|
 This episode of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" goes down a drastically different path
than most, at least until the very end where a completely unrelated anecdote about
interference with a remote garage door opener is told by Mac. Although the exact
issues chanted by electronics technician cum repairman Barney Gallagher regarding
many manufacturers' penchant for designing and selling unserviceable equipment is
dated, the principle remains the same. We have all wished a designer had to service
the product he/she has designed and sold to us...
 "Ten
U.S. researchers and scientists have reportedly died or disappeared over the past
33 months amid increasing speculation about the cause of some of the disappearances,
according to news coverage. Steven Garcia, a 48-year-old government contractor who
allegedly had top-level clearance at a key nuclear facility disappeared in August
2025 after reportedly leaving behind his phone, wallet and keys, taking a gun and
leaving his home in New Mexico on foot, NewsNation reported Thursday. Moreover,
retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland similarly went missing on Feb.
27 after leaving his home in Albuquerque on foot, the outlet reported. Eight other
well-known scientists and researchers..."
 For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new crossword puzzle. All
RF Cafe
crossword puzzles are custom made by me, Kirt Blattenberger, and have only words
and clues related to RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering, optics, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, and other technical subjects. As always, this crossword contains
no names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or
anything of the sort unless it/he/she is related to this puzzle's technology theme
(e.g., Reginald Denny or the Tunguska event in Siberia). The technically inclined
cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate the effort. Enjoy!
 Here is
Bendix
Models 636A, C, D schematic and parts list as featured in a 1947 edition of
Radio News magazine. No operational or alignment information was provided. The 636A
is a tabletop radio using five vacuum tubes in the detector and amplifier stages,
and a single vacuum tube rectifier in the power supply. Its shiny Bakelite cabinet
sported an Art Deco style, which was popular back in the day. The images to the
left are from a recent eBay listing, for $60, where the seller says it is in working
condition. As mentioned many times in the past, I post these online for the benefit
of hobbyists looking for information to assist in repairing or restoring vintage
communication equipment...
 Johanson Dielectrics has been a worldwide
producer of high quality ceramic chip capacitors for over 60 years. We design and
manufacture capacitors in a state-of-the-art facility in Camarillo, CA. Standard
and high voltage SMT ceramic chip capacitors, as well as a variety of standard and
custom high voltage & high capacitance value ceramic capacitors.
 The 1958-59
International Geophysical Year was an unprecedented eighteen-month global scientific
initiative involving 30,000 participants from 66 nations who invested up to 1.5
billion dollars to study Earth's interior, oceans, and atmosphere. Utilizing military
rockets and emerging satellite technology, researchers achieved major breakthroughs,
most notably Dr. James Van Allen's discovery of the radiation belts surrounding
Earth and enhanced understanding of ionospheric radio propagation, solar flares,
and geomagnetism. While the project aimed to improve communications...
 When I first saw an
Erie Resistor Corporation advertisement in the December 1958 issue
of Popular Electronics, I decided to research its history here in Erie,
Pennsylvania, where I live. Click on that hyperlink if you are interested in what
I discovered. This advertisement appeared in the January 1952 issue of Radio &
Television News magazine, so I figured I'd post it as well...
 Windfreak Technologies is proud to announces
the availability of our
FT108, an innovative
programmable bidirectional filter bank spanning a frequency range of 5 MHz
to 8 GHz in 15 bands. Band selection can be controlled through USB, UART or
at high speeds through powerful triggering modes. Each unit is factory tested via
network analyzer with unique data stored in the device to help with its use. Crossover
frequencies are stored so the user can send a frequency command and the FT108 will
utilizes Intelligent Band Selection logic to automatically toggle the optimal
filter path based on minimum insertion loss. Readback of FT108 insertion loss at
any frequency between crossover points allows for easy amplitude leveling...
 An article title with both "radar" and "Great
Lakes" in the title is sure to catch my attention, as did this. Author Norman Schorr
reports on the state of the art of radar equipment and usage for the purpose of
maritime navigation. Research and development, along with an ample
surplus of components left over from World War II facilitated a rapid adaptation
of radar to many venues. Included among its applications were airway and waterway
navigation, rocket trajectory tracking, security systems, speed measurement, weather
observation, and aerial mapping...
