 Friday the 15th
 "Portable" is
a matter of perspective when it comes to large systems. Anything that can
be put on wheels and moved over land is technically portable, but the
speed at which it can be brought into operation once relocated is what
really defines whether something is portable or not. To be truly portable,
all of the requisite support equipment must travel with it; e.g., electric
generators, fuel, water, food, personnel facilities (if needed), etc. The
MPN−14
portable airport surveillance radar (ASR) and precision approach radar
(PAR) unit I worked on in the USAF truly qualified since it was entirely
self-contained and the necessary power generators were supplied by a
separate shop within the 5th Combat Communications Group to which I
belonged. Other shops provided creature comfort facilities, ground-based
and satellite radio communications, tactical air navigation (TACAN),
security, and managerial services. A few times each year we had what were
called "Healthy Strikes" where claxons would sound in the barracks...
 On Wednesday,
January 20th at 2:00 PM EST (GMT -5:00), Copper Mountain Technologies will
present another of its VNA Master Class Webinar series entitled "Materials
Measurement at 5G Frequencies." This webinar will demonstrate the use
of free-space spot probes to characterize materials at 20 to 40 GHz, of
interest to new 5G millimeter wave frequencies. A table-top measurement
system using CMT's S5243 VNA will be used to determine transmission and/or
reflection of materials. From these measurements, the webinar will discuss
the calculation of dielectric properties of measured materials. The agenda
consists of free space measurement description, example measurements &
dielectric calculation and a Q&A session at the end...
 Ha, I thought WA referred to Washington
state, but not so. It's a good thing because I was going to accuse them of
using a phony photo that includes the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds which
are not visible from Washington! "A remote outback station about 800 km
north of Perth in Western Australia is one of the best places in the world
to operate telescopes that listen for radio signals from space. It's the site
of CSIRO's Murchison
Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) and is home to three telescopes (and
soon a fourth when half of the Square Kilometre Array, the world's largest
radio telescope, is built there). But it's important these telescopes don't
pick up any other radio signals generated here on Earth that could interfere
with their observations. That's why the observatory was set up with strict
rules on what can and can't be used on site..."
 Before the current generation began
destroying its hearing with smartphone earbuds, their parents and grandparents
(that includes mine) destroyed our hearing with ridiculously
powerful loudspeakers, often in boom boxes perched on shoulders right
next to the ears (not me). The "concert hall" - or concert auditorium - experience
has been long sought-after since recorded music has been available, which
has only been about a century. As evidenced by the sudden increase in articles
and advertisements in my growing collection of vintage electronics magazines,
the early and mid 1950s saw a sudden swell of articles promoting the equally
swelling supply of high fidelity (hi-fi) recording and playback equipment
hitting the markets. Subjects ranging from homebuilt projects to reports of
top end commercially products filled the pages each month. Television saw
the same treatment in the late 1950s and early 1960s. All, of course, relied
on vacuum tubes - with just enough relatively expensive semiconductors...
 Qorvo, a leading provider of innovative
solutions that connect and power the world, today introduced two
Wi-Fi 6E front end modules (FEMs) designed to maximize throughput and
range in high-bandwidth applications such as 8K video streaming, online gaming
and virtual reality. Wi-Fi 6E is an extension of Wi-Fi 6 that operates in
the recently opened 6 GHz frequency band, in addition to the traditional
2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. Wi-Fi 6E triples Wi-Fi capacity with contiguous
spectrum to accommodate 7 additional 160 MHz-wide channels or 14 additional
80 MHz channels. Qorvo's Wi-Fi 6E FEMs unleash the full potential of
this new spectrum, delivering leading linearity performance and maximizing
throughput and capacity at peak permissible indoor power levels. The Qorvo
QPF4656 and QPF4632 deliver robust and rugged performance with world-class
energy...
 ConductRF is continually innovating
and developing new and improved solutions for RF Interconnect needs. See the
latest TESTeCON RF Test
Cables for labs. ConductRF makes production and test coax cable assemblies
for amplitude and phased matched VNA applications as well as standard &
precision RF connectors. Over 1,000 solutions for low PIM in-building to choose
from in the iBwave component library. They also provide custom coax solutions
for applications where some standard just won't do. A partnership with Newark
assures fast, reliable access. Please visit
ConductRF today to
see how they can help your project!
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RfCaFe
autodidacts
Operation Chaos
Electronics-Themed
Comics June 1951 Radio-Electronics
 RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000
website visits each weekday and about half that
on weekends. RF Cafe is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists,
and students all over the world. With more than 13,000 pages in the Google
search index, RF Cafe
returns in favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for
text and images. New content is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major
search engines interested enough to spider it multiple times each day. Items
added on the homepage often can be found in a Google search within a few hours
of being posted. I also re-broadcast homepage items on LinkedIn. If you need
your company news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be.
Advertising begins at $40/month.
 RF Cascade Workbook 2018 is the next phase in the evolution
of RF Cafe's long-running series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are
you have never used a spreadsheet quite like this (click
here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system cascade parameter
and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere $45. Built
in MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook 2018 is a cinch and
the format is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster
than using a multi-thousand dollar simulator when a high level system analysis
is all that is needed. An intro video takes you through the main features...
 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...
 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
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
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...
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 "U.S. military researchers needed a
weapon data link radio to help steer hypersonic weapons to their targets.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in
Arlington, Va., announced a $4 million contract to BAE Systems last month
to develop two weapon data link prototypes for test and integration of the
future hypersonic Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) vehicle. The TBG program is a
joint DARPA and U.S. Air Force effort to develop technologies for future air-launched,
tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems. Boost glide uses a rocket to
accelerate a weapon payload to high speeds, after which the payload then separates
from the rocket and glides unpowered to its destination..."
 "In recent years, physicists and electronic
engineers have been trying to identify materials that could be used to fabricate
new types of electronic devices. 1-D and 2-D materials have been found to
have particularly advantageous characteristics, particularly for the development
of new generations of nanoelectronics (electronic components at the nano scale).
Such 1-D and 2-D materials, such as graphene, monolayer molybdenum disulfide,
silicon nanowires and silicon nanosheets, could also play a crucial role within
the semiconductor industry, as they could help to develop increasingly small
transistors. Despite their well-documented advantages, emerging low-dimensional
materials can have a relatively small amount of so-called free charges compared
to 3-D materials. In the context of electronic components, a
free charge is an electron or hole..."
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