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of the September 2015 homepage archives.
 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...
 "Antennas are a crucial component of any connected
device such as a mobile phone or IoT product. But choosing the right antenna for
an application presents a key design challenge. Wireless devices use several radio
bands, and reliable radio links are important. Creating effective antenna performance
in mobile phones..."
 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...
 Quantenna Communications, the leader in ultra-high performance
Wi-Fi, today announced the availability of the industry's first 10G Wave 3 Wi-Fi
product family. The products are built on Quantenna's True 8x8™ QSR10G Wi-Fi platform
with multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) technology for home wireless access points and residential
gateways. Quantenna's up-to-12-streams 10G Wave 3 product family delivers unprecedented
Wi-Fi performance, reliability and capacity for high-density environments, and can
address both the service provider and retail market segments. 10G Wave 3 is a revolutionary
new way for Wi-Fi networks to operate...
Russian Hacker Group Taps Satellite Links for Attacks
 They are called advanced persistent threat
groups and according to a new forensic analysis, they are descending from the sky
to potentially threaten counter-intelligence agencies, using the weak security in
some satellite communications to cover their tracks. Among the major hurdles for
so-called APT operators such as the Turla...
 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...
 Individual transistors made from carbon nanotubes
are faster and more energy efficient than those made from other materials. Going
from a single transistor to an integrated circuit full of transistors, however,
is a giant leap. "A single microprocessor has a billion transistors in it," said
NW Engineering's Mark Hersam. "All billion...
 The Black Oak Group has measured the Black-Oak-Group-Real-Relative-Permittivity-Conductivity-Air-9-11-2015.htm"
broadband complex permittivity of air. Maximum excursions over 50 MHz to 500 MHz
for the real relative permittivity were +0.016 and -0.016 compared to one (1) and
for the conductivity +0.0 and -0.00064 Siemens per meter compared to zero (0). The
measurement set-up is particularly well suited for commonly encountered low-loss
bulk complex permittivities found in dry wood products for the lumber industry,
dry grains and cereals for agriculture and the food industry, sifted homogeneous
soils for agriculture and machinable homogeneous dielectric samples around...
 ARRL President Kay Craigie, N3KN, has taken
strong exception to certain claims being made by community association organizations
about the
Amateur Radio Parity Act of 2015 - H.R. 1301 and S. 1685. In an interview with
Ham Radio Now host Gary Pearce, KN4AQ, during the ARRL Roanoke Division Convention
over Labor Day weekend, President Craigie stressed that passage of the legislation
is critical to ensuring the future of Amateur Radio. And she described as 'false'
recent assertions that the bills' passage would prevent community associations from...
 This
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 (clues labeled with asterisk *). 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...
 First public demo of Snapdragon Flight robotics
dev platform in one of world's smallest 4K drones. "We believe that robotics can
be brought to a whole new level by using highly integrated and optimized heterogeneous
mobile compute platforms. To that end, we're proud to announce Qualcomm Snapdragon
Flight, a next-generation development platform designed to help manufacturers build
the future of consumer robots and drones..."
 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...
 M/A-COM Technology Solutions, a leading supplier
of high performance analog RF, microwave, and optical semiconductor products, today
announced the new
MAGX-100027-100C0P, a wideband transistor optimized for DC-2.7
GHz operation and built using proprietary 4th generation GaN on Silicon (GaN on
Si) process is sampling today. This GaN on Si HEMT D-Mode transistor is ideally
suited for defense communications, land mobile radio...
 The collapse in demand for smartphones has
caused a severe drop in foundry orders for mobile SoCs. TSMC saw sales drop from
$2.48B in July to $2.06B in August - a fall of over 17%. At UMC August sales were
down 4% and the company said its Q3 wafer shipments may fall sequentially by as
much as 5%, while its ASP may fall 3%...
 "Ofcom this week launched a consultation
with the aim of fostering investment in Internet-of-Things
(IoT) services targeted at rural and remote locations.
