|
 The September 1966 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine had a plethora of good News Briefs, including an item where editor Hugo
Gernsback is presented with yet another honor - this time from the International
Press Group. It's like today with Dr. Ulrich Rohde (N1UL), who, deservingly, seems
to be receiving new commendations and awards on a regular basis. In the "Famously
Wrong Technology Predictions" department, COMSAT's president, Dr. Joseph
Charyk, declared that direct satellite-to-home television broadcasting was not a
likely possibility. Sylvania's General Telephone & Electronics...
 "Scientists are making significant strides
in creating
nuclear clocks, a new frontier in ultra-precise timekeeping. Unlike optical
atomic clocks that depend on electronic transitions, nuclear clocks harness the
energy transitions within atomic nuclei. These transitions are less influenced by
external forces, offering potentially unparalleled timekeeping accuracy. Despite
their promise, nuclear clocks face steep challenges. The isotope thorium-229, essential
for these clocks, is rare, radioactive, and prohibitively expensive in the required
quantities. In a recent study published..."
 A
time domain reflectometer (TDR) is an electronic instrument designed to characterize
and locate faults in electrical transmission lines and cables. It works by sending
a fast rise-time pulse down the cable and measuring the reflected signal. The time
it takes for the signal to return, combined with its amplitude and polarity, provides
information about the location, type, and severity of faults in the line. The principle
behind the TDR is based on transmission line theory and wave reflection phenomena,
making it a cornerstone in cable diagnostics and electrical engineering. The TDR
was first conceptualized in the early 20th century as wave propagation and reflection
principles were better understood, but practical devices emerged...
 "A massive fire broke out at a Californian
power plant early Friday morning, threatening one of the largest
battery energy storage facilities in the world. The blaze began in a building
containing lithium-ion batteries hours earlier, an official at the Monterey County
Sheriff's office told the BBC. The Moss Landing power plant was evacuated. No injuries
were reported. Officials are
not actively fighting the fire, the Monterey Sheriff
spokesperson said, and are instead
leaving the building and the batteries to burn on the advice of fire
experts. Hundreds of people have been ordered to evacuate..."
 To be honest, I don't know whether
military electronics training commands the respect in private industry that
it did back in 1982 when I separated from the USAF. If you left the military within
the last 20 years or so and care to share your experience with seeking civilian
employment, I'll be glad to add it here as a side note. Many of the electronics
technicians I worked with both as a tech myself and then as an engineer (after earning
a BSEE) got their initial classroom training in either the Air Force or the Navy.
There were probably some from the Marines and Army, but I don't recall any off-hand.
I hate to admit it, but I think the Navy vets were even more highly sought...
 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 ceramic bandpass filter models have been added to the product line in January,
including a 2250 MHz ceramic bandpass filter with a bandwidth of 225 MHz,
a 2140 MHz ceramic bandpass filter with a bandwidth of 60 MHz, and a 2190 MHz
ceramic bandpass filter with a bandwidth of 40 MHz, all with insertion losses
of <2 dB...
• 24%
Growth for Semis in 2024
• EU
Probes Gorilla Glass on Smartphone Monopoly
• Plea
for AM Act Passage After Helene
• Cost Concerns &
Confusion in Broadband Market
• Touchscreens Out; Buttons &
Dials Back In (good!)
 This is the most intense episode of John Frye's
"Carl & Jerry" series I can remember. It appeared in the January 1959 issue
of Popular Electronics magazine. There have been many adventures both before
and after this one where the electronics-obsessed teenagers assisted local police
and firefighters, and even a Fed or two occasionally. Usually, they are called upon
to find hidden evidence, track bad guys, listen in on their phone or radio conversions,
and other missions requiring high-tech methods. Other times they stumble into involvement.
In
The Little "Bug" with Big Ears," a girl has been kidnapped and the perp threatens
to rub her out if ransom...
 This is Part 3 of a 3-part series of articles
on
atomic radiation that appeared in Electronic World magazine in 1969.
