|
 At Parvoo University, amid relentless November
rain, H-3 dormmates Carl and Jerry pursue H-2's prank: a stolen bronze trophy plaque
hurled into a half-mile muddy stretch of river. Cold, turbid waters bar preclude
dives for a search; non-magnetic bronze defies current-day metal detectors. Jerry
repurposes his cousin's boat depth-finder as an
enhanced sonar, exploiting echo signatures. A motor rotates a neon tube across
a depth-calibrated dial; at zero, contacts trigger a 200-kc ultrasonic pulse from
the transducer in transmit (speaker) mode, flashing initial glow. Bottom echo reflects
to transducer in receive (microphone) mode, amplifying...
 The announcement and public demonstration
of Senatore Guglielmo Marconi's "death ray" device was the coming true of some of the worst fears
of science fiction aficionados. Application of these newly created centimeter wave
"beams" could roast the flesh of man or beast when generated with great enough power.
The diminutive wavelength not only would heat liquids, but also provided a means
of detecting and measuring energy reflected off of "targets" such as aircraft and
boats. It applications were endless. Although not called so, one of the article's
diagrams looks to be an example of a bistatic radar system. The early magnetron
implementation is quite different...
 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
is looking for qualified applicants for
Field Agents in seven Enforcement
Bureau (EB) offices across the United States: Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago,
IL; Dallas, TX; New Orleans, LA; New York, NY, and Portland, OR. Incumbents will
resolve Radio Frequency (RF) interference, educate users, and enforce regulations.
The GS levels for this position have been expanded to GS 7, opening the opportunity
for new college graduates. One year of work experience is not required for this
position. Closing date is March 2, 2026...
 If you are from a family of electronics
hobbyists and/or professionals, then there is a good chance your grandfather and
possibly even your father kept a handy-dandy list of common
circuit design formulas handy. Part 2 of the list appeared here in a 1930 issue
of Radio-Craft magazine. All the formulas on this page dealt primarily
with vacuum tubes, the schematics for which were presented in Part 1 of the series.
There are still lots of hobbyists who restore and/or modify vintage sets, so the
equations are still worth publishing. There was not an "app for that" back in those
days. Prior to a smartphone in every pocket, notes were pinned to a lab wall or
kept in a hand-written notebook...
 The name
Frank Conrad probably does not sound familiar to most people in
the electronics communications field today, but at one time he was the assistant
chief engineer to the Westinghouse Company. Back when voice radio (as opposed to
Morse code, aka CW) was being pioneered, Mr. Conrad was widely known for his efforts
in commissioning the country's first commercial broadcast installation - KDKA in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His arranging for live coverage of election night results
in 1920 is credited for launching a huge interest by consumers in purchasing radio
sets for their homes (Warren Harding beat James Cox that night, BTW). Toward the
end of his career, Conrad was active in helping develop...
 Copper Mountain Technologies develops innovative
and robust RF test and measurement solutions for engineers all over the world. Copper
Mountain's extensive line of unique form factor
Vector Network Analyzers
include an RF measurement module and a software application which runs on any Windows
PC, laptop or tablet, connecting to the measurement hardware via USB interface.
The result is a lower cost, faster, more effective test process that fits into the
modern workspace in lab, production, field and secure testing environments. 50 Ω
and 75 Ω models are available, along with a full line of precision calibration
and connector adaptors.
 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...
|
 • Shielding
Electronics Supply Chain from Cyberthreats
• 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
 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.
 People are entering the field of electronics
all the time and many want to learn not only
circuit theory and troubleshooting, but design as well. With all the pre-packaged
integrated circuits available that perform just about every function imaginable,
there are still times when you either want or need to set about designing your own
circuit. Interfaces between two circuits, or to displays and sensors are examples
of the kinds of applications that might need a custom design. That applies not only
for RF type circuits that require impedance matching, but also to low frequency
analog and digital circuits. This article by Mr. Jim Huffman, which appeared
in a 1972 issue of Popular Electronics, provides an introduction on how
to methodically determine all necessary requirements and then actually design
your circuit - in this case an audio amplifier. A technician I worked with in
the early-to-mid 1980s who was an inspector at Westinghouse Oceanic Division...