 Johanson Technology (originally part of
Johanson Dielectrics), located in Camarillo, CA, has for over 25 years designed
and manufactured high quality RF & microwave ceramic chip capacitors, inductors
and integrated passives. These includes chip-format antennas, capacitors, lowpass,
highpass, and bandpass filters, couplers, inductors, baluns, power dividers, substrates,
chipsets.
 Details the evolution of infrared technology,
tracing its origins from William Herschel's 1800 discovery to its deployment in
military and industrial sectors, are presented in this 1959 Radio &
TV News magazine article. It emphasizes the shift from active, illuminating
systems to passive, sensitive detectors capable of identifying thermal signatures
in total darkness. The piece highlights infrared's superior resolution compared
to radar, noting its utility in applications ranging from missile guidance and ballistic
tracking to industrial quality control and chemical analysis. Since the publication
of this article, infrared technology has achieved remarkable sophistication, evolving
from bulky lab instruments into the invisible, ubiquitous...
 An ample supply of surplus coaxial cable
after the end of World War II provided an inexpensive and easy to use form
of transmission line. Not having to worry about cable routing and unintentional
radiation makes transitions through walls, running along metal surfaces, and routing
high power transmission lines near habitable areas a no-brainer. Issues like power
handling, bend radius, and higher attenuation need more attention during the installation
design phase, but that pales in comparison to coaxial cable's advantages. Author
Byron Goodman addresses some of the issues Hams accustomed to using
flat
transmission lines...
 Not surprisingly, there is a website dedicated
to only the
Regency TR-1 transistor radio and its history from development
through retail sales. As reported in this January 1955 issue of Radio and Television
News, The TR-1 was the world's first commercially available, fully transistorized
portable radio. A complete schematic and functional description is provided. It
used four germanium transistors and operated on a 22-1/2 volt battery, which provided
about twenty hours of listening pleasure. The unit weighed eleven ounces and cost
$49.95...
 This
is a must-read article for all persons interested in the history of wireless communications.
Seriously. Stop what you are doing and read it. I guarantee the vast majority have
never heard of this challenge to the veracity of
Mr. Guglielmo Marconi's bestowed title of "father of wireless
telegraphy." Most of us are at least passingly familiar with challenges to Samuel
Morse's, Thomas Edison's, and a few other notables' claims to being the first at
a particular technical breakthrough, but herein, as penned by of
Lieutenant-Commander Edward H. Loftin, is a first-hand account
of multiple successful challenges by the U.S. Patent Office against...
 ConductRF is continually innovating and
developing new and improved solutions for RF Interconnect needs. See the latest
TESTeCON RF Test Cables
for labs. ConductRF makes production and test coax cable assemblies for amplitude
and phased matched VNA applications as well as standard & precision RF connectors.
Over 1,000 solutions for low PIM in-building to choose from in the iBwave component
library. They also provide custom coax solutions for applications where some standard
just won't do. A partnership with Newark assures fast, reliable access. Please visit
ConductRF today to see
how they can help your project!
 This nomograph from a 1959 issue of
Radio & TV News magazine simplifies matching a source (sending - s) impedance
(Zs) and a load (receiving - r) impedance (Zr) using a
quarter-wave transmission line. To use it, locate your Zs value on the left
vertical scale and your Zr value on the right scale. Lay a straightedge across these
points; the intersection with the center vertical scale reveals the required surge
impedance - also called characteristic impedance - (Z0). Surge impedance is the
ratio of voltage to current for a wave traveling along an infinite transmission
line, dictated by the physical geometry and dielectric properties of the cable,
defined as Z0 = sqrt (L/C), where L is inductance per unit length and C is
capacitance per unit length. The quarter-wave transformer relies...
 Here is a batch of
electronics-themed comics that appeared in the January 1949 edition
of Radio & Television News. The scene seen (hey,
homonyms) on the page 138 comic was commonplace in the 1940s when televisions
were relatively new and not every household had a set. The scenario repeated itself
in the 1960s when color sets were hitting the consumer market. Now, people can watch
TV on their smartphones while not at home so gathering 'round the television display
in a store is relegated pretty much to little kids watching the Disney movies that
seem to always running on them. There is a growing list of other comics at the bottom
of the page...