It deals with measurement techniques and equipment. Shippingport Atomic Power Station,
the first full scale nuclear power plant in the United Sates, went operational in
1957. It marked the dawn of a new era of electric power generation that was filled
with grandiose predictions of limitless, non-polluting, dirt cheap power. Everything
was going to be powered by electricity - air heating and cooling, lighting, automobiles,
refrigeration, cooking, water heating. Atomic power was going to be a figurative
and almost literal beating of swords into ploughshares as the destructive energy...
 Transcat | Axiom Test Equipment, has published
a new blog post that covers how
AC Power Sources are able to support AC/DC power testing according to numerous
industrial and military standards. These power sources are available with software
to coordinate standards-based AC/DC power testing with single-, two-, and three-phase
power supplies. Industrial standards such as IEC 61000-4-11 and IEC 61000-4-13 from
the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and military standards such
as MIL-STD-704 are just a few of the solid guidelines for AC power testing; they
are typically programmed into the test software available for modern AC power sources.
Measurement-grade AC electrical power sources...
 While far from being an expert in the use
of hand tools and small powered shop tools, I have built enough prototypes and models
in more than six decades to have learned a fair amount about what results in success
and failure. Admittedly, there have been times when quality has been sacrificed
for the sake of cost and/or expediency. Personal safety has sometimes been risked
as well - usually for no real good reason. Luckily, I still have ten fingers, two
working eyes (although very near-sighted), and excellent hearing. Surely, you possess
none of my bad habits ;-) This article from Popular Electronics magazine
offers advice on how to properly work with PCBs...
 The
Wireless Telecom Group,
comprised of Boonton, Holzworth, and Noisecom, now a part of Maury Microwave, is
a global designer and manufacturer of advanced RF and microwave components, modules,
systems, and instruments. Serving the wireless, telecommunication, satellite, military,
aerospace, semiconductor and medical industries, Wireless Telecom Group products
enable innovation across a wide range of traditional and emerging wireless technologies.
A unique set of high-performance products including peak power meters, signal generators,
phase noise analyzers, signal processing modules, 5G and LTE PHY/stack software,
noise sources, and programmable noise generators.
 My guess at the solution for the "Unsquare
Waves" challenge in "What's
Your EQ" feature of the July 1964 Radio-Electronics magazine was wrong,
but would have been reasonable for a more modern oscilloscope. I thought maybe the
compensation capacitor in the o-scope probe was way out of adjustment. Since the
author provides a schematic of the oscilloscope input circuit, you will probably
spot right off what the cause of his unexpected waveform was. The other problem
is a fairly simple, first-year electronics course deal. As the title of it suggests,
you'll need to take into account the charge on each capacitor to most easily arrive
at the answer...
 "For homeowners, moisture buildup can cause
the biggest headaches. Mold grows on drywall and wood-based materials, creeping
along walls, floors and ceilings. Building materials begin to erode and rot. As
insulation becomes damaged, the home's energy-efficiency decreases. Even human health
suffers, as moisture also leads to air-quality issues. The key to preventing extensive
moisture damage is discovering it early, when it can be easily fixed. Researchers
at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using
microwave radar reflection to nondestructively detect and measure..."
 "You
get what you pay for," is an admonishment which has been around for a long time,
and it applies generally to many situations. Radio-Craft magazine editor
Hugh Gernsback took the occasion of a meeting with a successful radio repair technician
to pen this piece illustrating how it is not only the consumer who gets hurt by
low-cost hucksters. Gernsback's discussion with a for-real electronics technician
from Ohio serves as a real-world example. A fictitious Serviceman, whom he assigns
the moniker of Mr. G.O. Getter (a play on the vacuum tube term "getter"), suffers
from the bad reputation brought to his electronics...
 For your convenience, everything RF
has created the most extensive
EMC Testing Company Directory on the Internet which includes all of the leading
EMC Testing Labs from around the world. Based on your specific needs, you can use
the filters on the left-hand side to identify EMC Testing Labs based on their location
and capabilities. Further select from international approval type (CE, FCC, UKCA,
G-Mark, etc.), testing services (radiated and conducted immunity, radiated and conducted
emissions, military standards, SAR, surge testing, etc.), industry segment (electronics,
industrial, medical, etc.), services (shielding effectiveness, consultation, pre-compliance,
risk...