 The term "metallized
dielectric" at first might seem like an oxymoron. After all, if you add a conductive
substance to the dielectric of a capacitor, then you have compromised the integrity
of the dielectric as a non-conducting substance. Here's the deal: The dielectric
material between the conductive plates does not receive the metallization; a non-conductive
(dielectric) material like paper is impregnated with metal and that is used for
the plate material. The advantage of this scheme is that the plate material can
be thinner, thereby reducing the size of the capacitor package for a given capacitance
value. It comes with a price, of course, and that is a lower operational and maximum
applied voltage rating. With proper design in circuits like power supplies, metallized-dielectric
capacitors can facilitate great space savings. A major benefit of metallized-dielectric
capacitors is an ability to self-heal when the plate material develops a short circuit
through the dielectric...
 This "drive-by" schematic and parts list
for the
Admiral Model 7C64 vacuum tube console radio and phonograph appeared in the
February 1948 issue of Radio News magazine. I refer to it as "drive-by"
because there was no description or maintenance verbiage provided. You might not
expect from the relatively simple circuit that the entire Model 7C64 was mounted
in a multi-sectioned wooden cabinet that included a phonograph. The thumbnail at
the left is from the RadioMuseum.org website - a great source for research on vintage
vacuum tube radios. Admiral Radio is a brand of electronic products that was founded
in Chicago in 1924. The company started out as a manufacturer of phonographs and
radios. In 1971, Admiral Radio was acquired by Panasonic.
 Hugo Gernsback had a vivid imagination, creativity,
and foresight. Throughout the many decades he penned editorials for his magazines
and authored many books - both fiction and technical - Mr. Gernsback made scores
of predictions which came to fruition (as well as far fewer which did not). In 1952
he published an editorial in Radio-Electronics magazine entitled "Our
Electric Universe," wherein he postulated the immense amount of energy impinging
upon the Earth being transformed into useable forms like electricity, heating water
for environment conditioning, directly driving machinery, and other innovative scenarios.
Is it sort of a follow-up on "The Celestial Audion" he wrote in a 1922 issue of
his Radio-News magazine which likened the makeup of the cosmos to a vacuum
tube. In this article, capturing cosmic rays and other forms of extraterrestrial...
 Lots of interesting topics were reported
in
News Briefs from the April 1960 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine.
One that is relevant even today is the assigning of new numeric prefixes tera for
a trillion; giga for a billion; nano for a billionth, and pica for a trillionth.
If you have read vintage science and engineering publications, you know that, for
instance, what is now called pica (a la pF, 10-12) used to be written
as micromicro (a la μμF, 10-6x10-6 = 10-12). Here
is an example of μμF being used. Less commonly seen was something like millimicroamperes,
which is 10-3x10-6 = 10-9, now known as a nanoamperes,
nA. A new television picture tube which used a solid state electron emitter in place
of a heated cathode was announced for portable TVs, potentially doubling battery
life. Did you know that in 1960, the South African government felt that TV would
be detrimental to children and "the less developed races," thereby justifying its
anti-TV policies? Following on the results of the International Geophysical Year
(IGY) discoveries, atmospheric ducts for radio signal transmission propagation were
being found worldwide...
 Long before there was a World Wide Web for
getting the latest weather report and the local time for setting your clocks, there
were phone numbers set up with recordings of the sought after information. As a
kid in the 1960s and 1970s, I called the weather forecast number,
WE6-1212
("WE" for weather), multiple times daily during the winter in hopes of hearing a
forecast for snow, and during the summer in hopes of favorable conditions for flying
model airplanes and launching Estes rockets. An obsession with time and watches
and clocks had me calling the time phone number,
TI4-1212
("TI" for time), so often that my father used to refer to the lady on the recording
that updated the time every 10 seconds as my girlfriend. Those two phone numbers,
even though it has been many decades since I've called them, will be forever emblazoned
on my mind. I lived just south of Annapolis, Maryland, and it never occurred to
me that the phone numbers might be something else for people in other parts of the
country. It turns out that the same two numbers were reserved in many cities...
