturer to provide a lower cost model with the tradeoff being
a poorer picture - that was the type of TV we always had in my household as a kid...
/jobs.htm" target="_top">
RF
Cafe's raison d'être is and always has been to provide useful, quality content for
engineers, technicians, engineering managers, students, and hobbyists. Part of that
mission is offering to post applicable /jobs.htm"
target="_top">job openings. HR department employees and/or managers of hiring
companies are welcome to submit opportunities for posting at no charge. 3rd party
recruiters and temp agencies are not included so as to assure a high quality of
listings. Please read through the easy procedure to benefit from RF Cafe's high
quality visitors...
Reactel has become one of the industry leaders in the design and manufacture
of RF and microwave
filters, diplexers, and sub-assemblies. They offer the generally known tubular,
LC, cavity, and waveguide designs, as well as state of the art high performance
suspended substrate models. Through a continuous process of research and development,
they have established a full line of filters of filters of all types - lowpass,
highpass, bandpass, bandstop, diplexer, and more. Established in 1979. Please contact
Reactel today to see how they might help your project.
Tuesday the 11th
 H.P. Manly, author of this "Time
Constants... What They Do" article from a 1956 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine,
must have been a baseball fan. You'll know why I say that if you read the story.
RC (resistor-capacitor) and to a lesser extent RL (resistor-inductor) time constants
are one of the first topics covered in basic electronics courses, after Ohm's law.
A thorough knowledge of them is essential both for design and troubleshooting purposes.
Exploiting their properties for timing and waveform shaping is a major feature of
circuit design and being able to recognize the effect a deficit or excess of capacitance
(or inductance) in a circuit is often the most obvious clue to a malfunctioning
circuit. In the days when electronics products (especially televisions with their
complex composite waveforms) were repaired and aligned by technicians, comparing
measured results with expected signals often instantly clued a guy into what had
gone wrong.
 Evidently it is Bob Pease nostalgia time with
the Electronic Design folks - and that's OK with me. I have not regularly
read a particular person's monthly electronics industry magazine column since
Bob left this Earth back in
2011. This is Part 1 of the classic 3-part series on algebraic equations from
the long-running "Pease
Porridge" articles entitled "What's
All This Algebraic Equation Stuff, Anyhow?" Begins the master: "You guys may
have noticed that recently, I have been showing you a lot of algebraic equations.
I really don't like to use, or generate, algebraic equations. Sometimes they're
much messier than just doing numerical evaluations. For example, to evaluate the
response of a filter, I usually like to plug in the R and C values, and simplify
as much as possible before I do the full analysis. I just prefer to get the numbers
into number form as early as possible..."
 The more things change, the more they stay
the same. That saying applies to many recreational activities. Pick up a copy of
the ARRL's QST magazine that was published in the last year and look at
reader comments and you will find laments about the dwindling participation of youngsters,
an
increased degree of incivility and rule breaking during engagement, the high
cost of getting into the hobby, yadda yadda yadda. I witness it regularly in the
model aircraft world, too. That is not to say the issues are not true or irrelevant,
just that they are persistent. Each generation, it has been said, tends to think
of history beginning when he/she was born and all situations are new to his/her
generation. Those of us who have lived through more than a single generation have
seen the cycles repeat. They will continue to repeat. I am of the opinion that overall
things improve by virtue of natural selection from a technical perspective. My proof
is the undeniable advancement of the state of the art in both equipment and operators...
 Innovative Power Products (IPP), with more
than 30 years of experience designing & manufacturing RF & microwave passive
components, is pleased to report that during the month of September, over 30 employees
joined IPP's community service day at Long Island Cares, a food bank located in
Hauppauge, NY. They sorted, weighed, and packed food, drinks, and cleaning/household
products for distribution to needy people. Also, Innovative Power Products introduces
our
Model IPP-7124, a 150 watt, surface mount 90° coupler that operates from 700
to 4200 MHz. The IPP-7124 will combine two signals up to 150 watts CW of total output
power. This coupler is produced in a Surface Mount (SMD) package with a size of
0.20 x 1.80 x 0.233 inches. The insertion loss is less than 0.65 dB, amplitude
balance is less than ±0.85 dB, phase balance is less than ±5°...
 Not so very long ago the availability and
usage of
lasers was restricted to laboratory and military use, but today they are ubiquitous
in our world. CD, DVD, and Blu-ray players are found in nearly every home and office.
Laser pointers (including the green ones being illegally targeted on aircraft),
laser distance measuring devices, laser leveling and alignment tools, laser light
shows, laser cutting, even laser weapons can be found in many other venues, and
at relatively low costs (except the weapons). Half a century ago, most lasers were
fabricated from rare earth elements whose output powers were measured in a few milliwatts
at most. The cost of even a low power laboratory experimental device was thousands
of dollars. I can remember seeing something like a 0.5 mW helium-neon laser
for hobbyists offered by Edmund Scientific back in the 1970s for about $200, and
much more for a laboratory quality laser. Power supplies were hundreds of volts.
Typical laser pointers put out around 5 to 10 mW and are made from tiny chips
of semiconductors powered by pen cells or button cells. This Electronics World
magazine article is a fairly extensive report...
 With more than 1000
custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Symbols available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic
drawings! Every object has been built to fit proportionally on the provided
A-, B- and C-size drawing page templates (or can use your own). Symbols are provided
for equipment racks and test equipment, system block diagrams, conceptual drawings,
and schematics. Unlike previous versions, these are NOT Stencils, but instead are
all contained on tabbed pages within a single Visio document. That puts everything
in front of you in its full glory. Just copy and paste what you need on your drawing.