'We want to encourage IoT investment and innovation in particular at 55 MHz-68 MHz,
70.5 MHz-71.5 MHz and 80 MHz-81.5 MHz,' the regulator explained in its consultation
paper, published on..."
 IMS ExpertServices periodically sends me e-mails that highlight
recent key court cases that can significantly affect the effectiveness of expert
testimony, both for the plaintiff and for the defendant. You need only scan the
headlines I post daily to know the importance of effective legal representation
when IP is being contested. This article by Annie Dike, writing for IMS ExpertServices,
points out a case where the use of a Google Earth image was admitted as evidence
in a criminal case even after the defense attempted to have it dismissed as "hearsay"
evidence. The judge's reasoning for qualification is interesting. It seems to me
there is fundamentally no difference between allowing a Google Earth image and those
obtained from private and commercial security cameras...
 "Our plane has been hijacked. Flight attendant
#1 stabbed. Flight attendant #5 stabbed. A business class passenger's throat has
been slashed and he is bleeding severely and may be dead. The captain is not flying
the aircraft. Something's terribly wrong. I see the water. I see the buildings."
After a short pause, she says, "We are flying low. We are flying very, very low.
We are flying way too low! Oh my God!" The phone went dead. "A colleague relayed
this information to us on a conference call at approximately 10:30 a.m. central
time at American Airlines headquarters in Ft. Worth..."
ISIL, Al Qaeda,
Muslim
Brotherhood ('jihad is our way'),
Iran, they're
all thriving and swearing to destroy the USA while we conduct a politically correct
campaign against them - even inviting them into the country as "refugees."
 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...
 "Twenty-five
years ago a couple dozen engineers gathered in a hotel meeting room to define a
wireless technology with the obscure name IEEE 802.11. Today the resulting Wi-Fi
is a data network that rivals cellular, found in notebooks, tablets, hotel rooms,
corner cafés and even airplanes. It's a story of people and their products that
made the unlikely journey from crude prototypes to widespread popularity. After
an unlikely start in Washington D.C., the story shifts to the Netherlands and ultimately
Cupertino..."
 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...
 "NASA's Pluto experts
have revealed new high resolution close up images of the surface of Pluto - and
admit they are stunned by the planet. They reveal a 'bewildering variety of surface
features' that have scientists reeling because of their range and complexity. 'If
an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called
it over the top..."
 "The National Radio Astronomy Observatory
(NRAO) at Green Bank, West, Virginia, has asked that hams notify the facility if
they plan to operate within 10 miles of either the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) or
the Sugar Grove Research Station in Sugar Grove, West Virginia. The internationally
renowned scientific research facilities..."
 The
TTRM1076 is a high linearity bi-directional SSPA suitable for
use with any modulation and signal type. It is currently utilized in UAV data links
and long range point-point COFDM video links. High speed T/R switching and sequencing
of the PA, LNA, and switch driver circuitry is performed by an on-board CPLD, where
switching timing can be adjusted in firmware based on system requirements. The transmit
section produces over 25 Watts of BPSK power, and over 6 Watts of 64 QAM. The unit
also features a three color status LED on the front panel that shows if the SSPA
is in transmit or receive mode...
 Guerrilla RF, a leading provider of high performance
MMICs, today introduces a new addition to the company's family of high linearity
gain blocks featuring a unique combination of simple-application schematic, flat
gain and high compressed output power which operate from near DC up to 4 GHz. The
GRF2012 and GRF2013 are ideal as cost-effective pre-drivers for today's state-of-the-art
broadband GaN high power amplifiers as well as a multitude of general purpose, high-performance
gain block applications. Their flat gain and flexible biasing allow for high levels
of re-use both within a single design and across platforms Guerrilla-RF-High-Linearity-Gain-Blocks-9-8-2015.htm"...