 Module 3 of the Navy Electricity and Electronics
Training Series (NEETS) series of lessons is entitled, "Introduction
to Circuit Protection, Control, and Measurement." Learning objectives include
why in-circuit meters are used, advantages of out-of-circuit meters, the way in
which a compass reacts to a conducting wire including the compass reaction to increasing
and decreasing dc and ac high and low frequencies, how a d'Arsonval meter movement
reacts to DC current, the purpose of a rectifier as used in AC meters, the meaning
of the term "damping" as it applies to meter movements and describe two methods
by which damping is accomplished, the electrical quantity measured by an ammeter...
 In the early days of radio, many people
built their sets from schematics and a box full of parts. Often, obtaining the required
components was not such an easy task, either because of a lack of means of knowing
what was available from suppliers or due to lack of availability of needed parts
that were advertised as being ready for purchase. A lot of local electronics repair
shops sold components, as did many hardware stores. Still, fabrication of one's
own inductors, antennas, tuning capacitors and/or coils, chassis for mounting all
the components, etc., was required. Accordingly, science and electronics magazines
often ran a monthly feature presenting
hints, kinks, tricks, and shortcuts submitted by readers. The December 1937
issue of Popular Mechanics magazine published this collection of "hints" which included
a homemade filter for blocking interference from appliances with electrically noisy
motors (arcing from armature brushes) and a means of isolating a possibly hot chassis
from the power source. Poor design and the lack of polarization on AC plugs meant
there was a 50-50 chance the metal chassis would be "hot." The plan for a wind-powered
generator could easily be something seen in a contemporary magazine. Back in the
day, many rural locations had no commercial electric service and relied on wind
and water turbines to provide power to household and farm implements...
 1957 was part of the heyday of the newfound
radio-in-your-car craze, and the public was voraciously consuming all the high
tech equipment it could afford. Rock and Roll music was on every teenager's mind
and many guys for the first time were able to have their own wheels and were outfitting
them with sound systems that could blast the latest works of Buddy Holley, Chuck
Berry, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. Those machines were the first babe magnets
used for cruising the strip on Saturday nights. Radio stations were popping up all
over the country, enabling cross-country travel with non-stop music, news, and variety
show entertainment. Ford and Chevrolet were not going to miss an opportunity, so
they delved into the high end mobile radio manufacturing business...
 If you had $4,000 to spend on a
desktop computer today, your money would get you a top-end 8-core microprocessor
with at least 32 GBytes of super-fast RAM, a couple TBytes of solid state hard drive
space, and at least a 32" high definition screen monitor. It would be a top-of-the-line
machine any serious gamer would envy. In 1982, the same cash would also get you
a top-of-the-line computer, but it would have a 1-core processor, a whopping 768
KBytes of sub-MHz RAM, a 10 MByte hard disk drive, and a 12" monochrome display.
That describes the IBM PC, Tandy's TRS-80, as well as the Zenith Z-100 PC shown
here from the Heathkit 1982 Christmas catalog. If you were around back then...
 In 1971 the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU), convened a meeting dubbed the World
Administrative Radio Conference for Space Telecommunications (WARC-ST). The
ITU was a specialized agency of the United Nations for telecommunications, with
a membership of 140 nations. Satellite communications was barely a decade old, but
already the need for international agreements on spectrum usage had become very
apparent. Prior to the 1971 meeting, there was the 1963 Extraordinary Administrative
Radio Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland. Amateur radio had its presence in
the game acknowledged with further allocations for its members' OSCAR birds; six
had been flown already. As of this writing there are about 20 OSCAR satellites still
in operation. Amateur satellites take many forms these days, including the newest
trend in CubeSat platforms with a well-defined set of specifications on dimensions
and mass per cube. Launches are provided on a space available basis at a substantially
discounted cost...
 Here is a different type
of quiz from Popular Electronics magazine's master quiz-maker, Robert P. Balin.
