Being a long-time fan of John T. Frye's
"Carl & Jerry" technodrama™ series, I have been intending to attempt a contemporary
version which has a Ham radio theme. Its purpose, as with "Carl & Jerry," is
to encourage young people to adopt electronics as a hobby and even as a career,
while using Amateur Radio as an enticement. Ham radio offers practical experience
in electronic theory, fabrication, and operation in an environment that encourages
community service, mentorship, camaraderie, and self discipline. In the U.S., there
are approximately 760,000 licensed amateur radio operators; worldwide, the estimated
number is around 3,000,000. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and the International
Amateur Radio Union (IARU) track these statistics. This title of the series is,
for now anyway, "Calvin &
Phineas Hamming It Up," and the first adventure is called, "The Phantom QRM."
Call signs are fictitious, chosen to hopefully not step on someone's real call sign.
The boys' names derive from my grandson's name...
There are probably few baseband and IF
delay lines these days that are constructed from a chain of inductor-capacitor
(LC) sections as described in this 1953 Radio-Electronics magazine article.
SAW and MEMS devices are the more likely choice for many reasons including cost,
weight, and volume savings. The preferred implementation of measured delays nowadays
would be in software after sampling with an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). There
are still applications for coaxial delay lines such as phase matching or adjustment
between system elements, and many companies offer custom designs with delay precision
in the tens of picoseconds. I once worked on part of a VHF/UFH transceiver unit
that used precise lengths of coax cable as part of a signal cancellation circuit
for enabling multiple radios to function in close proximity. I was not the designer...
"New Street Research analyst Blair Levin
titled today's research note: On C-Band, Who Wins? Musk or Wireless? Right now,
he's giving the edge to wireless, but it's early days. Is it time to pop the champagne?
Not quite, analysts say. The wireless industry might have won the first round in
the
upper
C-band kerfuffle, but given that Elon Musk is the challenger, nothing is a done
deal. What are we talking about? Get the popcorn because this will take a minute.
Earlier this week, the wireless industry, namely CTIA, cheered FCC Chairman Brendan
Carr's move to launch a Notice of Inquiry (NOI)..."
Channel Master is one of the few television
and FM radio antenna companies that has survived the evolution from over-the-air
(OTA) broadcasting to cable-based and then Internet-based broadcasting. Up until
around the end of the last century - which is incredibly two decades ago - a large
number of people still relied on rooftop and set-top antennas for program reception.
Airwaves continued to get more crowded both due to additional stations being built
and the ambient noise level increasing due to many other lower power devices in
use. An increasing number of manmade obstacles that blocked and/or reflected signals
resulted in many more low signal strength pockets and areas plagued by multipath
signal variability compounded the problem...
• €1B
European Chips Act Money for Infineon's Dresden Fab
• AM
Radio Mandate Costs Low for Automakers
• Dayton
Hamvention 2025 Award Winners
• FCC's Carr to Persuade Allies on new
Subsea Cable Regs
• AM
Radio for Every Vehicle Act up for Vote
Color TV has reached nearly 5 million American
homes, but many viewers complain about inaccurate colors due to
chroma-phase differences among networks, stations, and cameras. This results
in annoying hue changes, making it difficult for viewers to adjust the Hue or Tint
control for accurate flesh tones. This 1966 Radio-Electronics magazine article suggests
three possible solutions to this problem, emphasizing the need for precise phase
agreement among all components of the color TV system. Solving this issue could
encourage more people to adopt color TV technology, as the annoyance of inconsistent
colors is one of the last reasons the public has found for not making color-TV ownership
unanimous. Still plaguing the color TV industry is powerful x-rays emanating from
the high...
"A research team from the University of
Science and Technology of China (USTC), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
along with its partners, has made significant progress in random quantum circuit
sampling using Zuchongzhi-3 - a superconducting quantum computing prototype equipped
with
105 qubits and 182 couplers. Zuchongzhi-3 operates at an astonishing speed,
performing computations 1015 times faster than the most powerful supercomputer available
today and one million times faster than Google's latest published quantum computing
results. This achievement..."
Acrylic wall-to-wall carpeting really came
into vogue in the late 1960s to early 1970s - just in time for the arrival of miniaturized
microelectronics (is that redundant or just superfluous?). Gate widths were being
shrunken rapidly as the birth of the Moore's Law era was in its infancy (born in
a 1965 paper written by Intel engineer and co-founder Gordon Moore). The result
was copious quantities of
electronic gadgets being zapped when the unsuspecting user would
walk across the Van de Graaff generator in the form of floor covering and reach
for a dial or switch. A couple thousand volts could easily build up on a body clad
in lime green polyester pants (remember the era), then fzzzzt, there goes the clock
radio or AM/FM tuner. Vacuum tube circuits from a decade earlier...
