Monday 20
"ARRL Public Relations Committee Chairman
Scott Westerman, W9WSW, believes
collegiate Amateur Radio clubs need to blow away the dust and
cobwebs and modernize, in order to attract new members. He urges college and university
ham radio clubs to seek common technological ground with younger generations, in
order to attract new Amateur Radio licensees. 'We really need to be thinking in
terms of state-of-the-art technology, because that's what 'the kids' are looking
for "
Almost certainly the earliest observed evidence
of the existence of an
ionosphere as part of the Earth's atmosphere is aurora activity.
Alley Oop, B.C., and friends had no idea that the wavering colors were the
result of high energy, charged particles from our sun were interacting at altitude
with the Earth's magnetic field. This article from a 1935 issue of Short Wave Craft
gives a nice introduction to what was known of the ionosphere at the time, which
wasn't a whole lot since no in situ measurements had yet been made via sounding
Planar Monolithic Industries (PMI) recently introduced four new products in their
extensive line of - an absorptive SP2T PIN diode switch for 50 MHz to 18 GHz,
a compact RF amplifier for 50 MHz to 18.0 GHz, an SDLVA (Successive Detection Logarithmic
Video Amplifier) for 50 MHz to 18 GHz, and an 8-bit digital phase shifter for 2.0
to 6.0 GHz ...
"Graphene foam reinforced with carbon nanotubes can hold thousands
of times its own weight and still bounce back to its full height. The material is
thermally stable and highly conductive, making it suitable for batteries and other
electrical applications. A chunk of conductive graphene foam reinforced by carbon
nanotubes can support more than 3,000 times its own weight and easily bounce back
to its original height, according to Rice University scientists. Better yet, it
can be "
"Gadgets are set to become flexible, highly
efficient and much smaller, following a breakthrough in measuring two-dimensional
'wonder' materials by the U. of Warwick. Dr Neil Wilson in the Department of Physics
has developed a new technique to measure the electronic structures of stacks of
two-dimensional materials – flat, atomically thin, highly conductive, and extremely
strong materials. Multiple stacked layers of 2-D materials - known as
heterostructures - create highly "
For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new
crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, and other technical words. Clues in this puzzle with an asterisk
(*) are pulled from this past week's (2/13 - 2/17) "High Tech News"
column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives
page for help). Enjoy
Friday 17
Teledyne Microwave Solutions (TMS) operates
nine manufacturing facilities engaged in research, design, development, and manufacturing
of microwave products.
Amongst their extremely broad line of products are RF and microwave amplifiers,
integrated assemblies, VCOs, frequency mixers, detectors, power dividers, switches,
limiters, LNAs, attenuators, and AGC & log amps, TWTs, satellite modems. TMS
service the commercial, space, and military markets. Please visit Teledyne Microwave
today to learn how they can help your project
Six new pages of radio service data sheets
have been added to my growing list, which now totals 177
(that's a lot of work for not a lot of
pay). I try to find examples of actual
radios on the Internet to show what they looked like.
• Admiral 6EI & 6EIN
• General Electric 250
• Detrola 571A & 571B
• Farnsworth EC-260, EK-262,
EK-263, EK-264, & EK-265
• Howard 920
• United 980744 & 980745
"Inmarsat recently brought to light how its
LoRaWAN-based network, developed in partnership with Actility
is delivering on its strategy to bring the Internet of Things (IoT) to every corner
of the globe. Early applications in Asset Tracking, Agribusiness and Oil & Gas
are helping businesses in remote regions of the world become more efficient, reduce
costs and drive new revenue through IoT-based solutions. Inmarsat and Actility's
three early applications cover: Asset tracking: Tracking the location, movement,
health and other key "
Mini-Circuits has been running ads lately for 'reflectionless filters,' the likes of which are of great interest
to frequency conversion circuit designers who like to place filters on RF and/or
IF mixer ports. Normal filters have very bad out-of-band VSWR, which causes spurious
signals to be reflected back to the mixer ports for 're-mixing,' causing even more
spurious. The problem is typically addressed by placing attenuators between mixers
and filters, which is undesirable from a noise figure perspective. This book by
Mathew Morgan caught my attention because it deals with the issue
(here is a good article in
MWJ)
"Modern computer technology is based on the
transport of electric charge in semiconductors. But this technology's potential
will be reaching its limits in the near future, since the components deployed cannot
be miniaturized further. But, there is another option: using an
electron's spin, instead of its charge, to transmit information.
A team of scientists from Munich and Kyoto is now demonstrating how this works.
