|
 I have written
before about the love-hate relationship a lot of the buying public had with
television and radio repair shops and repairmen - similar to car owners and
mechanics. Lots of jokes and skits (what today is termed a "meme") were created
back in the heyday of in-home entertainment to make light of the situation.
These four
electronics-themed comics from a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine are typical examples. The one from page 111 alludes to an issue that
would almost never be seen today on a TV, unless maybe the AC power supply was
on the fritz. A composite analog broadcast signal contained vertical and
horizontal sync[ronization] components which...
 "Electrostatic
discharge (ESD) protection is a significant concern in the chemical and electronics
industries. In electronics, ESD often causes integrated circuit failures due to
rapid voltage and current discharges from charged objects, such as human fingers
or tools. With the help of 3D printing techniques, researchers at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (LLNL) are 'packaging' electronics with printable elastomeric
silicone foams to provide both mechanical and electrical protection of sensitive
components. Without suitable protection, substantial equipment and component..."
 Mr. Bob Davis, a seemingly endless
source of little known and/or long forgotten
historical radio and television
technical trivia, apprised me of this short segment from the 1960s Dragnet
television series, starring Sgt. Joe Friday. It features a guy, who turns out to
be a ... well, I won't spoil it for you ... who proudly professes his thirty
year career as a radio repairman. "...started back in the days of the old Crosleys, Atwater-Kents, Farnsworths.
Those were real radios, well built, well designed. Nothing cheap about any of
them. They didn't have transistors in those days, just tubes as big as light
bulbs. That meant heavy chassis, heavy transformers, and we didn't fix them by
simply slapping in a new part, either. We fixed the old parts. I wish...
 A new word has been added to my personal
lexicon: "sphenoidal."
Author John Kraus used it to describe the wedge shape of a
corner reflector. The Oxford Dictionary defines "sphenoid" thusly: "A compound
bone that forms the base of the cranium, behind the eye and below the front part
of the brain. It has two pairs of broad lateral "wings" and a number of other projections,
and contains two air-filled sinuses." This "square corner" configuration - essentially
a "V" shape, is shown to exhibit up to 10 dB of gain while being relatively (compared
to a parabolic reflector) insensitive...
 Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity,
published in 1915, fundamentally reshaped the way scientists understand gravity,
space, and time. It extended his 1905 special theory of relativity, which described
how the laws of physics are consistent for all observers in uniform motion and how
light's speed is constant in a vacuum. However, the special theory did not address
accelerating reference frames or gravitational forces. Einstein's general theory
tackled these limitations by proposing that gravity is not a force in the traditional
sense, but rather a curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy. This profound
insight would alter the course of 20th-century physics, influencing cosmology, black
hole theory...
 "The growing use of artificial intelligence
(AI)-based models is placing greater demands on the electronics industry, as many
of these models require significant storage space and computational power. Engineers
worldwide have thus been trying to develop neuromorphic computing systems that could
help meet these demands, many of which are based on memristors.
Memristors are electronic components that regulate the flow of electrical current
in circuits while also 'remembering' the amount of electrical charge that previously
passed through them. These components could replicate the function of biological..."
 Reading through the news items in the vintage
electronics magazines provides a mixture of important historical facts and figures
along with some predictions on the future of the industry. Some of the predictions
turn out to be amazingly accurate, even though in retrospect they might seem obvious.
Take, for example, Sylvania VP Dr. Robert Castor's foresight about how, "the future
growth of the semiconductor industry lies in a major switch from the production
of individual components to solid-state subsystems that can be used as building
blocks in electronic designs." "Well of course," you might be temped to say; however,
at the time there were still significant hurdles to overcome related to material
purity, wafer size, photolithography...
 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.
 2012 came and went more than a decade ago.