The file format is XML so everything plays nicely with Visio 2013 and later...
 Aegis Power Systems is a leading supplier
of AC-DC and
DC-DC power supplies for custom and special applications. Aegis has been designing
and building highly reliable custom power supplies since 1995. They offer a complete
line of switch mode power supplies and power converters for a variety of markets
including defense, industrial, aircraft, VME, and telecom. Supports military, aircraft,
EV, telecom, and embedded computing applications. Design and manufacture of custom
power supply solutions to meet each customer's exacting specifications. Please visit
Aegis Power Systems today.
Monday the 10th
 I am embarrassed to admit that I was surprised
when I saw this announcement in the August 1946 issue of Radio-Craft magazine
for
Sam's PhotoFacts entitled "A New Organization Attacks Circuit Information Problems."
Maybe it is because they eventually generated data packs for electronics equipment
prior to 1946, but I would have argued vehemently that Sam's was in business long
before 1946. The Sams Technical Publishing website homepage states, "Since 1946
SAMS Technical Publishing manuals have been the standard that repair technicians
have insisted upon having to provide professional repairs to their customers." I
stand corrected...
 Automotive ignition noise issues are rarely
experienced these days since not many people even listen to broadcast radio anymore,
and those that do tend to prefer FM stations. Portable music devices rule the world
both in and out of the car, with Bluetooth or phono jack connections to the dashboard
stereo making it easy to bring your own entertainment and use just the amplifier
portion of the box. Back before such conveniences existed, magneto, point, and condenser
ignition systems wreaked havoc with radio reception. AM was particularly vulnerable
because the noise was introduced inband and could not be readily filtered out. FM
helped matters, but even then it was not uncommon to detect a background crackle
in the audio that changed in frequency with the engine rotation speed; noise on
the DC distribution systems was the culprit. Electronic ignition systems went a
long way toward eradicating the problem. Nearly complete computerization of the
entire vehicle control and signaling installation has created a whole new source
of high frequency noise, but it usually is not noticeable to normal radio and digital
data devices. Ham radio operators still have to contend...
 There are plenty of trite old sayings about
failure
and how sometimes it is necessary to fail in order to ultimately succeed. After
all, people will say, Thomas Edison tried a couple thousand different alloys for
his electric incandescent light bulb (now ruled to be evil and a destroyer of fragile
Mother Earth) before finally arriving at tungsten. If at first you don't succeed,
try, try again. No pain, no gain. That sort of thing. Personally, I hate pain and
have never felt like I had more character because of having suffered pain. First
pass success is my preference on everything. If there is a parallel philosophy useful
to illustrate how dumb it is to extol any virtues that failure might have, it is
a quote from George Patton regarding the oft-touted nobility of dying for one's
country: "Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for
his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country..."
 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
Inflation Calculator, this
Crosley "Fortyfive" tabletop radio advertisement appearing in a 1932 issue of
Radio-Craft magazine which was priced at $45 (which coincidently happened
to be the name of the model) at the time would cost $932.01 in today's dollars.
That's a lot of money for a radio, but after all it was a newfangled superheterodyne
model containing seven vacuum tubes. The superhet feature made tuning a lot easier
since baseband filters could remain fixed. Cheaper models were available at about
half the price, but even that was a lot of dough to lay out for entertainment. Radios
were considered a luxury item - like a third car is today. These "tombstone" style
cases were popular in the day. I think they look more like an arched church window,
but that's just me. BTW, note the mention of a "Federal tax" which may be levied
on the purchase. Akin to a Value Added Tax (VAT) imposed in many countries, the
U.S. does not currently have such a tax - much to the disappointment to many lawmakers
in Washington who like to squeeze every ounce of blood...
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF & Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols" that
works well with Microsoft Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™.
This is an equivalent of the extensive set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch,
connector, waveguide, digital, analog, antenna, and other commonly used symbols
for system block diagrams and schematics created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000 or
so symbols was exported individually from Visio in the EMF file format, then imported
into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format allows an image to be scaled up or
down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes can be resized in a document
and still look good. The imported symbols can also be UnGrouped into their original
constituent parts for editing. Check them out!
 Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation (BNC) is
a leading manufacturer of precision electronic instrumentation for test, measurement,
and nuclear research. Founded in 1963, BNC initially developed custom pulse generators.
We became known for meeting the most stringent requirements for high precision and
stability, and for producing instruments of unsurpassed reliability and performance.
We continue to maintain a leadership position as a developer of custom pulse, signal,
light, and function generators. Our designs incorporate the latest innovations in
software and hardware engineering, surface mount production, and automated testing
procedures.
Sunday the 9th
 This week's
crossword puzzle for October 9th sports an electronics theme. All RF Cafe crossword
puzzles are custom made by me, Kirt Blattenberger, and have only words and clues
related to RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering, optics, mathematics, chemistry,
physics, and other technical subjects. As always, this crossword contains no names
of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything
of the sort unless it/he/she is related to this puzzle's technology theme (e.g.,
Reginald Denny or the Tunguska event in Siberia). The technically inclined cruciverbalists
amongst us will appreciate the effort. Enjoy!
 ASC designs and manufactures hybrid, surface
mount flange, open carrier and connectorized amplifiers for low, medium and high
power applications using gallium nitride (GaN), gallium arsenide (GaAs) and silicon
(Si) transistor technologies. ASC's thick film designs operate in the frequency
range of 300 kHz to 6 GHz. ASC offers thin film designs that operate up
to 20 GHz.
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