|
 Details of ancient Parthian
electrochemical batteries unearthed near Baghdad by archaeologist Wilhelm Konig,
dating over 2,000 years, was reported in this 1964 Popular Electronics
magazine article. Housed in earthenware jars sealed with asphaltum (bitumen), they
featured a copper cylinder soldered with 60/40 tin-lead alloy - identical to modern
electronics, prior to PB-free mandates - encasing a corroded iron rod for electrodes,
enabling electroplating of gold, silver, and antimony via electrolytes like copper
sulphate, ferrocyanides, or lye. GE engineer Willard F.M. Gray replicated them successfully
for Pittsfield's Berkshire Museum, using iron rods for series connections. More
cells surfaced in a Seleucia magician's hut and Berlin Museum...
 It seems most of the articles we see on
the subject of attenuator pads are based on signal reduction in terms of decibels
for units of power. Although it is a simple matter to convert power decibels to
voltage decibels, it would be more convenient if you are working with voltage to
have formulas and tables of values based on voltage ratios. This article does just
that. As a reminder, the decibel representation of a ratio is always 10 * log10 (x).
If you have a voltage ratio of V1/V2 = 0.5, then
10 * log10 (0.5) = -3.01 dB. If you have
a power ratio of P1/P2 = 0.5, then 10 * log10 (0.5) = -3.01 dB.
Does that mean that -3.01 dB of voltage attenuation is the same as 3.01 dB
of power attenuation...
 This might be a perfect application for
QuentComm. "Researchers led at the University
of Science and Technology of China (USTC), have achieved a major milestone in quantum
communication. For the first time, they demonstrated a key component required for
scalable quantum repeaters, which later allowed them to carry out device-independent
quantum key distribution (DI-QKD) across 100 kilometers. The results, published
in Nature and in Science, represent important progress toward building a functional
quantum internet. The work also reinforces China's position at the forefront of
quantum research and technology..."
 This Radio Service Data Sheet for the Clarion
"Replacement" Chassis, Model AC-160 A.V.C. Superhet is an example of the dozens
of similar schematic and alignment instruction sheets that have been posted on RF
Cafe over the years. Obtaining technical information on most things, even readily
available items, prior to the Internet era was often very difficult - if not impossible.
Service centers had what was need provided by manufacturers and distributors, but
if you wanted to find a part number or service data on a refrigerator, radio, lawn
mower, garage door opener...
 Remember the test patterns that used to
be broadcast by over-the-air broadcast stations that were used to align the electron
beam defection circuitry in CRT-based televisions? That pattern of squares, circles,
parallel and radial lines was generated by a special tube called a "Monoscope" on the transmitter end. Focus, 4:3 picture aspect ratio,
linearity, frequency response, and contrast and brightness were all tweaked to optimize
the pattern on the TV receiver circuitry. Of course not all sets were capable of
obtaining a perfect alignment due to inferior design and/or a scheme by the manufacturer
to provide a lower cost model with the tradeoff being a poorer picture - that it
the type of TV we always had in our household as...
 Anritsu has been a global provider of innovative
communications test and measurement solutions for more than 120 years. Anritsu manufactures
a full line of innovative components and accessories for
RF and Microwave Test and Measurement
Equipment including attenuators & terminations; coaxial cables, connectors &
adapters; o-scopes; power meters & sensors; signal generators; antenna, signal,
spectrum, & vector network analyzers (VNAs); calibration kits; Bluetooth &
WLAN testers; PIM testers; amplifiers; power dividers; antennas. "We've Got You
Covered."
 Dave Harbaugh created a great many electronics-themed
comics back in the 1960s for magazines like Popular Electronics, QST,
"73", and others. His "Hobnobbing
with Harbaugh" series usually depicted hobbyists and technicians in a state
of surprise and/or dismay over some event while in the act of pursuing his passion
(electronics, that is, not a woman). Although I have never run across any evidence
of it, I wonder how many of the scenarios are derived from personal experience.
Many do not have captions. I have to admit to being stumped at what he is trying
to convey in the comic where the guy is staring into the back of the TV while his
wife...