The date was 50 years in the future back in 1962 when Radio-Electronics
magazine editor Hugo Gernsback asked industry leaders to cogitate on possibilities
of the
state of electronics in 2012. Let's see how they did. One guy predicted our
communications would be in the 100 THz to 1,500 THz band, using 2 decimeter
antennas. Nope. Another believed we would be communicating with aliens on a regular
basis. A military dude partly hit the mark by predicting 2- and 3-year-olds would
be sitting in front of "televideo screens" (cellphones) learning Esperanto and "other
basic studies." Bell Labs believed most audiovisual material, along with commerce,
would be done electronically; i.e., the World Wide Web. I'm not quite sure how to
interpret the IT&T guy's prediction of replacing microwave space transmission
with light wavelength waveguide transmission. Seems bassackward to me...
 Here is a unique approach to discouraging scam
callers. A lot of scam calls are themselves AI, so can one AI detect and aviod another?
"Gangster
Granny! Meet Daisy: O2's new weapon against scammers. O2 has unveiled its new,
unique weapon in its fight against scammers: Daisy, an AI-powered assistant designed
to keep fraudsters talking and waste their time. As part of Virgin Media O2's 'Swerve
the Scammers' campaign, Daisy's mission is to distract scammers with realistic,
rambling conversations, helping protect potential victims while raising awareness
about fraud. Her lifelike conversations, peppered with stories about family or hobbies
like knitting, have kept fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes..."
Albert Einstein's
special theory of relativity, a milestone in physics, transformed our understanding
of space, time, and energy (mass). The theory, published in 1905, stemmed from Einstein's
efforts to resolve inconsistencies in classical physics, specifically between Newtonian
mechanics and electromagnetism as formulated by James Clerk Maxwell. By reconceiving
space and time as interconnected and relative to the observer's frame of reference,
Einstein established a framework that had profound implications for science and
technology. To understand how this groundbreaking idea emerged, one must consider...
 Werbel Microwave's Model WM2PD-0.5-26.5-S
is a wideband 2-way in-line power splitter covering of 500 MHz to 26.5 GHz with
excellent return loss, low insertion loss, and high isolation performance. With
ultrawideband performance, amplitude balance is typically 0.24 dB and phase
unbalance is typically 2.6°. Insertion loss is low for the bandwidth, coming in
at a typical 1.2 dB above 3 dB splitting loss. Return loss 16 dB
typical. Isolation 18 dB typical. The device is precision-assembled and tested
in the USA...
 If you wanted a career as an
electronics technician at the end of World War II, the world was your oyster
- so to speak. Electronics and communications trade magazines and publications like
Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Science ran a plethora of ads
monthly that offered unlimited opportunity to men seeking a career servicing the
burgeoning market of postwar technological marvels. Even though the enclosures were
not yet being marked with "No user serviceable parts inside," that fact was most
people were not qualified - nor did they want - to monkey with the guts of radios,
televisions, and other household appliances... (I provide a simulation to show the
true zener diode circuit output)...
 Take time out of your busy workday to look
at these three
electronics-themed comics from the February 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics..
The page 32 comic reminds me of sometime in the late 1970s while working as
an electrician (prior to enlisting in the USAF) when I was doing side jobs, and
a guy had me wire up a receptacle for his big 25" screen (CRT) which he had mounted
in a wall, with the chassis sticking out the back. It was in an upstairs room in
a Cape Cod style house with lots of room behind the wall. He was a "man cave" pioneer
with a full suite of high quality audiovisual equipment - even a Betamax machine!
The page 81 comic exhibits the irony that would have existed in the day if
American-made electronics equipment had been promoted in Japan, which they probably
were not. In 1962, Japanese...
 Admittedly, I mostly posted this because
of the drawing. "While
direct-to-cell (D2C) satellite communications were a big topic at the recent
Brooklyn 6G Summit, the technology is already here, well before 6G's anticipated
2030 arrival. Apple and Google already offer D2C emergency messaging, and Starlink,
T-Mobile and others are anticipated to follow. D2C satellite communications will
be well established when 6G arrives. The 3GPP froze a 5G specification for Non-Terrestrial
Networks (NTN) in Release 17 in March 2022, which means that NTN-compatible chips
and components should be available now or soon. SpaceX has reduced the cost..."