BroadWave Technologies showcases
600 Ω Impedance Terminations. Model 592-401-005 has a DC-1 GHz operating
frequency range and is rated 5-Watts average power at 25°C. The maximum VSWR is
1.20:1 and the RF connector is N male. Developed to simulate load flow on a data
bus these terminations are useful in simulating emergency operation conditions.
Applications include installations with elements that vary over time such as electric
vehicle charging stations. Delivery for up to 25 pieces is from stock to 1-week
ARO. Custom impedance and other connector types are also available...
We hear and read a lot in the news about
the electronic
surveillance carried out by governments - on both foreign entities and civilians.
If you think this is a phenomenon that has only existed since the age of cellphones
and the Internet, you might be interested in this article that appeared in a 1945
issue of the ARRL's QST magazine. Long before the entire textual content
of the Encyclopedia Britannica could be carried on a USB stick in your pocket -
and access virtually all the information in the world on your iPhone, engineers
were developing recording media to facilitate the capturing and later analysis of
over-the-air and wired communications. They wanted both encrypted and unencrypted
conversations. The National Archives has a huge store of magnetic tapes, vinyl discs...
Innovative Power Products has been designing
and manufacturing RF and Microwave passive components since 2005. We use the latest
design tools available to build our baluns, 90-degree couplers, directional couplers,
combiners/dividers, single-ended transformers, resistors, terminations, and custom
products. Applications in military, medical, industrial, and commercial markets
are serviced around the world. Products listed on the website link to detailed mechanical
drawings, electrical specifications, and performance data. If you cannot find a
product that meets your requirements on our website, contact us to speak with one
of our experienced design engineers about your project.
Even though this article was written more
than half a century ago, the fundamentals of
protecting relays against interference from either internally
generated or externally generated noise haven't changed. Sometimes a datasheet will
recommend protection and noise suppression techniques, and when that is that case,
the manufacturer's advice should be followed (unless you have a really good reason
to deviate, possibly voiding a warranty). When you find yourself on your own with
the design, whether a new creation or modifying an existing circuit, use this article
and the very comprehensive table of application examples. This reminds me of the
early 2000's when the RFIC company I worked for was in a frenzy developing ways
to protect the inputs and outputs of their devices...
"The use of
terahertz waves, which have shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies than
radio waves, could enable faster data transmission, more precise medical imaging,
and higher-resolution radar. But effectively generating terahertz waves using a
semiconductor chip, which is essential for incorporation into electronic devices,
is notoriously difficult. Many current techniques can't generate waves with enough
radiating power for useful applications unless they utilize bulky and expensive
silicon lenses. Higher radiating power allows terahertz signals to travel farther.
Such lenses..."
Withwave is a leading designer and developer
of a broad range of RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave test solutions and subsystems
with a focus on electromagnetic field analysis and signal processing. Withwave's
new
Multi-Channel SMPS Cable Assemblies (WMCS Series) provide a wide range of multiple
coax connectors and flexible cable assemblies with a choice of 26.5, 40, 50 &
67 GHz configurations based on precision array design and superior high frequency
cabling solutions. These products consist of high performance flexible assemblies
which can be bundled in housings (2, 4, & 8 channels) and the interface to board
is compression type which provides lower total cost of testing by avoiding costly
soldering components...
This full-page advertisement by
CBS Tubes caught my eye because of the vast array of vacuum tube
shapes and sizes. It appeared in a 1958 issue of Radio & TV News magazine.
Most people, even back in the era of tube-based electronic equipment, think of the
standard 12AX7 type rounded top, cylindrical glass package with a plastic or phenolic
base and some metal pins sticking out of the bottom. Television and radio sets were
full of them, and those are what you or your parents or grandparents would yank
from the chassis and take to the local drug store or electronics shop to plug into
the big tube tester that was commonplace back then. However, as this photo shows
there was a great variety of special glass and inner electrode configurations. If
you have ever attended the MTTS (IMS) show, you might have seen the equipment display
provided by the National Electronics Museum...