 This could be one of the earliest reports
of
mobile communications between a private automobile and a home base station.
Using a personally designed and installed 5-meter transceiver both at home and in
his car, Mr. Wallace is able to talk to his 12-year-old son on the way from
work. My guess is that in 1935 when this Short Wave Craft magazine article
was published there were not too many traffic jams, even in Long Beach, California,
so it is doubtful that was the cause for his announced expected later-than-normal
arrival home. The article states the automobile power supply needed to produce 300 mA
of current at 525 V, which is ~160 W...
 Please take a few moments to visit the
everythingRF website to see how they can assist you with your
project. everythingRF is a product discovery platform for RF and microwave products
and services. They currently have 333,423 products from more than 2198 companies
across 460 categories in their database and enable engineers to search for them
using their customized parametric search tool. Amplifiers, test equipment, power
couplers and dividers, coaxial connectors, waveguide, antennas, filters, mixers,
power supplies, and everything else. Please visit everythingRF today to see how
they can help you.
 For a few years, each month's edition
of Radio-Electronics magazine included a column entitled "The
Radio Month," which was a collection of a dozen or so relevant news items. The
March 1953 issue reported on transistorized hearing aids (those old vacuum tube
types didn't fit in your ear very well), how the number of TV sets in the U.S. had
out-paced the number of telephones thanks to new UHF channels, the continued rapid
expansion of television in Europe, and the upcoming 1953 I.R.E. Show (Institute
of Radio Engineers) in New York City. Of particular note was the new germanium ore
source discovered in Kentucky - not the first place I think of with a semiconductor
mother lode. At the time, germanium (Ge) was still the primary element used in transistors
and diodes, although silicon was making rapid inroads. The story was germanium sold
for $350 per pound in pure metallic form...
 "MVG, a leader in electromagnetic solutions,
has launched its innovative
Reverberation Chamber, designed to excel in immunity testing and applications
requiring extreme field strengths from 200 V/m to 7000 V/m. The chamber
incorporates a sophisticated paddle system that enhances performance across a broad
frequency range, particularly at lower frequencies, and adheres to the IEC61000-4-21
EMC testing specification. This chamber is ideal for EMC compliance testing in line
with emissions and immunity standards for electrical and electronic products..."
 Immersion Tin, also known as White Tin,
stands out as a RoHS-compliant (lead-free) PCB surface finish ideal for flat surface
needs and fine pitch components. San Francisco Circuits' application of Immersion
Tin involves applying a thin layer of tin onto the copper layer of a PCB, offering
exceptional flatness that supports small geometries and surface mount components.
This finish is also one of the most cost-effective immersion coatings, making it
a popular choice for budget-conscious designs. Despite its affordability, Immersion
Tin has some limitations, including a shorter shelf life (3-6 months) and susceptibility
to tin whiskering. It's primarily used as a sustainable alternative to lead-based
finishes, requiring fewer resources during its application. Its reworkability and
flat surface make it an excellent choice for fine pitch components and BGA assemblies....
 S-units are probably not familiar at all
to non-Hams since they refer to receiver signal levels (the "S" stands for "signal").
It is a relative unit of measure rather than absolute. Technically, the dBm unit
of power is also a relative unit, but it is referenced to a fixed power level of
1 mW - traceable back to primary standards at NIST or any other country's standards
keeper. By contrast, the S-unit - at least originally - is relative to the strongest
useable signal level at a particular receiver's input. An indication of S9 meant
a maximum signal level was present at the input based in part on the receiver's
dynamic range at a certain frequency...
 If you believe the claims and the radiation
pattern plots and graphs presented in this 1962 Radio-Electronics magazine
advertisement, then JFD Electronics had a pretty nice
television antenna. Per the data, reception gain was nearly perfectly flat across
the lower channel band (2-6) and across the upper channel band (7-13). That is the
VHF band. Model LPV-11 is featured in the image and the data. It was an 11-element
log-periodic antenna with "9 Active Cells and 2 directors," with an effective range
of 100 miles. UHF, covering channels 14-83, occupied the 470-884 MHz band.