 Competition amongst countries and businesses
existed long before the advent of radio receivers. Here is an interesting story
which demonstrates how international politics and corporate policies has been part
of the electronics industry since its inception. In order to circumvent what were
considered to be outlandish patent licensing fees, Danish engineer Carl Arne Scheimann
Jensen developed a new "gridless" type of vacuum tube (aka valve) which was called
the "Renode." Rather than using a screen grid in the path between the
cathode and plate, the Renode employed two sets of beam concentrator and deflector
plates on either side of the electron beam's path to modulate the conduction. According
to measurements it provided a slight improvement in both linearity and selectivity...
 "Sixth-generation wireless networks, or
6G, are expected to achieve terabit-per-second speeds using terahertz frequencies.
However, to harness the terahertz spectrum, complicated device designs are typically
needed to establish multiple high-speed connections. Now research suggests that
advanced topological materials may ultimately help to achieve such links. The experimental
device the researchers have made, in fact, achieved 72 gigabits-per-second data
rates, and reached more than 75% of the three-dimensional space around it. Current
solutions typically achieve only one or two of these features at a time and often
rely on complex
antenna arrays or mechanical steering..."
 This week's
RF & Microwave Companies crossword puzzle includes the names
of all my current advertisers and a few others that will be familiar to many of
you. These kinds of puzzles take a particularly long time to create because of needing
to force words into certain positions. That leaves the software with fewer options
for fitting the other words. All the words in RF Cafe crossword puzzles are relevant
to engineering, science, mathematics, etc., stored in a hand-built (over more than
two decades) lexicon of thousands of terms and clues. Enjoy...
 Mystery stories were broadcast on radio
stations in the days before television - and for quite a while after TV was available
for that matter. Families gathered around the living room radio set in excited anticipation
of the next adventure of shows like "The Shadow," "Amos 'n' Andy," "Tales of the
Texas Rangers," "Dragnet," and "The Green Hornet." During that era, it was common
also for electronics magazines, which focused largely on radio communications, to
experiment with printed dramas that had a radio-centric theme. Here is the first
of a series tried by Radio-Craft magazine in the late 1930s. A couple decades
later the Carl & Jerry adventures were run in Popular Electronics,
but other than that I don't recall seeing a lot of these things...
 Diode characteristics and their applications
have not changed fundamentally since this article was published in 1952. Sure, the
die are smaller, power handling and frequency range has increased, package styles
are greatly expanded, and the cost per unit is way down, but if you are looking
for some basic diode information, you will find it here in this 4th installment
of a multi-part series in Radio & Television News magazine. Don't let
the vacuum tubes in schematics scare you off and think that it makes the story irrelevant
for today's circuits. For purposes of illustration substitute a transistor's collector
(or drain) for the tube's plate, a transistor's base (or gate) for the tube's screen
grid, and a transistor's emitter (or source) for the tube's...
 The term "drone"
these days for most invokes the image of a little plastic spider-looking thing with
propellers mounted at the ends of the arms - usually with a toothless bumpkin at
the controls. Those same people often think drones are relatively new devices. People
with a just a little more information automatically classify all radio control (R/C)
models, be they traditional fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters, as drones. Pilots
of the aforementioned models are even likely, per observers, to have all their teeth
and bathe regularly. I happen to be one of the latter type R/C modelers and while
I no longer possess all 32 teeth I had at birth, I do bathe regularly. Drones have
been around since World War I where they were used for target practice by ground-based
mark...
 "If you have dark eyes and blonde hair.
and are under 30, you're due for some easy squeezing. Milligan's Appliance Center,
84 Main Street, is giving every girl between 16 and 30 who has these striking features
a newly patented orange squeezer, to introduce the new item ... Note: Any traces
of recent peroxide rinse will disqualify applicants." That is advertising copy offered
as an example effective promotional material in a 1947 edition of
Radio News. My first reaction was to think how something
like that would never fly today, but then I wasn't so sure. It seems there must
be anti-discrimination laws in this "offend nobody" climate today...
 Imagine having a serviceman of any sort
arrive at your house, fix your problem, and present you with a bill of $6 - parts
included. He would walk away satisfied that he had done a good job and was well
compensated for the work considering the effort invested in training and qualification.
$6 in 1932, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics'
Inflation Calculator is worth $135.97 in 2015 money - that's a
cheap service call even in today's economy. Further, the $14 stated as a day's earnings
is $317.26 in 2025, which equates to 50 (work weeks/year) x 5 (days/week) x $243.86
(/day) = $79,315 (/year) - not too shabby. Just between you and me, that's more
than I'm currently making per year running RF Cafe...