Exodus Advanced Communications is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. Power amplifiers ranging
from 10 kHz to 51 GHz with various output power levels and noise figure
ranges, we fully support custom designs and manufacturing requirements for both
small and large volume levels. decades of combined experience in the RF field for
numerous applications including military jamming, communications, radar, EMI/EMC
and various commercial projects with all designing and manufacturing of our HPA,
MPA, and LNA products in-house.
On April 20, 1964, AT&T introduced the
Picturephone at the New York World's Fair, enabling coast-to-coast video communication.
The device, which featured a 4-3/8" x 5-3/4" screen and push-button controls allowing
users to display themselves, others, or nothing at all, went into commercial service
on June 24 with public booths in New York, Washington, and Chicago. The article
notes that the concept of video telephony was first imagined in Hugo Gernsback's
1911 science fiction novel "Ralph 124C 41+," where it was called the "Telephot."
While initially expensive ($16-$27 for 3 minutes depending on cities connected),
the Mr. Gernsback, in this 1964 editorial, predicts the technology would eventually
become more affordable and evolve to include features like language translation,
3D capabilities...
If you are a Ham radio operator - especially
a DX (long distance) operator, you have been required to study and learn about how
the various layers of the Earth's ionosphere can, under predictable conditions,
be an excellent reflector of certain radio wavelengths, thereby facilitating
over-the-horizon communications. Reading this article is like
a flashback from the license preparation manuals - particularly for the General
license exam. There is a lot of information here. When this article was published
in a 1958 issue of Radio & TV News magazine, the world was nearing
the end of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), which had as its goal learning
as much as possible about the properties of the upper atmosphere. The first earth-orbiting
satellites were being launched and manned space flight was only months away, so
there was much interest in learning...
"Microsoft this week introduced its first
quantum chip. The chip, called
Majorana
1, is powered by a new Topological Core architecture. Without getting too much
into the weeds, topoconductor is 'breakthrough class of materials' that will allow
Microsoft to create topological superconductivity, which Chetan Nayak, technical
fellow and corporate vice president of Quantum Hardware at Microsoft, described
in a blog post as 'a new state of matter that previously existed only in theory.'
So, something that is topological is not a solid, or a liquid, or a gas - it's topological.
While classical phases of matter correspond to local..."
It seemed like a reasonable idea, but the
absence of "One Hander" soldering tools on the market today - or any time
in the last half century for that matter - is empirical proof that the concept is
not feasible. In principle, being able to feed the solder into the joint area with
a squeezable pistol grip setup is not so different than modern wire welding machines
that basically do the same thing (I have one). It was probably the lack of stiffness
of the solder wire that caused the problem since keeping it on the joint would be
difficult. Preventing the flux from jamming the solder feed tube was no doubt an
issue as well. Oh well, it was worth a try. Today's surface mounted components could
never be soldered with such a device, even if modernized to accommodate the smaller
sizes...
Innovative Power Products has been designing
and manufacturing RF and Microwave passive components since 2005. We use the latest
design tools available to build our baluns, 90-degree couplers, directional couplers,
combiners/dividers, single-ended transformers, resistors, terminations, and custom
products. Applications in military, medical, industrial, and commercial markets
are serviced around the world. Products listed on the website link to detailed mechanical
drawings, electrical specifications, and performance data. If you cannot find a
product that meets your requirements on our website, contact us to speak with one
of our experienced design engineers about your project.
Articles like "Decibels
Debugged" from the July 1964 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine will
always be useful, which is why similar articles appear regularly in electronics
magazines over all time. When I was first introduced to logarithms in high school,
my eyes rolled back in my head and I was completely lost. The same thing happened
with factoring polynomials. Maybe it was because there was no apparent direct link
to my everyday life. Electrical concepts were easily grasped, but the math behind
it - other than various forms of Ohm's law - had me running for cover. I barely
passed 9th grade due to poor grades in math and science, and would still be waiting
to graduate high school (half a century later) if not for being able to spend three
years in high school in an electrical vocational program. Rather...
"By levitating nanoparticles with laser
beams, scientists have built an
antenna 10,000 times smaller than typical low-frequency receivers. This innovation
sidesteps the usual size limitations, enabling strong signal reception despite its
microscopic dimensions. With high tunability and real-world transmission tests proving
its viability, the nano-antenna could transform communications in extreme environments.
A research team led by Professor Huizhu Hu from Zhejiang University and Zhejiang
Lab has developed an innovative low-frequency receiving antenna using optically
levitated nanoparticles. This breakthrough has resulted in an antenna that is nearly
10,000 times smaller..."