 The subtitle of this article from a 1971
issue of Popular Electronics magazine, "From
Quackery to Speculation to Programmed People," could to some extent still be
applicable even though the author evidently meant to put an end to the "quackery"
and "speculation" part of it. Indeed, a lot of advancement has been made in the
fields of electrostimulation of weak or/or paralyzed muscles, healing of certain
types of soft and hard tissues, suppressing sporadic muscle twitching and epileptic
seizures, and other malady diagnosis and relief. Specifically tuned microwave frequencies
have proven useful in healing and symptom relief as well. As with most articles
on medical procedures, I cringe at some...
Anatech Intros 3
Filter Models for November
 Anatech Electronics offers the industry's
largest portfolio of high-performance standard and customized RF and microwave filters
and filter-related products for military, commercial, aerospace and defense, and
industrial applications up to 40 GHz. Three new
C-band cavity bandpass filter models have been added to the product line, including
a 4994 MHz BPF with a 50 MHz bandwidth, a 4950 MHz BPF with a 10 MHz
bandwidth, and a 5785 MHz BPF with a 100 MHz bandwidth. Custom RF power
filter and directional couplers designs can be designed and produced with required
connector types when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements are such that
a custom...
• 5G
Is 42% of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in 2024
• Robert Dennard,
DRAM Pioneer, Dies at 91
• TSMC's Energy
Demand Drives Taiwan's Geopolitical Future
• Semiconductor
Packaging Market on 5.6% CAGR 'Till 2028
• Altering
Asteroid Trajectories with Nuclear X-Rays
 Albert Einstein, one of the most renowned
physicists in history, was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg,
part of the German Empire. His father, Hermann Einstein, was an engineer and salesman
who ran an electrochemical factory, and his mother, Pauline Koch, managed the household
and supported her son's education. Einstein had one sister, Maja, who was born in
1881 and with whom he had a lifelong close relationship. Einstein's extended family
included several relatives who would play various roles in his life, both personally
and professionally. His early family life was comfortable, though his parents moved
frequently as they sought economic stability. Hermann Einstein's business ventures
had varying success, and eventually, the family moved to Italy in 1894...
 Here is the second part of a series of articles
about
stepping switches appearing in 1967 issues of Radio-Electronics magazine.
A standard (at the time) dial rotary phone was used as a familiar example in the
part one. It delivers a single pulse for each number / letter set from 1, 2 (ABC),
3 (DEF), through 9 (WXY), 0 (Operator). On some phones, you can hear the clacking
of the switch contacts as the spring-loaded dial rotates from the selected number
back to home position. The stepping action as the result of dialing occurs at the
telephone system switching and call routing equipment at central locations. There,
stepping switches increment with each pulse received, and when the full number of
pulse sets have arrived, the circuit is complete and the call put through to ring
the phone...
 "Results are published, and the numbers
are in. They paint a picture of a very active
2024 ARRL
Field Day. Nearly 1.3 million contacts were reported during the 24-hour event.
That is up from 2023's 1.25 million contacts. That's likely indicative of the continued
rise of Solar Cycle 25 leading up to the event, but more people also participated
this year. Entries were received from all 85 ARRL and Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC)
sections, as well as from 27 different countries from outside the US and Canada.
'It is encouraging to see a rise in participation year to year,' said ARRL Contest
Program Manager Paul Bourque, N1SFE. 'ARRL Field Day is amateur radio's premier
event, and the hams turned out for it..."
 After searching for the first mention of
Nikola Tesla in U.S. newspapers, I performed a similar search on
Albert
Einstein, again using editions available in the NewspaperArchive.com database.
I was utterly surprised to find it in a 1919 issue of the The New York Times.
His theory of Special Relativity was published in 1905 and his theory of General
Relativity was published in 1915, so it took The NY Times four years to
mention it. There is a reference to Dr. Einstein's' work on relativity in a 1915
edition of The Manitoban, from Winnipeg, Canada. The NY Times article
is an actual interview with Albert Einstein, wherein at one point it is stated that
there were perhaps only a dozen people in the world at that time who understood
general relativity. Interestingly, Einstein uses the term "difform motion" to describe...