 Aegis Power Systems is a leading supplier
of AC-DC and DC-DC power supplies
for custom and special applications. Aegis has been designing and building highly
reliable custom power supplies since 1995. They offer a complete line of switch
mode power supplies and power converters for a variety of markets including defense,
industrial, aircraft, VME, and telecom. Supports military, aircraft, EV, telecom,
and embedded computing applications. Design and manufacture of custom power supply
solutions to meet each customer's exacting specifications. Please visit Aegis Power
Systems today. Manufactured in the USA.
 Oscillators were never my forte. My biggest
exposure to oscillators was unintentional oscillations in amplifier circuits ;-(
. This
Oscillator Quiz, published in the November 1962 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine, would embarrass me if I attempted to complete it. Therefore, I will simply
state that I highly regard your oscillator prowess if you do better than 50% on
it. I guessed correctly at a couple of the more familiar circuits, but cannot even
make an educated guess at most of them. Don't let the presence of vacuum tubes scare
you off; mentally replace them with a FET and move on...
 These letters represent an unfriendly exchange
between The Electrical Experimenter editor Hugo Gernsback and Dr. K.G.
Frank, of the Telefunken System of Wireless Technology, of Germany. Gernsback correctly
accused Dr. Frank of engaging in espionage for Germany and against the United
States of America, during World War I at a time we were not officially at war
with the Axis powers. He was arrested and interred for the duration of the war for
sending out "unneutral
messages" from the broadcast station at Sayville, Long Island, New York. See
"Radiobotage" in this month's (September 1941) editorial...
 "There's an interesting development in amateur
ballooning: using so-called
superpressure
balloons, which float high in the atmosphere indefinitely rather than simply
going up and up and then popping like a normal weather balloon. Superpressure balloons
can last for months and travel long distances, potentially circumnavigating the
globe, all the while reporting their position. You might imagine that an undertaking
like this would be immensely difficult and cost thousands of dollars. In fact, you
can build and launch such a balloon for about the cost of a fancy dinner out. You
just have to think small! That's why amateur balloonists call them pico balloons.
The payload of a pico balloon is so light..."
 Many of the words in this week's
crossword puzzle pertain to radar engineering. All the rest of
the words are related to technology, engineering, science, mathematics, aeronautics,
ham radio, chemistry, etc. There are no names of Hollywierd actors, shoe designers,
or romance novel titles. I will be glad to create a special edition crossword for
your newspaper, newsletter, etc. Enjoy...
 It's time to gather 'round for another story
about fictional radio service shop owner
Mac McGregor and his trusted sidekick technician, Barney. In this
episode, an errantly wired bypass capacitor on a chassis from one of the old AC/DC
radio sets caused Mac to get a 300-volt wakeup call when his hand brushed against
it. After explaining the situation to Barney and apprising him of the danger it
poses to an owner who unwittingly sticks his/her hand into the back of the cabinet,
Mac lists a few other common dangers to watch for. Radios that ran on either AC
or DC power were very common back in the early days because there were homes and
businesses that had both type systems wired in to the premises - in part due to
the famous battle between Thomas Edison's preferred DC electrical distribution system
and Nikola Tesla's preferred AC electrical distribution system. Another reason for
DC compatibility was that prior to the
Rural Electrification Act of 1936, many...
 An incredibly glaring example of the famous
admonishment* that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it, Radio-Craft
editor Hugo Gernsback wrote in May of 1941, a full half year before the United States
of America officially entered World War II, about how current conditions regarding
domestic commercial radio broadcast stations were likely being used by German agents
to send coded messages to offshore vessels (ships, submarines, and aircraft).
In example, he cited, amazingly, an article he himself published in 1915 in
The Electrical Experimenter accusing Dr. K. G. Frank, of the German Telefunken
company, of conducting spy operations from the Sayville, NY, station on Long Island...
 Considering that not much more than a year
before this article was written that the transistor had been invented, it is impressive
that already Raytheon was producing a commercially available
CK703 "crystal triode." That nomenclature was a natural extension
of the preceding crystal diode already being widely adapted in circuit design. If
you have wondered how the transistor schematic symbol came to be as it is, you will
learn why here where the emitter and collector symbols actually both have arrows
on the ends that contact the base, indicating the "point contact" physical arrangement
of the semiconductor junctions. Shortly thereafter the arrow on the collector port
was eliminated, primarily, I suppose to avoid confusion when the E, B, and C labels
are not present...