Game playing with a remote opponent is routine
these days thanks to the Internet, but a couple decades ago it was not quite so
easy. A
checkers or chess match via telephone, snail mail (the only kind of mail at
the time), or even fax machine were the venues available to the common man, but
Hams had another means - radio! Using either Morse code or voice (aka phone) and
a playing board set up like the one shown in this article, two players could easily
match wits anywhere in the world where signals could be exchanged. Evidently the
participants could get so wrapped up in the game that they risked forgetting to
broadcast their call signs at the legally required interval (every 10 minutes),
so author Utterback provides a friendly admonition at the end...
everything RF is a product discovery platform
for RF & Microwave Products/Services. We currently have more than 344,477 RF &
Microwave Products from over 2278 Companies listed in 469 categories in our database
and enable engineers to search for them using our customized parametric search tool.
The parametric product search tool on everything RF has been designed to replace
paper and PDF catalogs. This "Custom Waveguide
Directional Couplers" tool get you quotes from multiple companies by filling
out a single form. Just enter your particular waveguide directional coupler requirements
and select manufacturers from whom you would like a quotation...
Electric induction heating has been used
in manufacturing processes since shortly after Benjamin Franklin invented electricity.
Of course I jest about Franklin; he didn't invent electricity but discovered that
lightning was a form of electrical discharge. One of the most energy-consuming forms
of induction heating is that used by Alcoa for smelting aluminum. Beyond that are
many thousands of processes ranging from forming, tempering, and joining metal parts
to cooking food and curing adhesives. Both Tocco and Ajax-Northrup, now Ajax Tocco,
brands of equipment are featured in this 1955 article which appeared in Popular
Electronics magazine. Some processes work by directly inducing a high current
in the primary target object - usually metallic - being treated...
Once upon a time, long, long ago, I believed
that someday I would be a military pilot for a couple decades, then retire and work
for the airlines. I enlisted in the Air Force (1978) with plans to earn a degree
during off-duty time. Having begun flying training prior to entering, I figured
working as a technician on
weather equipment would be a good gig whilst earning that sheepskin. Working
as an Air Traffic Control Radar Repairman (AFSC 303x1) job turned out well, but
the mobile communications squadron I was assigned to made taking college courses
nearly impossible. So, after a four-year stint, I got out and graduate with a BSEE
degree in 1989. This article encompasses two...
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One aspect of advertising on the RF Cafe
website I have not covered is using
Google AdSense.
The reason is that I never took the time to explore how - or even whether it is
possible - to target a specific website for displaying your banner ads. A couple
display opportunities have always been provided for Google Ads to display, but the
vast majority of advertising on RF Cafe is done via private advertisers. That is,
companies deal with me directly and I handle inserting their banner ads into the
html page code that randomly selects and displays them. My advertising scheme is
what the industry refers to as a "Tenancy Campaign," whereby a flat price per month
is paid regardless of number of impressions or clicks. It is the simplest format
and has seemed to work well for many companies. With nearly 4 million pageviews
per year for RFCafe.com, the average impression rate per banner ad is about 225,000k per
year (in eight locations on each page, with >17k pages)...
The 1940s and 1950s was an era of much advancement
in our knowledge of Earth's upper atmosphere and its affects on
radio communications - both good and bad as reported by this 1947 issue of
QST magazine. Industry, government, academic, and amateur groups all played
major roles in conducting experiments and publishing findings for the interested
community to share and build upon. Still today a huge amount of research is being
carried out to better understand how the various layers of the atmosphere - from
ground level to space - are affected by extraterrestrial influences. A year ago
I posted an article, along with a bit of editorializing, from the July 1958 edition
of Radio-Electronics entitled..."
Here is the last
engineering- and science-themed crossword puzzle for October.
These custom-made crosswords are done weekly for the brain-exercising benefit and
pleasure of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. The jury is out on
whether or not this type of mental challenge helps keep your gray matter from atrophying
in old age, but it certainly helps maintain your vocabulary and cognitive skills
at all ages. A database of thousands of words has been built up over the years and
contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science, physical, astronomy,
mathematics, chemistry, etc. 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...
Satellite evolution occurred at a rapid pace once
Sputnik and Echo were successfully launched in the late 1950s. Sputnik was a simple beacon
transmitter whose signal was used to measure orbital and atmospheric properties and their
effects on radio signals. Oh, and also to announce to the world that the USSR had accomplished
the world's first satellite mission - I'd brag, too. Explorer 1, the first
U.S. satellite, launched the following year, measured and broadcast Van Allen Radiation
Belt data. This Electronics World article appeared about a decade into the satellite
aspect of the "Space Race." By then...