 Exodus Advanced Communications, is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. We are pleased to announce
the model
AMP2103P-LC, dual-mode (CW & pulse) amplifier covering 800 to 3200 MHz.
1000 watt peak pulse power, or 500 watts CW. Ideal for automotive pulse/radar
EMC-testing & commercial applications. Pulse widths to 560 μsec, duty cycle
to 10%, 60 dB gain, and outstanding pulse fidelity. Monitoring parameters for
forward/reflected power in watts and dBm, VSWR, voltage, current, and temperature,
with unprecedented reliability and ruggedness in a compact 7U chassis...
 Sally Mason was the soldering iron-wielding
heroette (heroine sounds too much like the narcotic) of Nate Silverman's "Sally,
the Service Maid" series that ran in Radio-Craft magazine during the
years of World War II. As I noted in the previous episode, many of the nation's
women were left behind to run their husband's, father's and/or son's electronics
sales and repair businesses when they went off to save the world from aggressive
Communists, Socialists, Maoists, Nazis, and other nasty types. Some of those ladies
had already become very adept at troubleshooting, component replacement, and aligning
radio and television sets, while some were left to learn at the School of Hard Knocks.
Sally's father, Gus Mason...
 Crane Aerospace & Electronics' products
and services are organized into six integrated solutions: Cabin Systems, Electrical
Power Solutions, Fluid Management Solutions, Landing Systems, Microwave Solutions,
and Sensing Components & Systems. Our Microwave Solution designs and manufactures
high-performance
RF, IF and millimeter-wave components, subsystems and systems for commercial
aviation, defense, and space including linear & log amplifiers, fixed &
variable attenuators, circulators & isolators, power combiners & dividers,
couplers, mixers, switches & matrices, oscillators & synthesizers.
 The AN/MPN-13|14 mobile radar system I worked
on while enlisted in the U.S. Air Force was designed and fielded around the time
this
Electronic Navigation in Flight article appeared in a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. It had been upgraded a few times by 1979 when I was in Air Traffic Control
Radar Repairman technical school at Keesler AFB, Mississippi; however, the original
system did not featured a Doppler capability. The fully RF analog system could not
provide air traffic controllers with speed data, but it did use physical mercury
delay lines to provide a stationary target (ground, and to some degree, rain, clutter)
cancellation by inverting and summing a real-time radar...
 Decisions, decisions, decisions. As the
title states, color television manufacturers were, in 1965 when this Electronics
magazine article was published, finding themselves between a rock and a hard place,
as the saying goes, regarding a change
from vacuum tubes to transistors. The buying public (aka consumers) had mixed
emotions about the newfangled semiconductors based at least partly on bad information
about transistors. Transistors had been designed in various circuits for a decade
and a half and were gaining rapidly in performance and reliability. The price was
coming down, but as reported here, still cost $5 to $10 apiece compared to a $1
vacuum tube. Company management needed to decide whether to delay implementing the
new engineering and production methods required to deal with transistors...
 "At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty
banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in New York City to call
to order a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was no
ordinary gathering. The AIEE had decided to conduct a live national meeting connecting
more than 5,000 attendees in
eight cities across four time zones. More than a century before Zoom made virtual
meetings a pedestrian experience, telephone lines linked auditoriums from coast
to coast. AIEE members and guests in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York,
Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco had telephone receivers at their
seats so they could listen..."
|
RF Cascade Workbook 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 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...
 This
is a Javascript
calculator for
fixed Pi and T attenuators. Enter values for Rin, Rout, and Attenuation, then
click Calculate. If unequal termination resistances are used and an attenuation
value is selected that is lower than what is physically possible (a negative resistor
value is displayed), then a message will appear in the box over the schematics.
"k" is the linear ratio equivalent to the decibel value of the attenuator. Equations
used in this calculator can be found on the Pi and Tee Attenuators Equations page...