 "CDimension recently unveiled a technology
that enables conventional semiconductor fabs to use ultra-thin semiconductor materials
to manufacture vertically integrated arrays of extremely small, fast, and efficient
"2D" transistors. It has the potential to change what's possible for both digital
and power devices. According to the company, it's already helping several chipmakers
explore how to apply their technology to produce digital and analog ICs that offer
dramatically higher logic densities, operating speeds, and energy efficiency..."
 Here are three more Radio Service Data Sheets
added to the online archive. As mentioned many times in the past, I post these for
the benefit of hobbyists looking for information to assist in repairing or restoring
vintage communication equipment. These particular radio models -
Emerson Model 20A and 25A,
Pilot Model B-2,
General Electric Model K-40-A - were featured in a 1933 edition
of
Radio-Craft magazine...
 A lot of RF Cafe visitors might not be familiar
with some of the electronic waveforms presented in this
Oscilloscope Quiz by Popular Electronics magazine's ultimate quizmaster, Robert
Balin. The shapes are recognizable to anyone who has done a lot of design, troubleshooting,
testing, or alignments on analog circuits. Electronics repairmen were intimately
familiar with these - and much more complex - waveforms. Modulation of the z-axis
is especially cool as it varies the intensity of the waveform. I always roll my
eyes when, back in the day, a laboratory or medical facility in movies or on TV
had an oscilloscope display with a Lissajous pattern writhing on the display...
|
 • Fund Opens
Defence Contracts to UK Startups
• Global
Trade Holds Its Ground
• FCC
"Supercharge" Wi-Fi in 6 GHz Band
• Legacy
Memory (DDR2, 3, 4) in Demand but Scarce
• 2026 is
Year of 6G Slop
• FCC to
Exempt Amateurs from Foreign Adversary Reporting
 The
RF Cafe Homepage Archive
is a comprehensive collection of every item appearing daily on this website since
2008 - and many from earlier years. Many thousands of pages of unique content have
been added since then.
 I have often said that some of the most capable
and enthusiastic engineers and technicians - and even managers - I have worked with
in my 30-something year electronics career have been amateur radio operators. They
are the rare few who are able to combine a hobby passion with a profession that
pays for the hobby... kind of like the airline pilot who flies model airplanes or
the druggie who works at a pharmacy. Oh, wait, scratch that last example. Here we
see a video from Chevrolet where two engineers, one of them a Ham, took up the challenge
to replace the
AM/FM whip
antenna originally planned for the 2011 Camaro convertible with a blended, inconspicuous
antenna. Leaked photos of the prototype car showed the whip, which caused Camaro
aficionados to descend upon Chevy requesting its removal. The flexible, folding
rear window prevented...
 Antenna
builder extraordinaire Dave Jones (N1UAV) outdid himself by replacing his 9-element
dual stacked Yagi antenna array with a 17-element version. He provides some
written instructions and, most helpfully, a YouTube video showing how he did it.
There is also a parts list that, where possible, has Lowe's item numbers for easy
procurement. Dave originally sent me a note back in July about the stacked television
antenna project he undertook after finding the "How
to Stack TV Antennas to Increase Signal Strength and to Reduce Ghosts" article
from the November 1965 issue of Popular Electronics magazine here on RF
Cafe. He lives in an area prone to multipath effects when receiving signals from
a rather distant television station, so he decided to muster his considerable antenna
building skills to see whether a stacked array would work for him...
 Hughes Aerospace has many openings for qualified
design engineers in Culver City, California. High power airborne transmitters, low
noise receivers using parametric amplifiers, solid state maser component development,
radar processing systems, crystal oscillators, telemetering, and high efficiency
spaceborne power supplies are among the kinds of specialties needed by Hughes to
support military and civilian projects. If you have been looking for just such an
opportunity, then the wait is finally over... provided you happened to see this
advertisement in Electronics magazine back in the fall of 1965. Quiz question:
What is the difference between a geosynchronous orbit and a geostationary orbit?
 RF Cafe visitor Vince S. saw the "Barney
Turns Inventor" episode of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" series recently posted here
which told of Barney's idea for a vacuum tube tester that would set all the switches
and voltages based on a coded card for the particular tube type. That story appeared
in a 1950 issue of Radio & Television News magazine. I don't know when Hickok
came out with their first
"Cardmatic" tube tester, but as Vince noted in his message to
me, the idea might have been borne of John Frye's fictional scenario. This
full-page advertisement for the Hickok Model 121 High-Speed Portable Cardmatic Tube
Tester comes from the March 1958 issue of Radio & TV News. A YouTube
video of a Model 121 Cardmatic is included below...