 December
1942 was just a year into America's "official" involvement in World War II.
Already, both wired and wireless communications had made major advances and were
indisputably vital in both the logistical and strategic aspects of troop movement,
supply chains, fighting battles, and evacuation of wounded personnel. It also played
a large part in propaganda campaigns. This was all true for both Axis and Allied
forces. Ham radio operators provided a huge boost to the Signal Corps
because they came at least partially trained for the jobs. These dozen and a half
photos from the field exhibit the state of the art at the time. Maybe you'll
recognize a father, grandfather, or uncle in one of them. For that matter, you might
even recognize a mother, grandmother...
 Exodus Advanced Communications, is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. Exodus'
AMP20026 is a rugged 2.0 to 6.0 GHz solid state amplifier delivering a
minimum of 200 W with clean, stable 53 dB gain. It offers excellent gain
flatness, a 20 dB control range, and full protection circuitry. Built for EMI/RFI,
lab, CW/pulse, and EW environments, it delivers instantaneous bandwidth, superb
reliability, rack mount configuration...
 In April of 1952 when this article appeared
in Radio & Television News magazine, the
bipolar junction transistor (BJT) had only made it out of the
experimental laboratory of Messrs. Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain at Bell Labs
a mere three years earlier in December of 1948. It did not take long for commercial
production to begin. Along with being a great primer for anyone new to transistors,
herein is also some background on how the now ubiquitous BJT schematic symbol was
created. Interestingly, only Dr. William Shockley is mentioned, making me wonder
whether the contributions of Dr. John Bardeen, and Dr. Walter H. Brattain was
not widely publicized early on. Not to worry, though, because all three were duly...
 Mac's Service Shop captures here a moment
of technological transition in 1961 where a new "Loud-speaking
Telephone" impresses his right-hand man, Barney. The device utilizes vacuum-tube
amplifiers and a bulky external control box to allow hands-free communication, enabling
Mac to work while handling customer inquiries. Mac, ever the mentor, contrasts this
tube-based unit with the emerging technology of transistorized speakerphones, which
eliminate the need for external control boxes, external power supplies, and warm-up
times. The 1961 "Loud-speaking" setup, occupying significant space under a workbench,
has been completely replaced by modern smartphones and integrated VoIP systems...
 As with all
RF Cafe
crossword puzzles, this one uses only words pertaining to engineering, science,
mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. As always, this crossword puzzle
contains no names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie
stars, or anything of the sort unless it/he/she is related to this puzzle's technology
theme (e.g., Hedy Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll). The technically inclined cruciverbalists
amongst us will appreciate the effort. Enjoy!
  The microwave klystron was invented in 1937
by brothers
Russell and Sigurd Varian. If you have been in the microwave design
business for a couple decades, you undoubtedly recognize the company name of Varian
Associates, especially if you worked in the aerospace or defense electronics business.
There is a video on YouTube of a segment on Varian done sometime around 1990 by
Walter Cronkite. There is also a historical piece on Varian Associates on the Communications &
Power Industries website. This circa 1952 article covers the fundamentals of klystron
operation and reports on the increasing use of klystrons in high frequency application
- including by amateur radio operators exploring...
 Werbel Microwave began as a consulting firm,
specializing in RF components design, with the ability to rapidly spin low volume
prototypes, and has quickly grown into a major designer and manufacturer with volume
production capacities. The
WMRD02-7.2-S is a resistive splitter that covers up to 7.2 GHz with ultra-wide
bandwidth. This design is useful when there are many low power signals within a
wide spectrum. By design, the nominal insertion loss and isolation is 6 dB,
hence it is often referred to as a "6 dB splitter." Its small size makes it
easy to integrate into compact systems. Designed, assembled, and tested in the USA.
"No Worries with Werbel!"