 As I have pointed out in the past, by the
end of 1944, everyone - at least in the United States - was pretty much convinced
that World War II was all but done. Advertisements and articles in most of
the magazines were going full force with promoting a
plethora of great new consumer products that would soon be
flowing from post-war factories and into the homes of the families who had
sacrificed life, limb, fortune, and opportunity on the parts of fathers,
brothers, boyfriends, and husbands who fought Axis powers during the past four
and a half years. Parents, children, and wives of those who went "Over There"
played an invaluable part back home in the success by managing single-parent
households and filling in on jobs formerly performed by the servicemen. Life was
difficult at home and on the battlefield but they persevered. We still refer to
them collectively as "The Greatest Generation." Interestingly, one of the main
impediments to implementing the aforementioned grand plan was difficulty in
transporting raw materials and piece parts to manufacturing plants, and then
distributing finished goods to the stores. Recall that...
 As with my hundreds of previous
engineering and science-themed crossword puzzles, this one for January 19, 2020,
contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science, physical, astronomy,
mathematics, chemistry, etc., which I have built up over nearly two decades. Many
new words and company names have been added that had not even been created when
I started in the year 2002. You will never find a word taxing your knowledge of
a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some obscure village in the Andes mountains.
You might, however, encounter the name of a movie star like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical
location like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons which, if you don't already know, might
surprise you.
 Having worked around resistors and capacitors
for more than four decades comes in handy when presented with 'simple' quizzes like
this one that appeared in a 1963 Popular Electronics dealing with
RC circuits. Still, there is always some trepidation involved when being subject,
even voluntarily, to a test of any sort, regardless of whether you are fairly confident
that it will be a lead pipe cinch, a cake walk, child's play, so to speak. Even
if nobody else will bear witness to your effort, you would feel like a real moron
if you missed even one of those simple questions that anyone with your level of
experience should get right without even having to think about it. Such is the irrational
fear I have when taking these quizzes ...
 These four
electronics-themed comics appeared in the March 1944 issue of
Radio-Craft magazine. People worldwide were still obsessed with radio and
many forms of media created content to feed the frenzy. For that matter, any form
of electronic gizmo was deemed to be magical to the average person. All sorts of
fantastical inventions were envisioned. In 1944, less than half the households had
even one television set, and hard as it may seem to believe, many did not have a
single radio, either. Newspapers and magazines constituted the primary form of news
distribution and consumption. I have to say that the comic with the quasi-Baroque-angel-style
baby holding a "radio-bottle" kind of creeps me out...
 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+ 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...
 The
Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) has been around since the early 1930s, as made
apparent by this article in Short Wave Craft magazine. Frequencies, circuits,
and infrastructure equipment have evolved over the years, but fundamentally, landing
an aircraft (airplane, helicopter, dirigible) under 'blind' flying conditions has
not changed. Two precision beams - one in elevation and one in azimuth - broadcast
by ground-based installations are detected by airborne receivers and relative positions
are displayed for the pilot's use in navigation. ILS does not help the pilot fly
the aircraft; it only leads him to the runway threshold. In the past couple decades,
space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment has increasingly been used
to replace ground-based microwave systems...
 Banner Ads are rotated in all locations
on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each
weekday. RF Cafe
is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world.
With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in
favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images.
Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 225,000 times per year! 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. If you need your company
news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...
 There are a lot of audiophiles in the RF
Cafe audience, so this 10-question
Audio Quiz from Popular Electronics should prove useful.
It covers not just the physical aspects but also some simple electronics concepts,
like decibels of gain, crossover networks, push-pull amplifiers, etc. High fidelity
(hi-fi) stereophonic equipment was all the rage in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a
way for people to enjoy live concert quality music in their homes since the quality
of radio transmissions was not reliable, and stereo broadcasting was not a common
feature until the 1960s. Many articles were published educating beginners and veterans
on ways to optimize both equipment - receivers, turntables, speakers, equalizers,
etc. - and environmental parameters. Similarly, many stereo-themed comics (and here)
appeared in Popular Electronics and other magazines. Enjoy.