 "As reported in recent days, there has been
a serious lobbying effort by AM broadcasters to open a window for FM translators
exclusively for them. It's an idea FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler does not support.
It appears the FCC has come up with a different plan for AM broadcasters and is
pushing it vigorously both..."
 Here are a couple more
electronics-themed comics from Electronics World magazine, good for
winding down the week. They appeared in the January 1963 issue. The page 86
comic reminds me of the professor I had for solid state circuit design. He was
supposedly the first person to successfully use gallium arsenide (GaAs) as a
semiconductor, although he also did pioneering work with silicon. Anyway,
Prof. Anderson would say he takes at least one "business" trip each year to
Portugal in order to search for higher quality raw semiconductor material in
sand on the beaches. He spoke Portuguese, BTW. The page 89 comic is reminiscent
of the pre-GPS days of navigation. Raise you hand if you ever drove around
utterly lost while looking for an off-the-beaten-path location...
 "The
founder of a Houston-based technology company admitted to spying for Russia while
in the U.S. and conspiring to export microelectronics to Russian military and intelligence
agencies. Alexander Fishenko, a dual Russian-U.S. citizen, was scheduled to go to
trial this month on charges of scheming to illegally supply Russia with computer
chips and other..."
 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...
 "Qualcomm says that its forthcoming chips
will include a real time, on device machine learning designed to support detection
of zero day malware threats. Snapdragon Smart Protect is also the first application
to utilize Qualcomm Zeroth technology, augmenting conventional anti-malware
solutions by supporting on device real-time malware detection, classification and
cause analysis using an advanced cognitive computing behavioral engine. Snapdragon
Smart Protect complements existing..."
 "Those employed by government in the United
States in August of this year outnumbered those employed in the manufacturing sector
by almost 1.8 to 1, according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There were 21,995,000 employed by federal, state and local government in the United
States in August, according to BLS. By contrast, there were only 12,329,000 employed
in the manufacturing sector..."
 Broadband Impedance Matching Networks are always
difficult and time consuming to design. This webcast discusses how to deal with
matching frequency-dependent complex source or load impedances to unstable, non-unilateral
devices as well as designing non-50 ohm inter-stage matching between devices. Unlike
traditional discussion on impedance matching using smith charts and complex math,
you'll learn practical methods of quickly synthesizing and realizing lumped or distributed
matching networks for difficult broadband applications ...
 Here is yet another treatise on the subject
of
reactance and resistance. Considering that the date on this article
is 1931, it was probably amongst the first to publically discuss such 'newfangled'
topics outside of a formal university setting. The layman just was not accustomed
to being bothered with such esoteric concepts. After all, not many decades previous
a person might be burned at the stake for exercising such witchcraft as speaking
of 'imaginary' numbers as is required for a complete analysis of alternating circuits.
This article, however, does not actually get into complex number, but future ones
did...
 Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien) in Austria
has improved its bi-functional 6.8μm quantum cascade laser and detector (QCLD) technology.
It is hoped that monolithic integration of quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) and quantum
cascade detectors (QCDs) could lead to compact spectroscopy systems for environmental
monitoring and medical applications in the form of trace gas sensing, blood serum
analysis, etc...
 This Radio Service Data Sheet for the
Sparton Model 40 6-Tube T.R.F. Automotive Receiver 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...
 Officials of the Naval Air Warfare Center
Aircraft Division in Lakehurst, N.J., announced a $10.2 million contract to Microwave
Applications last week for 1,800 ferrite phase shifter RF and microwave modules,
which researchers will use to develop a closed-loop passive electronically scanned
array radar system...
 For a few years I have been occasionally
posting radio service data sheets for vintage radio sets, all of which appeared
in electronics industry and hobby magazines such as
Radio-Craft and
Radio News. Unlike the last decade and a half, procuring
service information on commercial products could be very time consuming, and
often resulted in not even obtaining what you needed. Thanks to the Internet being
populated with schematics and mechanical drawings for seemingly everything ever
made, we no longer need to call or mail order for information needed to repair your
radio, television, cellphone, lawn mower, toaster, or anything else. Granted, most
people these days toss out broken items and just...