 Before there was the annual
International Microwave Symposium (IMS) trade show, the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S)
hosted the show, which was widely known as the MTT-S show. Before that, the event
went by a variety of names, including "Intercon," (International Convention and
Exposition) as reported in this 1972 issue of Popular Electronics magazine.
For the first few decades since its inception in the 1950s, New York City was the
venue, often in a hotel. As with tides and solar cycles, enthusiasm and attendance
waned and ebbed over the years. 1972 was one of the low years. Per the story, about
half the number of people were there compared to two years prior. I could not locate
a chart of attendance numbers over the years, nor the numbers to generate my own
chart...
 "Our first complete column devoted to the
subject [of
v.h.f. and u.h.f. signal variation], presenting material similar to that which
follows, was withheld from publication at that time in compliance with censorship."
That is an amazing statement from a time when almost any form of technical information
that was not already public knowledge was withheld for the sake of the war effort.
Nothing that might even remotely give the enemy an edge, and consequently possibly
harm our troops, got past the government censors at the War Department. Most citizens
and even media editors willingly complied. Compare that with today's 5th column
traitors at most of the media outlets that not only can't wait to publish information
that will aid and abet our country's enemies, but have been known to manufacture
stories in order to make the U.S. look bad...
 Here is a nifty little exercise that appeared
in the April 1960 edition of Popular Electronics magazine. The "Find the Brightest
Bulb Quiz" has ten different light bulb circuits and challenges you to figure out
which bulb would burn the brightest. All are intuitively obvious to most of us who
have been in the field for decades, but do you remember how to do a circuit mesh
analysis to prove your "gut?" One way to help figure out what is going on is to
re-draw the circuit to eliminate crossing lines, if possible, as in circuit numbers
2, 4, 6, and 10. Also try drawing electrically common nodes as a single connection
point, as in circuit #2 where the two nodes in the upper left and right corners
are actually the same point. Finally, try to re-arrange the circuit branches into
obvious parallel and series paths to make clear any interdependencies and independencies...
 Most people who have been in the electronics
world for a while know that neon light bulbs* used to be commonly employed as a
"pert-near" voltage regulator reference of between 55 and 65 volts, depending on
the type. The familiar NE-2 has a turn-on voltage of 65 Vac (90 Vdc),
for instance, and the voltage across the terminals remains there with little change
regardless of the current through the bulb - a lot like a Zener diode. Neon bulbs
are also used as non-invasive RF power detectors. Most people probably do not know,
however, that incandescent bulbs also have properties that make them useful for
purposes other than just lighting up a dark space.
Incandescent light bulbs have been used successfully for voltage regulation
and RF power measurement. They have also been used as dummy loads for transmitters.
John Parchman details some of these uses...
 Finding current information on the ARRL's
Brass Pounders
League (BPL) is difficult, and in fact a search on the ARRL.org website does
not get you to a page with a date more recent than around 2012. I don't know whether
the BPL has been "obsoleted" or just does not enjoy the promotion level it once
did. This article in The Dipole publication reviews a bit of the history
of the Brass Pounders League, and even mentions Mary A. Dougherty (a.k.a Mae Burke,
W3CUL), who is featured in this 1953 QST article. She was born in 1911 and became
a Silent Key in 1997. If I wasn't so busy, I would do some research to find out
what the percentage of licensed female Hams was in 1953 compared with today. I wouldn't
be surprised if the number was higher in 1953...
 Here are a couple more
electronics-themed comics from you that appeared in the October 1950 issue of
Radio & Television News magazine. The comic on page 50 might challenger
your ability to appreciate the situation. Television was still a relatively new
phenomenon and people were fanatical (the origin of "fan" is "fanatic") over it.
Crowds gathered in front of store windows containing a TV set to watch the magic
of the technology. The opportunity to watch live sporting events via television
was available to many people only at venues outside the home, as a TV was still
a middle class accessory at the time. Today when people gather around a TV set at
a bar, it is not because they could not watch it on their smartphones or home TV
sets or computers, but because they want the camaraderie of fellow fans. Although
I am tempted to assume most people "get" the gag in the page 167 comic, it could
very well be that not many are familiar with what a radio or TV antenna looks like,
since the ones they use are buried inside their phones. It is rare to see an old-fashioned
multi-element antenna on a house anymore, and the antennas on cell towers look nothing
like them. About the only place you see...