1962, the year of this article, is the same year that the All-Channel Receiver Act
which compelled manufacturers to include UHF reception on all new TV sets. The only
show I remember watching on UHF was Bob Ross (a career USAF technician) painting
"happy little trees" on PBS...
 Here is an advertisement for Delco radios
that I scanned from page 91 of my copy of the April 1945 QST magazine.
"'Control
the Air' has a new meaning today." That's the tag line referring to the need
to dominate wireless communications in the effort to conduct effective warfare.
Radio certainly wasn't a new science in 1945, but secure communications - including
spread spectrum techniques - was a vital technique both for transmitting and receiving
messages and for jamming the communication of our enemies. Even though Hollywood
actress Hedy Lamarr and music composer George Antheil came up with the concept of
frequency hopping spread spectrum in the early...
 Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
was born on February 18, 1745, in Como, Duchy of Milan, which was then part of the
Holy Roman Empire and is now in modern-day Italy. He was the son of Filippo Volta,
a nobleman of modest means, and Maria Maddalena dei Conti Inzaghi. Volta was the
youngest of seven children. His father died when Alessandro was just seven years
old, leaving the family in financial difficulties. Despite these challenges, Volta
showed an early aptitude for learning and science. Volta received his initial education
at the Jesuit school in Como. From a young age, he demonstrated an intense curiosity
about natural phenomena and developed a particular interest in electricity. Although
his family hoped he would pursue a career in law or the clergy, Volta's passion...
 "On Wednesday, February 20, 1963, Frank
Wanlass delivered a paper at ISSCC at U. Penn., written by him and his co-author
C.T. Sah, describing Fairchild Semiconductor's process in which N AND P-type field-effect,
metal-oxide-semiconductor-triodes have been fabricated from silicon by a planar
diffusion process.' Much more so than the invention of the bipolar junction transistor
in 1947 by Bardeen, Brattain, and Schockley, Wanlass' CMOS process would impact
humanity in unforeseeable ways, perhaps providing the seed to its future extinction
since it forms the basis of almost all ASICs in use today, including those powering
AI..."
 Anatech Electronics (AEI) manufactures and
supplies RF and microwave
filters for military and commercial communication systems, providing standard
LP, HP, BP, BS, notch, diplexer, and custom RF filters, and RF products. Standard
RF filter and cable assembly products are published in our website database for
ease of procurement. Custom RF filters designs are used when a standard cannot be
found, or the requirements dictate a custom approach for your military and commercial
communications needs. Sam Benzacar's monthly newsletters address contemporary wireless
subjects. Please visit Anatech today to see how they can help your project succeed.
 As with most things of consumer, commercial,
and industrial nature, the
battery - more correctly "cell" - science has come a long way in a relatively
short time. Alessandro Volta invented the eponymous voltaic pile in 1799; it consisted
of zinc and copper electrodes immersed in a sulfuric acid electrolyte, thereby being
a wet cell. The first dry cell was the zinc-carbon type invented by Guiseppe Zamboni
(not the guy who invented the ice rink resurfacer) in 1812. Rechargeable dry cells
of the NiCad variety hit the scene in 1899. Then, it wasn't until 1991 - a century
later - that Sony commercialized...
 Radar jamming, as with radio communications
jamming, has been a critical piece in military and intelligence realms since the
advent of radar and radio. Early methods involved a brute force transmission of
RF energy in the known band of operation, effectively overwhelming the receiver
input. This is far from the preferred option due to large, heavy, mobile systems
which need to be privy to the exact (or nearly exact) frequency being jammed. Unless
the receiver operates in a very narrow band and/or has some degree of anti-jamming
features, blanking out a signal is pretty easy to do. I've written before how my
turning on a 100 mW radio control...
|
 Right on time for the anniversary of
Pierre and Marie Curie's 1989 discovery of the radioactive element radium is
this article which appeared in a 1944 issue of Radio-Craft magazine. Editor Hugo
Gernsback comments on the recently released (1943) film entitled "Madame Curie*,"
starring Greer Garson as Marie Curie and Walter Pidgeon as Pierre, criticizing it
for not delving more deeply into the technical aspects of radium. Chief among the
objections was the omission of information about how radiation treatment had been
shown to cure some forms of cancer. Indeed, he cited his own experience with a "growth"
on his hand that was successfully treated at a "radium hospital" where the doctor
applied a bulb of radium to the tissue for a mere five minutes. It disappeared in
less than two weeks. Beyond that would be radium's usefulness in generating electricity,
creating wonderful visual effects created by its elemental decay using a spinthariscope...