Here are a couple more
technology-themed comics that appeared in the May 1956 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. Both are indicative of the issues commonly encountered in the day. The
era was during the transition between vacuum tubes and semiconductors, but inhabitants
of either can understand and appreciate the humor. The comic from page 52 does require
you to be familiar with the copper oxide or selenium type of rectifier that spanned
both eras. Otherwise, you might wonder what the funny-looking hat on the guy's head
is (hint - it's not a hat). The 1950s was also a time of transition from electromagnetic
speaker magnets to iron magnets, so AC hum in radios could get in not just through
the audio circuits but also through the speaker itself. The page 126 comic addresses
that issue...
Each week, for the sake of all avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created
lexicon related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
etc. You will never find among the words names of politicians, mountain ranges,
exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might, however,
see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly related to
this puzzle's theme, such as Hedy...
Thyratrons, klystrons, and magnetrons I've
heard of, but
trochotrons, charactrons, tonotrons I ain't heard of. That made this quiz more
of a learning exercise for me than a test of any sort of knowledge possessed. Heck,
I thought an 'ignitron' was a pejorative term for a really dumb techie wannabe.
In all there are 17 types of '-tron' devices given for which to match from a list
of descriptions. You'll probably do better than I did on this quiz that appeared
in the October 1963 issue of Electronics World magazine.
Listen to the RF
Cafe Podcast. It is a rare thing when I take exception (i.e., disagree) with
anything Mac McGregor has to say, but on the
subject of soldering I must object. In this 1956 installment of Mac's Service
Shop, Mac and Barney are discussing the plusses and minuses of making a solder joint
mechanically sound prior to applying solder. Barney mentions an article he read
where the author asserts that the only way to make a quality solder joint is to
wrap component leads and wire ends around posts, lugs, eyes, etc. and then flowing
the solder. Both Mac and Barney argue that a perfectly sound solder joint can be
made simply by laying the lead or wire in place and applying solder. From a servicing
perspective that sounds good, because - as I can attest to from much experience...
Homepage
Archives for January 2023. Items on the RF Cafe homepage come and go at a pretty
fast rate. In order to facilitate fast page loading, I keep the size reasonable - under a megabyte (ebay, Amazon, NY Times, etc., are multiple
megabytes). New items are added at the top of the content area, and within a few
days they shift off the bottom. If you recall seeing something on the homepage
but now it is gone, fret not because many years I have maintained
Homepage Archives.
Here be another brain teaser from quizmaster
Robert P. Balin. The "Amplifier
Quiz" is one of sixty or so I have posted thus far from vintage issues of
Popular Electronics magazine. Having been created in 1964, the circuit
schematics use vacuum tubes, but don't let that inhibit you from taking the test.
Enhancement mode field effect transistors (FETs) are an apt analogy to tubes for
determining function, so I added symbols for FETs next to the vacuum tube symbols
to help you visualize the equivalence. I usually do a respectable job on these quizzes,
but have to admit to only getting 4 out of 6 this time (67%), and one of those was
just a lucky, semi-educated guess. Shameful.
OK, I give up. What is a "pukka amateur?"
According to an online dictionary: pukka, adj (esp in India) 1. properly or perfectly
done, constructed, etc. a pukka road 2. genuine pukka sahib. Next up: A
Blattnerphone. That sounds an awful lot like Blattenberger, or
maybe more like Blattnerberger. Anyway, a Blattnerphone was an early attempt at
recording sound on a steel tape. I thought my native language was English, but evidently
there are still some good words to learn. If you read enough vintage magazines from
the first half of the 20th century, you will run across many words and phrases that
are still in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but you hardly ever see or hear them
used anymore...
I was first introduced to the concept of
receiver noise figure at the start of my engineering career in
1989 at General Electric AESD in Utica, NY. During my four years in the U.S. Air
Force working on airport surveillance and precision approach radars, I do not recall
having ever heard the term noise figure or noise temperature. We did signal to noise
and signal sensitivity measurements as part of the normal maintenance, but the terms
never arose. Ditto for my courses at the UVM. We never did cascade parameter calculations
for noise figure, intercept points, compression points, etc. That is primarily the
realm of practicing...