 India's Bharti Airtel has chosen Ericsson
to roll out 4G (LTE FDD) network for its subscribers
in Delhi. This four year agreement marks the first LTE FDD rollout by Ericsson in
Delhi. Ericsson will enable Bharti Airtel to meet growing customer demand for mobile
broadband services while delivering superior network performance. On 4G, Airtel
subscribers will be able to enjoy an improved smartphone experience, with faster
web...
 Z-Communications, Inc., a worldwide leader in
the design and manufacturing of RF and microwave components, is pleased to introduce
a new series of RF amplifier products with the release of the PAC18700T and DRC23000M.
Operating in the K-band, the PAC18700T and DRC23000M provide a unique advantage
by allowing quick and simple installation into systems with their integrated supply
circuitry allowing to be operated from a single power source and availability in
a SMA connectorized module package. These remarkable new RF amplifiers are further
heightened by their high output power, high gain, and superior linearity...
 A homemade gadget can disable the systems
that allow self-driving cars to see where they are going, a security researcher
has said. Jonathan Petit demonstrated how a modified, low-cost laser could create
ghostlike objects in the path of autonomous cars. The cars slowed down to avoid
hitting them...
 Gowanda Electronics/TTE Filters is recruiting
for an experienced Design Engineer for our RF / Microwave filter product line. Our
company is rapidly growing, resulting in this new position at our Arcade NY facility.
Exciting opportunity for a Design Engineer with 3 – 5 years relevant experience
with RF/ microwave filter design. Reports to the President, TTE Filters, Arcade
NY. Relocation assistance is available. Requires BS EE or other relevant degree.
We offer a competitive salary DoE with a comprehensive benefit program, including
401(k) w/match, health, vision, Long Term Disability, Holidays...
 "Using laboratory instruments typically used
to make semiconductor devices, space weathering of airless bodies in the Solar System
has been simulated, allowing researchers to better determine the ages of their surfaces,
states a new paper by Kimberly R. Kuhlman of the Planetary Science Institute. 'Space
weathering' is a catch-all term for what happens to surfaces exposed to the environment
of space over time. This includes the micrometeorite impact damage..."
 "Samsung's biggest announcement at IFA 2015
was the Gear S2, its long-rumored round smartwatch. But, as expected, that's not
the only thing the company is showing off in Berlin, Germany. The R1, R3 and R5
are new wireless, multi-room speakers designed to take on Sonos. What makes them
different than most of the competition, though, is their 360° enclosure
..."
 In the early days of television, what we
today refer to as cathode ray tubes were called
kinescopes. The kinescope on the receiving end displayed
images generated by a tube called an iconoscope on the transmission end. Kinescopes
had round faces onto which a rectangular picture was electronically drawn. Once
manufacturing technology evolved sufficiently, it became possible to make them rectangular
in order to save on material and to fit a larger picture in a smaller area. The
real story in this article from my perspective is appreciating the ingenuity of
the manufacturing engineers for an ability to develop machines that handle very
complex operations. They were wonders of electromechanical manipulation. There were
still some operations that needed human dexterity...
 "The first 'loophole-free' measurement of
the violation of
Bell's inequality by a quantum system has been claimed by physicists
in the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Their experiment involves entangling spins
in diamonds separated by 1.28 km and then measuring correlations between the
spins. The large separation between the diamonds and the relative ease with which
the spins can be measured ensures that the experiment is performed properly..."
 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. The list certainly included the
formulas on this page. There was not '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...
 "Keysight Technologies continues to build
its test equipment support services business and it has bought a UK-based repair
and asset management services company. The test services business is new focus for
Keysight following last year's separation from Agilent Technologies life sciences
businesses. Electroservices Enterprises, which is based in Telford..."