 In the run-up to World War II and during
the battle, a lot of
plastics
research and production was considered classified defense information. Poly(methyl
methacrylate) (PMMA), also know by the trade names of Plexiglas, Lucite, Crystallite,
and others, was a crucial component for aircraft where the weight and brittleness
of regular glass made it practically useless (and dangerous). A full-page ad by
Shell Oil in this 1942 issue of Life magazine promoted plastic used in a bomber.
When I see this, it reminds me of "It's a Wonderful Life," where Sam Wainwright
offers George Bailey a position in his fledgling soybean-based plastic canopy factory
in Buffalo, New York. Being primarily a petroleum product, plastic was promoted
heavily by oil companies like Shell Oil, Standard Oil, American Oil, partially due
to patriotism, but no doubt also for the profits. Those places, of course, were
part of the "Military-Industrial Complex" identified by President Dwight Eisenhower.
In fact, an Internet search turns up many claims that those same companies conspired
to sell oil to Axis powers prior to America's official entry into WWII on December
7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor...
 You have probably seen
Fahnestock clips, but did you know that's what they were called? Me neither,
until I first saw the name of them on a page in a MicroMark catalog a while back.
When I ran across this advertisement in a 1947 issue of Radio News magazine, it
seemed like a good opportunity pass the revelation on. Model train enthusiasts must
not use Fahnestock clips as much anymore for wiring their layouts since there are
more modern quick-change type terminal connections available. MicroMark does not
sell them anymore, but you can still get some from Newark Electronics and other
online sellers. Maybe the ones sitting in my parts drawer will one day be worth
big $$$ to collectors (just kidding).
 This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, Baseball Caps, and more, all sporting my amazingly clever "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design. These would make excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids,
significant others, and for handing out at company events or as rewards for excellent
service. My graphic has been ripped off by other people and used on their products,
so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. I only make a couple bucks
on each sale - the rest goes to Cafe Press. It's a great way to help support RF
Cafe. Thanks...
 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 second in a series of
International Geophysical Year (IGY) articles that appeared in Radio-Electronics
magazine in 1958. The author covers basics of satellite configuration, launching,
and tracking based on knowledge of the era. Keep in mind, though, that the U.S.
had not actually launched its first satellite at the time. In fact, the two satellite
models shown possess antennas suggesting active radio circuits within, but Echo,
our first passive earth-orbiting satellite, was just a metallized plastic sphere
that reflected radio signals back to Earth. The Russian Sputnik, by comparison,
did have electronic circuitry onboard for transmitting but not receiving a signal.
SCORE, launched in December of 1958, was America's first transponder satellite...
 The newest release of RF Cafe's spreadsheet
(Excel) based engineering and science calculator is now available -
Espresso Engineering Workbook™. Among other additions, it now has a Butterworth
Bandpass Calculator, and a Highpass Filter Calculator that does not just gain, but
also phase and group delay! Since 2002,
the original Calculator Workbook has been available as a free download.
Continuing the tradition, RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook™ is
also provided at no cost,
compliments of my generous sponsors. The original calculators are included, but
with a vastly expanded and improved user interface. Error-trapped user input cells
help prevent entry of invalid values. An extensive use of Visual Basic for Applications
(VBA) functions now do most of the heavy lifting with calculations, and facilitates
a wide user-selectable choice of units for voltage, frequency, speed, temperature,
power, wavelength, weight, etc. In fact, a full page of units conversion calculators
is included. A particularly handy feature is the ability to specify the the number
of significant digits to display. Drop-down menus are provided for convenience...