 Trigger Alert: Don't look at this advertisement
from a 1954 issue of Radio & Television News magazine if you are easily
offended by what used to be an effective marketing technique, but is now considered
too exploitative for use. The "Cancel Culture" mindset of today's easily offended
(often agenda-driven) citizenry would likely work to have Walter Ashe driven out
of business for such an ad. If you
dare to peek at the advertisement - and I'm not recommending that
you should if it might jeopardize your place in society, be sure to note the fire
hydrant...
 Here is a 1950s
vintage crossword puzzle from Popular Electronics magazine. Unlike
the weekly crosswords from RF Cafe that use only relevant technical words, this
one uses some common words unrelated to electronics and science to fill in where
needed. It's still a good puzzle, though. Print it out for use during your next
boring meeting or 12-hour flight to China. A list of many other puzzle from
Popular Electronics and Electronics World is presented at the bottom
of the page. Have fun.
 Fellow amateur radio enthusiast Russ Keller
(KM4RHK), of Wake Forest, North Carolina, has designed and is selling his
DMMCheck Plus
test device for verifying the accuracy of digital multimeters, oscilloscopes, or
other instruments which measure the provided parameters. This compact (2.5" x 2.2"),
inexpensive board is battery powered and can be used to verify the accuracy of seven
primary DMM functions. A very complete description of each function is provided
on the DMMCheck Plus website. A certificate of measured values for each function
is provided with the DMMCheck Plus. Re-measurement, if desired, is free for
the first two years ...
 Listen to the
Podcast! Just in time for Halloween, John T. Frye's teenage sleuths
Carl & Jerry unexpectedly recorded a late-night conversation between two
men where they plot how to dispose of the "body" when death occurred as a result
of prolonged choking. Employing their trademark technical prowess and scheming ability,
the pair sets a trap for the perpetrators and dutifully summon the authorities as
they complete their nefarious act of the night before. Halloween comes into play
because the recordings were made for use in creating sound effects during the reading
of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Cask of Amontillado." This
story, which appeared in a 1955 issue of Popular Electronics magazine,
is a little dark compared to a typical story...
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (1/1 - 1/7)
"Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage
(see the Headline Archives page for help). For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, each week I create a new technology-themed crossword puzzle using only
words related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
etc. Enjoy...
 As with your school and college days where once
there was no longer any reason to memorize physical constants, conversion formulas, and
names of people, places, and things, much of the noggin's gray matter was repurposed
to remember topics of more immediate need. You can always look up what you have forgotten.
While studying for your Ham radio or FCC license, being able to be able to quickly convert
between wavelength and frequency is essential. Recalling on demand
frequency-wavelength pairs is a real time saver on a timed exam. Even being able
to perform the conversion on a calculator during the test takes up valuable time that
could be better used on other tasks. This handy-dandy chart for converting...
 Proficiency in Morse code is no longer required
as part of obtaining an Amateur Radio license. A proposal to drop the 5 wpm requirement
was first floated by the FCC in 2005. It was actually at the request of the ARRL;
to wit, "In 2004, the League called on the FCC to create a new entry-level license,
reduce the number of actual license classes to three and drop the Morse code testing
requirement for all classes except for Amateur Extra." ARLB018 FCC Proposes Dropping
Morse Code Requirement Entirely Now, there is no code requirement for any license
class, not even the Amateur Extra. A lot of Hams are not happy about it, but times
have changed and the need for code proficiency just is not needed anymore because
of the plethora of communications formats available. No small part of the ARRL's
motivation for requesting that code proficiency be dropped...
Banner Ads are rotated in all locations
on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each
weekday. RF Cafe
is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world.
With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in
favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images.
Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 225,000 times per year! 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. If you need your company
news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...
 This
Radio
Theme Crossword Puzzle for May 9th has many words and clues related to
RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering, optics, mathematics, chemistry, physics,
and other technical subjects. Also, it contains at least six (6) instances of this
puzzle's theme word. 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!