 Contributors to the Wikipedia article on
the
Yagi–Uda antenna credit Japanese professor Shintaro Uda primarily for the antenna's
development, with Hidetsugu Yagi having played a "lesser role." Other sources assign
the primary role to Yagi. Regardless, history - and this article's author, rightly
or wrongly, has decreed that this highly popular design be referred to commonly
as the Yagi antenna and not the Uda antenna. I don't recall seeing advertisements
for "'Uda" television or amateur radio antennas. Harold Harris, of Channel Master
Corporation, does a nice job explaining the fundamentals of the Yagi antenna. Another
Yagi article appeared in the October 1952 issue of QST magazine...
 Established in 1990,
dB Control supplies mission-critical,
often sole-source, products worldwide to military organizations, as well as to major
defense contractors and commercial manufacturers. dB Control designs and manufactures
high-power TWT amplifiers, microwave power modules, transmitters, high- and low-voltage
power supplies, and modulators for radar, ECM, and data link applications. Modularity
enables rapid configuration of custom products for a variety of platforms, including
ground-based and high-altitude military manned and unmanned aircraft. Custom RF
sources and receivers, components and integrated microwave subsystems as well as
precision electromechanical switches. dB Control also offers specialized contract
manufacturing and repair depot services.
 The production of high-performance transistors
necessitated new methods to achieve extreme purity levels, far beyond standard industrial
capabilities. To reach the required purity of
one part in ten billion, engineers adopted zone melting, a sophisticated technique
pioneered by W. G. Pfann. In this process, radio-frequency heating coils melt a
narrow zone of a semiconductor rod, which is then moved along the crystal to sweep
impurities to one end. Beyond purification, zone melting allows for the precise,
uniform introduction of "dopants" like antimony or indium, which are essential for
creating p-type and n-type semiconductor characteristics. By refining these methods
through continuous processing and floating-zone techniques, manufacturers significantly...
|
 • Middle East
Conflict
Rewiring Global Supply Chains
• Ham
HOA Antenna Protection in Indiana
• FCC Expands
Use of Broadband Spectrum
• UK's
Fractile Chip Facility Gets £100m Expansion
• Choosing an
Antenna for Compliance Testing
 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.
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF &
Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols"" that works well with Microsoft
Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™. This is an equivalent of the extensive
set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch, connector, waveguide, digital, analog,
antenna, and other commonly used symbols for system block diagrams and schematics
created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000+ symbols was exported individually from Visio
in the EMF file format, then imported into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format
allows an image to be scaled up or down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes
can be resized in a document and still look good. The imported symbols can also
be UnGrouped into their original constituent parts for editing...
 When a worker assembling cellphones in a
plant in China hurls him/herself out of a window, it makes headlines. Like the human
cost of extracting the minerals that go into making cellphone components, people
yawn and write it off as the cost of progress. Among the many other dimensions of
that cost is one that, until recently, received little attention -
cell tower worker falls. According
to a joint investigation by Frontline and ProPublica that was aired in May 2012,
there is a well-established record of ill-equipped and ill-trained climbers who
fall [pun intended] victim to low budget operations... and, to be honest, sometimes
their own stupidity. Cell tower climbers experience 10x more on-the-job deaths as
the average construction worker. That might seem logical and even expected given
that you normally think of a construction worker as the guy banging nails in that
new housing development down the road...
 For many years, I have been scanning and
posting schematics & parts lists like this one for the
Crosley Model 56FC tabletop radio, which appeared in a 1947 issue of Radio
News magazine. Often, a description of the radio's operation and detailed tuning
instructions are provided - sort of like a Reader's Digest condensed version
of the Sams Photofact data pack. In this instance, only the schematic and parts
list are provided. When the textual content is also available, I usually OCR it
and post it along with the graphical stuff. There are still many people who restore
and service these vintage radios, and often it can be difficult or impossible to
find schematics and/or tuning information. I keep a running list of all data sheets
to facilitate a search...
 Homepage
Archives for May 2022. 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.
 Before there were
clocks that synchronized themselves to a wireless low frequency (LF) time standard
emanating from one of NIST's broadcast towers, a different method was used to keep
all the clocks in a building (like a school) reading the same time. Many of the
AC-powered mechanical master-slave clock systems are still in use today. This episode
of Carl and Jerry has them teaming with a contract repairman to figure out why seemingly
random clocks in their high school failed to synch with the master overnight. Author
John T. Frye provides a pretty thorough overview of how the system operates
using a power line carrier scheme. Of course the boys' keen troubleshooting skills...