 "When you want to know how things really work,
study them when they're coming apart." ― William Gibson,
Zero History. Gibson is a high tech science fiction writer
who focuses on artificial intelligence and the government's and corporate world's
ability to track your every move - sort of modern day
1984 stuff only now it's already real.
 "Softening demand has caused the three-month
average of global chip sales for July to decline in comparison with the same month
a year ago, according to numbers from World Semiconductor Trade Statistics. The
growth of year-to-date global chip sales is still positive at 2.7 percent but given..."
 In an investigation involving guns and drugs,
the Justice Department obtained a court order this summer demanding that Apple turn
over, in real time, text messages between suspects using iPhones. Apple's response:
Its iMessage system was encrypted and the company could not comply. Government officials
had warned for...
 "In an attempt to catch up with the technologies
being employed in electronic warfare, the Air Force has issued a solicitation
looking for an electronic warfare test kit in which it can test and simulate certain
EW prototypes. The tests will involve evaluating certain waveforms and record
jammer responses..."
 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...
 "'Steve Jobs played no role at all in any
of my designs of the Apple I and Apple II computer, and printer interfaces, and
serial interfaces, and floppy disks and stuff that I made to enhance the computers. 'He
did not know technology. He wanted to be important, and the important..."
 European Microwave Week, Booth #E112 –
NI (formerly AWR Corporation)
announces that NI AWR software events will be showcased on its own
mobile app
beginning with European Microwave Week (EuMW) 2015 in Paris on Sept 8-11. "There's
an app for just about everything these days and the NI AWR software event mobile
app will bring the EuMW experience to a new level," said Antti Lautanen, senior
marketing manager for AWR Group, NI. "Attendees will be able plan their activities
real time right from their mobile device...
 "Dave Swanson, KG5CCI, of Little Rock, Arkansas,
and Christophe Lucas, F4CQA, in Trouy, France, appear to have set a new contact
distance record on the FO-29 satellite. The contact occurred on August 27 at 1732
UTC. 'This was not a scheduled contact,' Swanson explained. 'I simply answered Christophe's
CQ. I knew it was a good contact at the time...
 MECA is pleased to announce its latest addition
to our broad band line of
Power Dividers
with the type N model (80X-4-3.250WWP). Available in; 2, 4, 8 & 16-Way, 30W
Wilkinson Power Dividers, optimized for excellent performance with industry leading
specifications from 500 MHz - 6.00 GHz IP67 rated and suited for indoor and outdoor
applications. Offering typical VSWR's ranging from 1.20:1 to 1.30:1, Isolation of
17-20dB minimum while offering phase and amplitude balance typically only seen in
narrower/octave band models...
 "The U.S. justice department says federal
agencies will have to obtain search warrants to use technology that tracks mobile
phones under new guidance. Until now agencies such as the FBI had not needed a warrant
to use machines called cell-site simulators that track the locations of phones in
the area..."
 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...
 "A team of researchers from Germany and Canada
has found a way to make graphene superconductive—by doping it with lithium atoms.
In their paper they have uploaded to the preprint server arXiv, the team describes
the process they used and the results they obtained when testing it..."
 In the mid 1930s, hand-assembled products
were by far the rule rather than the exception for most products be they electronics,
furniture, appliances, automobiles, or toys. Many people lament - even curse - the
advent of machine automation in production, but the fact is for the vast majority
of things the consistency and quality of the finished component is typically much
greater. Toiling at the same task, in the same location, day after day, gets unbearable
very quickly for someone like me who likes to accomplish a particular job and then
move on to something new - even if "new" is defined as the same type of endeavor
but with different materials. There are many people, thankfully...
 "It appears
that the $50SAT Amateur Radio 'PocketQube' microsatellite — also known as Eagle
2 (MO-76) — has finally gone silent, a couple of days short of 20 months in orbit.