 QST, the monthly publication of
the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), occasionally ran a
crossword puzzle with an electronics theme. This one appeared in the April 1967
edition. Unlike the weekly RF Cafe crossword puzzles, this one does have a few words
that are not strictly technology and science themed. However, many of the clues
and words require some familiarity with Ham radio subjects and lingo ...
 Here for your New Year's Eve entertainment
is a new-old adventure story of "Carl & Jerry" titled, "Stereotaped New Year." In the same
manner that author John T. Frye's highly regarded "Mac's Radio Service Shop"
technodramas had themes echoing the time of year they were published, this appeared
in the January 1963 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, which would
have arrived in subscribers' mailboxes in December. Carl & Jerry, if you are
not familiar with the dynamic duo of the teenage electronics and Ham radio enthusiasts,
routinely got themselves involved in police investigations, creature comfort inventions,
and practical jokes involving tape recorders, disembodied spirits, and remote controlled
models. By 1963, they were out of high school and matriculating at "Parvoo University,"
which many people believe is a reference to Purdue University, given the boys' Midwestern
locale. Admittedly, this plot...
 These values for
density of
some common building materials were collected from sites across the Internet
and are generally in agreement with multiple sites. Most are from ASAE (American
Society of Engineers and Architects) tables. However, if you have values that you
believe are more accurate, use them for your calculations, and please send me an
e-mail to let me know what your values are. Note that original units were lb/ft3,
so actual number of significant places in kg/m3 column are the same as the original
unit; i.e., aluminum density is really only known to three significant places even
though four are presented...
Anytime I see a photo or story about the
1964 New York World's Fair, I immediately think of the scene at
the end of the first "Men in Black" movie when Agents K and J face off with the
alien invader who has come to Earth in search of "The Galaxy." This story from an
April 1964 issue of Electronics magazine reports on preparations made for
the grand opening on April 22 of that year. Based on the typical three to six month
lead time for publishing magazines back in the day, this material would have been
gathered long ahead of time. Of course now that half a century has passed we hardly
consider any of the whiz-band technology presented there as being anything wonderful,
but then half a century from now our grandkids will laugh at what we consider amazing
at the present time. Here is an interesting statement from the article that really
gives you an idea of generational progress: "The World's Fair alone will contain
some 300 television..."
 Waaaay back in the mid-1980s when I first
became aware of
Digi-Key, it was one of the relatively few electronics component suppliers that
had a large on-hand stock of commonly used parts and provided fast shipping. Places
like Newark Electronics and Allied Electronics also provided good service, but Digi-Key
usually offered lower prices than the others. By the 1990s, I was placing orders
at least weekly during circuit design projects. Digi-Key was founded in 1972 in
Thief River Falls, Minnesota - the town that for many years often had the country's
lowest recorded daily temperature. This 1/4-page advertisement appeared near the
back of a 1974 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. By the mid-1990s, their multipage
ads in electronics magazines were proliferating like today's Harbor Freight ads.
Here's a bit of trivia I just learned: The company's name is a reference to the
"Digi-Keyer Kit," a digital electronic keyer kit that founder Ronald Stordahl developed
and marketed to amateur radio...
 Anyone who pays attention in a present-day
high school physics class would read this article from 1944 and immediately appreciate
the advances that have been made in atomic theory during the ensuing 75 years. With
modern knowledge, it is hard to believe that even in 1944 someone would seriously
suggest that theorized
sub-electronic particles (building blocks of electrons) might be responsible
for supporting the propagation of electromagnetic energy. We still consider the
electron to be an elementary particle (although now not so the proton and neutron),
but at this point we are aware of many elementary particles other than the electron
(some of which make up protons and neutrons). There are six types of quarks, the
gluon, the photon, three types of bosons, and five other types of leptons other
than the electron - for a total of 17. The author's characterizing of the electron
as having a "flitting and jerking" "enormous" positional presence... |