 The old-time radio broadcasts available on
the Internet are obviously recorded version of shows made long ago. However, back
in the day those shows were
originally performed live in front of microphones and recorded
in a broadcast studio. With a cast of two or three or even more, the actors would
voice their lines with as much talent and effort as those performing for movies.
The crew usually included a group of people responsible for creating background
sound effects like horses running, car horns tooting, airplanes buzzing by, and
dogs barking. All was done real-time with split-second timing required to pull it
off and sound convincing. Radio audiences were unaware of all the work required
as they sat intently listening to the Adventures of the Lone Ranger and The Shadow.
Behind the scenes were dozens of engineers and technicians tending local radio broadcasting
equipment and all-important telephone landlines used for synchronizing stations
across the country...
 It has been a long time since I heard this
saying: "Well, they always say that if you want to find out the best and easiest
way of doing something, just put a lazy man at the job." Mac McGregor offered that
line to his service shop technician Barney - in jest of course - when Barney explains
his million dollar invention idea for a
fool-proof vacuum tube tester that can be used by just about anyone. Mac's Radio
Service Shop creator John Frye often used the monthly techno-drama to introduce
some good ideas for new inventions and/or new methods for troubleshooting problems.
Somewhere along the line I think I have seen an advertisement for a tube tester
that used the automation concept dreamed up by Barney...
 When beginning to read this 1954 Radio-Electronics
magazine article, I almost missed the uniqueness of the author's name:
Henry Farad. Usually something like that appears in an April edition, but this
being March, I figured it was just a clever device used by whomever really wrote
the story. For anyone trying to enter the field of electronics repair in that era,
reading this piece must have been discouraging, and Mr. Farad makes that clear
up front by stating, "He is up against a problem as old as civilization - he hasn't
been able to find a job because he has no experience; he can't get any experience
because he can't find a job!" Profit margins were very low in repair work due to
the usually undeserved reputation of service shops as being rip-off joints. Taking
on an apprentice was a luxury few could afford since the payoff would take so long.
Radio, TV, record players, etc., were not generally serviceable by laymen (except
for swapping out vacuum tubes), and the throw-away mindset was not yet possible
because of how relatively expensive those sets were. Accordingly, you might think
knowledgeable servicemen...
 Navy Electricity and Electronics Training
Series (NEETS) Module 4 -
Introduction
to Electrical Conductors, Wiring Techniques, and Schematic Reading. Upon completing
this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Recall the definitions of unit size, mil-foot,
square mil, and circular mil and the mathematical equations and calculations for
each. 2. Define specific resistance and recall the three factors used to calculate
it in ohms. 3. Describe the proper use of the American Wire Gauge when making wire
measurements. 4. Recall the factors required in selecting proper size wire. 5. State
the advantages and disadvantages of copper or aluminum as conductors. 6. Define
insulation resistance and dielectric strength including how the dielectric strength
of an insulator is determined. 7. Identify the safety precautions to be taken when
working with insulating materials...
 Once a major manufacturer of both primary
(one-time use) and secondary (rechargeable) batteries, the National Carbon Company
changed names many times through acquisitions and mergers until its current incarnation
as GrafTech International. National Carbon Co. appeared frequently in electronics
magazines during the World War II era for their innovations in portable power
supplies. They are credited for developing the world's first "D" size dry cell battery.
This advertisement in a 1958 issue of Popular Electronics heralded the company's
introduction of what was essentially what we call a
hydrogen fuel cell...
 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..."
 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)...
 Take a look at this
ARRA (Antenna & Radome Research
Associates) attenuator advertisement that appeared in the September 2018 issue of
Microwaves & RF magazine a tell me if it reminds you of
something you might have seen in the 1960's through 1980's. That might not have
been the intention, but seeing it sure triggered my nostalgia mechanism. Even
the tag line, "When it comes to attenuators, nobody - but nobody - can fill our
shoes," idiom, being somewhat dated, conjures up memories of vintage company
slogans. Of course the black and white motif feeds the perception. Maybe I'm
wrong, but if it appeals to me for any reason, the ad designers have done their
job... |