The satellite, which did not carry an Amateur Radio transponder, transmitted on
437.505 MHz at a power of 100 mW..."
 This week's
Amateur Radio crossword puzzle contains the usual collection of
science, math, and engineering terms, and also includes special words related to
Amateur Radio (clues labeled with asterisk *). These custom puzzles take more than
an hour to create. Enjoy...
 "The growing number of satellites, spent boosters
and space junk in low-Earth orbit has prompted a number of efforts to keep closer
track of all these objects in order to avoid collisions that would generate dangerous
orbital debris fields..."
 Planar Monolithics Industries, Inc. invites you
to visit them at Stand 107 of the European Microwave 2015 show in Paris, France, from September
6-11. PMI offers just about any RF/Microwave component, module, or sub-system for
both industrial and military based requirements. Components and modules can be modified
to meet your exact requirement...
 While working as an electronics technician
at the Oceanic Division of Westinghouse in Annapolis, MD, in the 1980s, I received
a vintage 1941 Crosley model 03CB console style radio for Christmas from Melanie.
It was in poor condition, having spent the previous few decades sitting in a barn
on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Due to the era of manufacture, vacuum tubes rather
than transistors provided all the necessary amplification. One of the engineers
I worked for at Westinghouse (Mr. Jim Wilson, engineer extraordinaire)
was a Ham radio operator and had been from boyhood in Pittsburgh, PA. After learning
of my Crosley, he gave me his
B&K Dyna-Quik Model 650 tube tester for use in restoring the
radio. The Model 650 was a rather high-end portable tube...
 New MFJ-226 introduces the MFJ Times Technology
series of advanced
Antenna Analyzers! This groundbreaking VNA antenna analyzer --
MFJ-226 Antenna Expert -- delivers OSL calibration and true reactance including
its sign from 1 MHz to 230 MHz with 1-Hz frequency resolution! Incredibly Powerful
MFJ-226 is the first and only low-cost handheld VNA to feature OSL
(open/short/load) calibration for super accuracy and
sign of reactance to positively identify inductive or capacitive reactance. These
two features, normally only found on lab instruments, place incredible diagnostic
power in...
 Having never been a sports aficionado, I
have not spent much money or time at baseball, football, or soccer fields, hockey
rinks, bowling alleys, curling sheets, or basketball courts. When an air show comes
to town, however, I'm there. I'll stand in line for 45 minutes to tour the inside
of a DC-3, B-25, B-17, PBY-5, or just about anything that will admit me. What is
particularly enjoyable is inspecting the radio equipment racks and bays. The sight
and smell (I consider it an aroma) of the old UHF
and VHF sets, recording equipment, power supplies, generators, synchros, and the
associated wiring and connectors is something I never tire of experiencing. I always
imagine the men who operated and maintained everything doing their assigned duties
to keep those wonderful machines flying. Maybe you know of what I write. This article
provides a nice overview of the state of the art for airborne electronics in the
post...
 I listen to a lot of radio - all day, every
day - while pounding away at the computer keyboard publishing RF Cafe and
Airplanes and Rockets
websites. During those many hours a lot of commercials get aired. Most I can't stand,
some are tolerable, and there are a precious few that I actually enjoy hearing.
Although as a rule the vast majority of public service commercials produced by the
Ad Council run the gamut from inane to downright insulting, they do on occasion
come up with a really good ad. Chance: One of my all-time favorites titled Chance
is from their "The Grads
of Life" campaign that encourages companies to not hold rigidly to an employee
background requirement of a college degree. It essentially gives legitimacy to those
whose bona fides include being...
 Advanced Test Equipment Corp is a nationwide
company that focuses on the rental of a wide variety of equipment working in a fast
paced environment. We are looking for someone to calibrate, troubleshoot, and repair
a wide variety of equipment, including but not limited to: Analyzers, GPTE, fiber
optic, scopes, meters, power supplies and more. ATEC has an immediate need for a
Calibration Technician who meets the following minimal requirements: 5 years experience
as a technician, knowledge of high voltage calibration is a plus, experience in
troubleshooting and repair, familiar with ISO/IEC 17025 & A2LA accreditation,
ability to read schematics and diagrams, must...