 Occasionally an unbuilt vintage Heathkit
item appears on eBay with really nice photos of the contents. In fact, I have a
Saved Search that sends me an e-mail whenever one shows up. This morning, a
Heathkit
DG-140 Two-Station Intercom kit appeared on auction. The instruction booklet
has a publish date of 1972, so I looked for a copy of it on the WWW but the only
thing I could find was a PDF for purchase. Despite the 1972 date, it appears it
was 1973 when the DG-140 was first available. The 1971 catalog still shows the previous
version, the DG-141 (which you might understandably think would be the newer model
number). There is a big difference in the chassis configuration from the DG-141
to the DG-140. Per the 1973 Heathkit catalog, the DG-140 was priced at $29.95 ($184.91
in 2021 money - a whopping 6.2x factor in 48 years). Heathkit products were well
known for the completeness of its instruction manuals, with clearly illustrated
instructions...
 Today's
consumer electronics (CE) industry has an estimated value of $354
billion per a Statista report (a high number compared to others I located). In 1957,
according to this article in Radio-Electronics, the market value was reported to
be $13.7B ($121B in 2014 dollars per the BLS inflation calculator). The world population
in 1957 was 2.89B and grew to 7.10B by 2013 (per Census.gov). That means population
increased by a factor of 2.45 while the CE industry grew by a factor of 3.05. Within
the margin of error of marketing expert estimates, that represents essentially flat
growth. Fret not, though, because while the total spending on consumer electronics
per capita might have been flat over a span of nearly 60 years, the effective cost
per electronics product and the vastly improved functionality and reliability of
electronics products has increased by a much larger factor...
 A nice article by Donald Lancaster appeared
in an issue of Radio-Electronics magazine that introduces and puts into
layman's terms the relatively new (at the time) world of
digital logic circuits. Rapidly falling prices and equally
rapidly rising performance fuelled the craze. By 1969, most of the barriers
preventing former never-tubers from adopting the fledgling semiconductor
paradigm and there was by then a new generation of electronics hobbyists,
technicians, and engineers who had "grown up" on transistors and integrated
circuits. I like the author's analogies for AND gates and OR gates that involve
the familiar objects that include a garden hose with the house tap and nozzle,
and the kitchen sink faucet with the hot and cold handles. It's interesting how
often water, a substance generally to be avoided around electricity...
 Like a fool, many years ago I donated a perfectly
fine
vacuum tube tester that had been given to me by an über-engineer/ham I worked
with during the time (nearly 35 years ago) I was restoring my first vintage tube
radio. Big mistake. It was a really nice tester: a B&K Model 650 Dyna-Quik Dynamic
Mutual Conductance Tube & Transistor Tester. It was sold shortly after I had
also given away as a wedding gift the Crosley floor console radio that I restored.
Another bad move. Now, many moons later, I am working to restore yet another Crosley
tube radio and I sure wish I had held on to it. Similar tube testers are routinely
selling on eBay for $100-$200. I finally found a really nice B&K Model 650 on
eBay and got it for a decent price. Mistake corrected...
 When this "Communications
on 450,000,000 MC" article appeared in a 1961 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine, MC (megacycles) was still being used rather than MHz (megahertz). Ditto
for kC. Cycles per second (cps) were used in place of Hertz (Hz), and concepts like
GC (GHz) and TC (THz) were rarely seen. Picofarads (pF) were designated as micromicrofarads
(μμF). 450,000,000 MC is 450 terahertz, which is 6.66*10-7 m, or 666 nm
(6660 Å). That is deep-red/near-infrared. Aside from using rubies, many early
lasers were made from rear earth materials like YAG and neodymium, or from gases
like CO2 and He-Ne. Semiconductor lasers were decades off. The first ruby laser
was demonstrated just a year earlier by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories.
Lasers were moving out of the science fiction realm and into laboratories. Now,
they're ubiquitous....