This might be the first (and only) appearance
of Carl's father, at least in a drawing. In this episode, John T. Frye's high-tech
teen duo Carl and Jerry design and build a "polecat detector." In the process, a
little drama is thrown in when a stander-by mistakenly believes he is being insulted.
Even if, in spite of the detailed description by Jerry, you don't learn how a photocell-based
threshold crossing circuit works, you might just learn the meaning of 'lugubriously.'
Mr. Frye always worked valuable technical information into his stories about
"Carl & Jerry," "Mac's Service Shop," and other regular features which appeared
in electronics magazines for decades.
One aspect of advertising on the RF Cafe
website I have not covered is using
Google AdSense.
The reason is that I never took the time to explore how - or even whether it is
possible - to target a specific website for displaying your banner ads. A couple
display opportunities have always been provided for Google Ads to display, but the
vast majority of advertising on RF Cafe is done via private advertisers. That is,
companies deal with me directly and I handle inserting their banner ads into the
html page code that randomly selects and displays them. My advertising scheme is
what the industry refers to as a "Tenancy Campaign," whereby a flat price per month
is paid regardless of number of impressions or clicks. It is the simplest format
and has seemed to work well for many companies. With nearly 4 million pageviews
per year for RFCafe.com, the average impression rate per banner ad is about 225,000k per
year (in eight locations on each page, with >17k pages)...
Since 2000, I have been creating custom engineering-
and
science-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising benefit and pleasure
of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. The jury is out on whether or
not this type of mental challenge helps keep your gray matter from atrophying in
old age, but it certainly helps maintain your vocabulary and cognitive skills at
all ages. A database of thousands of words has been built up over the years and
contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science, physical, astronomy,
mathematics, chemistry, etc. 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 ...
For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created lexicon
related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. You
will never find among the words names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic foods or
plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might, however, see someone or something
in the exclusion list who or that is directly related to this puzzle's theme, such as
Hedy Lamar or the Bikini Atoll, respectively...
The many
idiosyncrasies of atmospheric phenomena that affect long distance communications
are certainly more well known and understood today than they were in the early days
of radio. Ionization, temperature and pressure gradients, suspended particulate
contamination, and other factors have been extensively studied, measured, and modeled.
Daily and seasonal patterns are somewhat predictable and exploitable for purposes
of general use, but short term variability that affects long distance radar measures
of distance, altitude, and speed requires near instantaneous, pulse by pulse analysis
of atmospheric conditions. Research and development of methods for accommodating
short term variations that skew measurements are an ongoing science. An extreme
example of atmospheric variation ...
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...
Montgomery Ward (aka "Wards" or even "Monkey
Wards") had their own line of radios, electric guitars, and other products that
went by the name of "Airline." Sears, Roebuck and Company, by the way, had the "Silvertone"
series of radios, electric guitars and, other electronics products. This 2-page
radio service data sheet for the
Montgomery Ward Airline Model 04BR-1105A console type radio appeared in a 1941
issue of Radio-Craft magazine. Some of the electronics magazines of the
era ran these features to help out people who wanted to attempt troubleshooting
and aligning their own equipment. Many electronics manufacturers would sell service
data documentation only to authorized dealers and repair shops. Unlike today where ...
This episode of "Mac's
Radio Service Shop" is a prime example of the difference between a business
owner and an employee when it comes to always thinking about how to make things
more efficient and attractive to customers - and therefore more profitable. To be
fair, there is no reason to expect an employee to have as high a level of devotion
as an owner other than for better job security. The October 1950 story entitled
"Mending Harness," appearing in Radio & Television News magazine, is a prime
example. Mac, the proprietor, had spend many hours in the evenings completing service
jobs and clearing the shop of its sizeable backlog. Barney, the employee, loved
the situation since he thought it would mean some slack time for him. Mac, though,
planned to use that time for repairing, aligning, and improving the test equipment
- something that had gone wanting during the busy times. As always, Mac's Service
Shop docu-dramas are a good mix of useful lessons and good humor...
Ryan Aeronautical Company was founded in
1934, and became part of Teledyne in 1969, eventually being owned Northrop Grumman
in 1999. Ryan, which produced many airplanes and drones, was perhaps most famous
for building the Spirit of St. Louis (Ryan NYP) used by Charles Lindbergh on his
historic transatlantic flight. Ryan also dabbled in jet engines and electronics.
The "packaged
radar" concept described in this 1952 Radio & Television News magazine article
was the precursor to modular circuit assembly commonly used in military systems
to facilitate rapid field repair... |