 Joe G., of Gibbstown, NJ, is one of two winners
of the August RF Cafe Book Drawing. Joe wisely selected The Homeowner's DIY
Guide to Electrical Wiring, by David Herres (graciously provided by
McGraw Hill). Winner #2 has not checked in yet. History
suggests he never will, and will lose an opportunity. I have sent the second notice.
If you have been entered in the drawing, please check your e-mail to see if you
are the second winner...
 P1dB, Inc., a supplier of RF and microwave components,
launched its new e-commerce website, www.p1db.com, whose focus is product availability and fast shipment
to its global customer base. "P1dB is committed to providing its customers with
RF and Microwave products on a timely basis" says Gerry Camacho, P1dB GM and COO.
"Our updated website is the first step to meeting our commitment of offering RF
and Microwave components to the industry from stock or very short delivery." The
P1dB Website has been designed to meet customer demands for an easy product search
and consumer level e-commerce check-out and 24/7 availability...
 The DailyJobCuts website tracks the number
of people affected by layoffs, bankruptcies, and business closings on a daily basis.
It does not tally the huge number of jobs that are converted from full-time to part-time
positions in order to avoid oppressive government rules about health care, maternity
leave, etc. Below is a chart I just generated on the Bureau of Labor Statistics
website showing the number of people age 18 and over who are
not in the
labor force. Part of the number includes retirees and those who would like to
work but cannot, but the well-documented primary cause of the huge increase is that
...
-
Things That Make You Look Like
a Weirdo to Hiring Managers
-
How to answer the question
"Why do you want to change jobs?"
-
How to Respond to "Tell Me About a
Time You Made a Mistake" <more>
 "The Whistler
and His Dog" is one of those tunes that you have probably heard dozens of times
but never knew the title of it (video at bottom of page).
It is mentioned in this installment of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" from a 1948 edition
of Radio & Television News magazine. Barney is said to have been whistling
it while replacing an output transformer on a receiver-recorder... a wire recorder
at that. The "20 Questions" theme is from the game where the player attempts to
guess the answer by asking a series of questions that narrows the possible results
until only the correct one is left - aka deductive reasoning. BTW, I'll bet "The Syncopated Clock" is another tune you've
heard many times but didn't know the title of it...
 Advanced Test Equipment Rentals (ATEC) and NH
Research (NHR) today announced an agreement for ATEC as an authorized rental partner
of the NHR 9200 Battery Test System. The 9200 provides automated characterization,
power cycling & life-cycle testing of battery modules & packs. NHR is a
leader in power electronics test instruments and complete turn-key test systems
for universities, military, and companies involved in space, defense, battery manufacturing/research
and other applications. The
NHR
9200 Battery Test System is designed for all battery chemistries including lead-acid,
nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion. The 9200 is configured with independent, 12 kW DC
bi-directional loads that can be dynamically...
 This
report by EE Times'
Cabe
Atwell presents a collection of PCBs where the designers decided to include
a bit of artistic license to the metal trace pattern. Doing so doesn't add to the
production cost, although hard core bean counting officers might complain about
the "waste" of company time spent in the implementation. You might argue that such
an effort is wasted since most people will never see it, but that never stopped
IC designers from adding 'chip
art' to die. Unfortunately, you have to click through 10 pages to see them all.
Enjoy...
 Anatech Electronics offers the industry's largest
portfolio of high-performance standard and customized RF and microwave filters and
filter-related products for military, commercial, aerospace and defense, and industrial
applications up to 40 GHz. Anatech has released three new designs: a surface
mount 455 kHz Anatech-Electronics-Crystal-Ceramic-Bandpass-Filters-9-1-2015.htm"
crystal bandpass filter, a connectorized 1800 MHz cavity bandpass filter, and
a surface mount 1650 MHz ceramic bandpass filter. All can be ordered directly
through their AMCrf web store...