In this October 1960 challenge, rather than the typical format where you need to match a word or another
picture with a picture, this one requires you to consider each description and decide
whether it best describes an inductive, capacitive, or reactive circuit. I confess
to messing up on question 20, because I couldn't remember whether a lagging power
factor referred to voltage lagging current or current lagging voltage. Hint: It
refers to current lagging voltage. Another hint: Remember the ELI the ICE man mnemonic...
 Little did Ham radio operators know in April
of 1941 when they were enthusiastically buying equipment for their shacks that a
year later the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would ban them from broadcasting
from their transmitters. This advertisement for a high-end Hallicrafters receiver
appeared in the April issue of Radio News magazine. Part of the feature
definition includes "calibrated bandspread
inertia controlled," and "micrometer scale tuning inertia controlled." I'm not
sure what the "inertia controlled" part is, unless it refers to how massive metal
disks were sometimes installed inside the chassis on the tuning shaft in order to
give a more solid feel to the control knob, as well as to enable the dial to be
spun and released to rapidly move through a large distance between adjustment points...
 This "Greek
Alphabet Quiz" created by Robert Balin appeared in the December 1963 issue of
Popular Electronics magazine. Years from now most people will probably
have forgotten about how prominently Greek letters appeared in the news in this
current era (2022) regarding the COVID-19 plandemic and the destruction caused by
politicians and others with power and financial agendas. Delta and Omicron variants
(but notably not Xi since it might offend the leader of the country of the virus'
origin) are the most publicized. For centuries prior, from a scientific and engineering
perspective we looked either positively or benignly toward Greek letters when assigning
them as unique identifiers for quantitative units or physical configurations. When
Robert Balin created this "Greek Alphabet Quiz" for Popular Electronics magazine
in 1963, he had no idea how the aforementioned people would manage to bastardize
the revered letters. No vaccination, mask, or social distancing is required while
working this quiz...
 As with nearly things electronic, innovations in
radar systems that were ground-breaking a few decades ago are now
available commercially at a small fraction of the cost, a much more compact
size, and much greater performance and reliability. Radar operators during World
War II noticed that they were able to detect strong rainstorms demonstrating
that signals did not necessarily need a metallic object to be reflected strongly
enough to be received and processed. Research began soon thereafter to build
radars optimized for detecting...
 Here are a couple more
electronics-themed comics from the March 1967 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine for your TGIF enjoyment. The comic on page 100 especially appeals to me since
I am finishing the installation of a Channel Master CM-5020 antenna. It has been a long
time since I installed a traditional style TV antenna - about 40 years ago when I put
a Radio Shack antenna on the roof of my mother's house. The entire 109" long by 100"
wide antenna, including mounting hardware, weighs only 11.5 pounds and presents
a wind resistance of 30 pounds. This is Channel Master's best antenna.Gain
is 10 dB at VFH and 16 dB at UHF. I plan to use it for FM radio as well. A
vintage Alliance Tenna-Rotor will make it steerable...
 The world is full of geniuses who have ideas
with the potential to introduce history-making products and services to mankind.
Thankfully, many of them manage to draw the attention to themselves and make their
contributions available. Some of those same people have the talent to prepare their
inventions and concepts for distribution, while others require the know-how of others
- nowadays known as manufacturing engineers - to figure out how to mass produce
a product with enough efficiency to make things affordable. Thomas Edison, Henry
Ford, George Westinghouse, Lee de Forest, and other recognizable inventors
depended on assistance for ultimate success. I will soon be posting stories of de Forest's
long, hard-fought path to success with his Audion tube which will make you wonder
how people can have the fortitude to continue...
 This is a great
electronics-themed comic from a February 1972 issue of Popular Electronics.
It encompasses the essence of the stereotypical salesman ruse, especially in that era
when people were sure that electronics repair services were out to rip them off by selling
unneeded services and replacement parts. Aspiring TV technicians who couldn't grasp the
technology moved on to working as mechanics in a garage, poking tiny holes in brake lines
to scare owners into paying for complete braking system rebuilds. I usually like to post
multiple comics on each page, but at the moment only this one is available... |