 This is Part 3 of a series of articles on
atomic radiation that appeared in Electronic World magazine in 1969. It
deals with measurement techniques and equipment. Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the
first full scale nuclear power plant in the U.S., went operational in 1957. It marked
the dawn of a new era of electric power generation that was filled with grandiose predictions
of limitless, non-polluting, dirt cheap power. Everything was going to be powered by
electricity - air heating and cooling, lighting, automobiles, water heating. Atomic power
was going to be a figurative and almost literal beating of swords into ploughshares as
the destructive energy...
 With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils
available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings! Every stencil
symbol has been built to fit proportionally on the included A-, B-, and C-size drawing
page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components are provided for
system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment, racks, and
more. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good presentation
that can incorporate all provided symbols...
 Ever heard of the revolutionary
Graphechon Tube, by RCA? Neither
had I, until I saw it mentioned in an ad for RCA televisions in a 1950 edition of
The Saturday Evening Post. My curiosity was piqued enough to do some research.
First, here is the text of the ad: "Scientists at RCA Laboratories work with split-seconds
of time too infinitesimal for most of us to imagine. Their new electron tube, the
Graphechon, makes it possible. For instance, in atomic research, a burst of nuclear
energy may flare up and vanish in as little as a hundred-millionth of a second.
The Graphechon tube oscillograph, taking the pattern of this burst from an electronic
circuit...
 In the light of having just marked the 75th
anniversary of the D-Day (Operation Overlord, June 6, 1944), which marked the beginning
of the end of Hitler's ruthless siege on all of Europe, please note how Electronics
magazine editor Lewis Young cites, in 1964, the continued rebuilding of Europe as
the reason many - maybe most - companies there are still, two decades later, concentrating
engineering and financial resources on getting back on a solid footing rather than
chasing after the latest and greatest in
nonessential technologies. It was probably an accurate assessment of the situation.
However, I do take issue with his admonishment to American companies to emulate
Europe's "practical approach" to innovation and manufacturing. There was absolutely
no reason to dissuade and throttle activity here ...
 Here are a couple more
tech-themed comics from a vintage electronics magazine (Popular Electronics).
The one from page 101 reminds me again about how different the world of retail sales
is today compared to just two short decades ago. Prior to the advent of online marketing
and sales, you either walked into a brick and mortar (a term rarely heard before
the Internet era) type store and walked out with your purchased product, or you
thumbed through a catalog and placed an order either by mail or telephone. Most
people opted to pay for a postage stamp rather than pay the long distance phone
charge (a term rarely heard today). Free overnight or 2-day shipping from many e-stores
makes online shopping nearly as instantaneous as walking into a store. People under
20 years old have never known much different, but some old-timers still find the
paradigm change strange. The way things are going...
 This 1970s-era Mac's Service Shop story made me
think about all the
cellphones today being dunked in toilets, swimming pools, lakes, and washing machines.
Of course back in Mac''s day not everyone was walking around with an electronic device
tucked into his or her pocket waiting for its absentminded owner to bend over or drop
his/her drawers. At the time, far more wallets made the dive than transistor radios.
I won't bother linking to any articles about how to best dry your dunked phone because
there are hundreds - nay, thousands - of them out there. They contradict each other about
which absorbent materials to use...
This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, Baseball Caps, and more, all sporting my amazingly clever "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design. These would make excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids,
significant others, and for handing out at company events or as rewards for excellent
service. My graphic has been ripped off by other people and used on their products,
so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. I only make a couple bucks
on each sale - the rest goes to Cafe Press. It's a great way to help support RF
Cafe. Thanks...
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 is
pretty much a ho-hum bit of information for most RF Cafe visitors, but there are
a lot of people searching the World Wide Web (WWW - don't see that much anymore)
for
abbreviations and definitions of electronics terms. Most are readily
available from multiple sources, but those which are more antiquated can present
a challenge. As is almost always the case, the most reliable authority for information
is from the original source, such as these lists in a 1955 issue of Popular
Electronics magazine. Examples are the use of "cps" for cycles per second,
before the adoption of Hertz as the standard unit of frequency in 1960 by the General
Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM); e.g., "m.c." was the equivalent of MHz.