 It seems like these days you can get software
or hardware for just about any task. This Carson Intermediate 100x-1000x
Compound Microscope with Universal Smartphone Optics Digiscoping
Adapter is a prime example of that which I write. This would be a great addition
to your lab or hobby bench to assist during assembling or reworking PCBs with fly
spec size components as well as for inspection during troubleshooting or even quality
control for small scale manufacturing operations. With all the USB-based test instruments
available for electrical test, it is no wonder that we are now seeing things like
this plug-in oscilloscope for smartphones. The Oscium iMSO-204L oscilloscope sports
2 analog...
 The FEKO Student Competition is an international
contest organized annually by the FEKO team in support of engineering education.
Open to students of colleges and universities from every country in the world who
are aged 18 years and older at the time of entry, except for students in countries
or at universities subject to a ban on receiving U.S. technology exports. Submission
should highlight the problem solved with FEKO, including details on simulation setup,
solution method used, results and result interpretation. The Competition will begin
on April 1, 2015. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 2015. Entrants must
use and complete the
online registration form.
 RCA, the
Radio Corporation of America was not merely a manufacturer of
radio, television, and phonograph equipment for home entertainment. The company
also made vacuum tubes for all sots of electronic equipment, and produced a weekly
radio broadcast called "Magic Key" on the NBC Blue Network. Sticking to their communications
roots, RCA today markets televisions, microwave ovens, Android-based tablet computers,
DVD / Blu Ray drives, telephones, 2-way radios, radios, clocks, antennas, and many
other devices - with no tubes in sight, not even in their TV displays...
 everything RF has recently updated its Directory for Waveguide
Products & Manufacturers. There are over 20 waveguide component categories listed
on everything RF. Users can search for products across multiple manufacturers using
parametric search tools to narrow down on products based on waveguide size and other
parameters based on the selected category. everything RF is working closely with
a number of manufacturers to get all their product data listed on the site. It is
a free service, so we encourage manufacturers to contact us...
 Disneyland opened its gates in Anaheim, California
on July 17, 1955. It was billed as the most high-tech theme park in the world, with
a "wow" factor on par with the World's Fair extravaganzas. One of its much-ballyhooed
features was the "realistic" jungle safari tour with life-like animal automatons
and authentic 3-D jungle sounds. This article, published less than a year after
opening day, highlights some of the equipment and methods used by artists and engineers
to achieve the effects...
 NI (formerly AWR Corporation) announces
that the agenda has been set and registration opened for the
AWR Design Forum 2015 (ADF)
in Hsinchu, Taiwan on Tuesday, Sept. 22. Highlights of ADF 2015 Taiwan include the
following technical presentations featuring NI AWR Design Environment software as
well as customer design successes: Overview of NI AWR Design Environment V12, Module
and Connector Design, Using Microwave Office and Analyst Software, LTCC Design and
Verification with Microwave Office, Efficient Implementation and Design...
 Sivers IMA today announces its launch of the
next generation
converter for E-band radio links. The new generation converter
is based on the company's proprietary SiGe chip and offers a cost-effective and
high-performance solution for those who develop and market radio links or test and
measurement equipment for manufacturing of radio links and devices. The new converter
from Sivers IMAs is designed to support very advanced modulation schemes, which
enables record breaking capacities of up to 10 Gbps...
 "Technology
is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not
manage and those who manage what they do not understand." -
Archibald Putt, Ph.D., from
Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat. Per the publisher,
John Wiley & Sons, "'Archibald Putt' is the pseudonym of a man whose contributions
in science, engineering, and R&D management are well known. He has served on
government advisory committees, managed basic and applied research, and held executive
positions in a large multinational corporation. He received his PhD degree from
a leading institute of technology and has served as president of an international
technical society. He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles."
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