 Remember when the first manned spacecraft transported
astronauts to Mars and then back to Earth in the 1970s - a 13-month round trip? In
the mid-1960s, Electronics magazine reported on the preparations being made
by NASA for Mars travel at the same time they were busy preparing the Apollo mission
to the moon. The world's first manned orbit (Apollo 8) of the moon didn't happen
until in December 1968, a mere seven months before the historic July 1969 Apollo 11
moon landing*, but NASA was wasting no time planning for the next big thing. Of course
you know to date we never have made it to Mars with a manned spacecraft, but the headlines
are still filled with "any day now" projections by SpaceX's Elon Musk (whom I
like) and his contemporaries. Sure, I would love to be alive to witness a manned
mission to Mars, but I'd settle...
 At first look this antenna from Bell Telephone
Laboratories appears to be a
phased array, but in fact it is a "lens" that uses reflecting metal fins to
direct incoming and outgoing radio waves into a narrow beam. This is a new approach
to the standard method of using a curved (usually parabolic) reflective dish with
a feedhorn. No detail is given about how, if at all, the phases of the received
signals are phase-adjusted at the point they converge on the back-side waveguide
feed. It is sort of akin to the Osgood optical lens used in lighthouses. Shortly
after the end of World War II, Bell Telephone Labs began a major effort to
interconnect the entire country with microwave relay stations to enhance efficiency
and reliability of long distance telephone calls...
 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. This one for November 10, 2019 celebrates Veterans Day. 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 Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll, respectively...
 On the May 13, 2005 episode of The Tonight
Show, Jay Leno held a Morse code vs. SMS speed contest between two Ham Radio operators
using Morse code and two Millennials using their smartphones for texting (SMS).
At least one member of the audience thought texting would win. Watch the video to
see if she was right. Mr. Chip Margelli (K7JA) did the sending. He declares, "Let
me assure you that we never saw that message before I flipped the blue card over.
Each message, in rehearsal, was different. The character count was the same as the
one during dress rehearsal, though, to account for the time slot. And they put the
card on the table "upside down" creative to how I flipped it, as you can see on
the video." Mr. Ken Miller (K6CTW) did the receiving...
 This March 29, 2020,
tech-themed crossword puzzle contains only clues and terms associated with engineering,
science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc., which I have personally
built over nearly two decades. Many new words and company names have been added
that had not even been created when I started in the year 2002. You will never find
a word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some obscure
village in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the name of a movie
star like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons
which, if you don't already know, might surprise you...
 Mr. Forest H. Belt was, in addition
to being an editor for Radio-Electronics magazine in the 1960s, a prolific
author of electronics handbooks. His publications included theory, design, components,
and operation of radios and various equipment and gadgets - even snowmobiles and
mobile home maintenance. He published this "Can
Electronics Get Much Smaller?," editorial article in the March 1967 issue of
Radio-Electronics. On the surface, it seems like a rhetorical question,
but this statement suggests maybe he thinks that current state of the art had about
reached the practical limit of size reduction: "There are practical limits to just
how small electronic devices can become. At least, there seem to be." The first
commercially available monolithic IC op amp, the μA702, appeared in 1963, just three
years earlier. Surely that could not have represented the pinnacle in electronic
component technology. Mr. Belt imagines miniaturizing existing vacuum tube
designs with newfangled semiconductor equivalents, but did he have the vision to
imagine entire mixed signal (analog and digital) radios on a single chip?...
 This is another example of one of those
advertisements you likely would not see in a modern electronics magazine. There
is nothing fundamentally problematic about its content or message, but politically
correct standards would condemn any depiction of a woman expressing such excessive
appreciation for a man's efforts. It might, after all, convey the idea that all
television antenna servicemen should expect such treatment from all women. It also
implies that only men can be TV antenna servicemen / servicepersons. If that sounds
nutty, well, what can I say. It's the world we live in as evidenced by news items
of late. Keep firmly in mind that what is accepted as a social norm today might
be considered to be a crime in a few decades, so exercise caution in all you do
in the presence of witnesses be it written, videoed, spoken, or acted out...
 Thanks to Chuck U. for providing new
Watkins-Johnson (WJ) Tech Notes v10-3 and v15-2, and an
improved copy of v5-2. A lot (but not all) of the TNs that I had or other people
sent to me are made from B&W copies from old scanners, so the quality is not
super good. Chuck's versions appear to be scanned from the originals in color,
so they're very good... |