 If you were hanging around here in 2014,
you might recall a paper I published titled, "Drone-Based
Field Measurement System™ (dB-FMS)™." Since that time, I have seen news
items about a few companies using drones to measure antenna radiation patterns and many more others are coming online all the time. Some amazing working systems
have been implemented that seem to perform very well. I'm not saying they got the
idea from my article because more than one person can have the same brilliant idea
;-). It's just good to know that my concept had some merit in the real world...
 I don't know about the rest of the country,
but this Monday morning in Erie, Pennsylvania, is cold and snowy. That means people
going to work had to shovel their driveways, maybe brush snow and ice off their
windows, and brave hazardous conditions on the streets on the way to the office.
Moods are understandably less than jovial and nerves might be shot. For those of
you who identify with this scenario, these
electronics-themed comics from a couple vintage Radio &
Television News magazines might help assuage your anxieties. The same goes
for those who are in Southern California and managed to arrive safely from a commute
on the notoriously unfriendly highways there. As with many of these old comics,
you have to be privy to the mindset of the day to fully appreciate the topic. TV
repair was big business and people were fascinated with the boob tube innovation
rapidly consuming the attention of domestic dwellers...
 Restoring and/or upgrading vintage radio receivers
is still a very popular pastime for hobbyists, and for that matter for some professional
servicemen who preform maintenance on established equipment installations. Three of the
most significant changes that can be made to older receivers to
improve sensitivity are to clean up the power supply DC output, replace
noisy components like vacuum tubes and leaky capacitors, and tune / modify /
replace RF and IF filters. This article discusses a method of replacing a stock
LC filter with a high selectivity mechanical filter. The nice thing about an
analog receiver is that narrowband, steep-skirt filters can be substituted
without concern for group delay at the band edges that can (and will) wreak
havoc on digital signals...
 Here is an advertisement by Corning from
the May 29, 1948, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. The Hale 200-inch
telescope mirror was dedicated for service at
Mount Palomar on June 3, 1948, at the in honor of George Ellery Hale. As a side
note, it is interesting that in the magazine of the era (which were typically quite
large in width and height), actual photographs like this one were rarely used in
advertisements. The vast majority of artwork was... artwork - pencil drawings or
actual paintings. Tomorrow a new door to the secrets of the universe will be gin
to open. A door through which astronomers will be able to see 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
miles into space...
 If you do a Google search on the
Talos Defense Unit at White Sands Proving Grounds, you have to look really hard
to find any mention of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) having had any part of
the program. Bendix Corporation built the Talos missile. According to the sparse
documentation on the development of the AN/FPS-16 monopulse radar, it was the brainchild
of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and built by RCA in Moorestown, NJ. This 1958
Radio & TV News magazine article claims the FPS-16 was developed with
a lot of input from Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University,
but the Wikipedia webpage makes no mention of it. The FPS-16 had the highest spatial
resolution of its time at 0.15° and 4.5 meters. It operated at 5400-5900 MHz...
 "The Radio Month" was a regular feature
in Radio-Electronics magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It contained
news items from around the industry and across the world. The entire two pages are
included in the included scan, but a couple items in particular stand out that are
worth mentioning. The first is announcing the soon to be available rectangular cathode
ray tubes (CRT) for television. Until then, the actual CRTs had round faces even
though the displayed image was rectangular. A 4:3 aspect ratio was the standard,
which required the tube diameter to be roughly 25% larger than the horizontal size
of the picture. In fact,
that is how TV display sizes came to be rated by their "diagonal" dimension
rather than the picture width, and the standard stuck even after rectangular tubes
were available. For instance, the 4:3 aspect ratio conveniently produces a diagonal
length of 5 (the 3:4:5 triangle), where the hypotenuse...
 "Short waves," with their ability to support
long distance communications under certain conditions, became a phenomenon in the
late 1920s, and a market developed for converting commercial broadcast receivers
to
short wave receivers. Magazines at the time were full of advertisements
for the devices. The particulars of short waves and the way they propagated in the
upper atmosphere were not yet well understood early on. In fact, the government
considered transmission frequencies above 1.5 MHz (≤200 meters) so useless
that they assigned those bands to amateur radio operators. The presence of an electrically
conductive layer, known as the ionosphere, was not verified until 1927 by Edward
Appleton... |