Computers and mobile devices continue providing ever more "
Online calculators are a great convenience
even in the 'The Age of the Phone App.' Website-based calculators have the advantage
of being accessible from any device, and without having to download and store it
in memory. Federal Custom Cable has a fairly extensive collection of basic
electrical, RF and microwave type calculators. They are all conveniently listed
on a single page. Before using any calculator I have never used before, I validate
its accuracy with known quantities
"The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
is claiming a record:
104 satellites launched on a single rocket. India record space
launch feb2017 Taking off this week, it was the 39th flight for the country's India's
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) design, with ISRO's own 714kg Cartosat-2 earth
observation satellite as its primary payload. Sharing the ride were 103 nano satellites
together weighing ~663kg. All went off into a 505km polar sun-synchronous orbit
from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre "
Thursday 16
"The High Frequency Active Auroral Research
Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska, will soon undertake its first scientific
research campaigns since the facility was taken over by the University of Alaska
Fairbanks (UAF) Geophysical Institute 18 months ago. Among the investigators is
UAF Researcher Chris Fallen, KL3WX, who will be working under a National Science
Foundation grant, 'RAPID: Spatiotemporal Evolution of Radio-Induced Aurora.' Fallen
says the HAARP transmissions will take place within the facility's "
Here are a few interesting photos from the
annals of
radio communications' 1935-era history that include airborne,
land mobile, and fixed operator stations from around the world. Japanese amateur
radio operator Seichiro Handa is shown sitting in his 'shack' donning headphones
and a Morse code key. The author mentions that judging by his high quality radio
equipment, Mr. Handa's finances seemed to be unaffected by the Great Depression
that hit the United States and
Modelithics, Inc. is pleased to announce the latest release, of the
Modelithics® COMPLETE Library
version 17.0 for use with the Keysight EEsof EDA Advanced Design System (ADS) simulation
software. This release marks another big milestone with over 15,000 commercial electronic
components from over 65 different vendors now represented in the COMPLETE Library
of advanced simulation models. The version 17.0 release contains 34 NEW MODELS,
in addition to the already extensive collection of high accuracy, scalable parasitic
The
Nokia 3310 was one of the first reverse engineering reports I
wrote for a former employer. Internal antennas were new on the scene. Nokia was
undeniably king of the cellphone world. "On Sept. 1, 2000, the top movie in the
country was 'Bring It On.' The No. 1 song was Janet Jackson's Doesn't Really Matter,
from Nutty Professor II. And the newest cell phone on the market was the Nokia 3310
- a sturdy little brick of a phone. A lot has changed since then. But get ready
for a blast from the past: Rumor has it the Nokia 3310 might be making a comeback.
Sure, it was technically 'retired' in 2005, after selling some 126 million units
(per Nokia) "
"Oscilloscopes are one of the primary electronic
diagnostic tools, and there are a lot of vendors to choose from. While all oscilloscopes
generally looked similar when they first appeared, things have changed radically
since then. For example, do you know the difference between a
digital phosphor oscilloscope (DPO) and a digital storage oscilloscope
(DSO)? Here's a little quiz: Out of all the devices depicted in Fig. 1, can you
select the oscilloscopes "
"The University of Bristol has been awarded
a £4.3 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
(EPSRC) to lead an important new project to develop
GaN-on-Diamond microwave technology. This next generation technology
will underpin future high power radio frequency and microwave communications, space
and defense systems, paving the way towards 5G and 6G mobile phone networks and
much more comprehensive radar systems "
Wednesday 15
Here is some serious die stacking... "Computer
scientist David Blaauw pulls a small plastic box from his bag. He carefully uses
his fingernail to pick up the tiny black speck inside and place it on the hotel
café table. At one cubic millimeter, this is one of a line of the
world's smallest computers. I had to be careful not to cough or
sneeze lest it blow away and be swept into the trash. Blaauw and his colleague Dennis
Sylvester, both IEEE Fellows and computer scientists at the "
Jerry missed an opportunity to patent his
capacitive touch switch, the sort used to control everything from living room lamps
to kitchen sink faucets. Untold millions of dollars in royalties could have paid
for his engineering degree at Parvoo University and then used the rest as seed money
for a startup business. When I started reading the adventure of
Carl & Jerry, I thought they were going to rig the metal door
to issue a high voltage pulse to whatever touched it, but that probably would have
been too much of a liability for Popular Electronics to risk since readers would
sometimes replicate the devices described
"Graphene's unusual electronic structure enables
this extraordinary material to break many records of strength, electricity and heat
conduction. Physicists at the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems
(PCS), in collaboration with the Research Institute for Standards and Science (KRISS),
used a model to explain the electronic structure of
graphene measured by a new spectroscopic platform. These techniques,
published in the journal Nano Letters, could promote future research on stable and
accurate quantum measurements for 2D "
This latest collection of articles from our
industry's magazine publishers with a mix of topics including one of my favorite:
grounding. Items move onto and off of all homepages quickly, so even if you visit
Microwave & RF, Microwave Journal, Microwave Product Digest,
High Frequency Electronics, et al
•
Tile Arrays Accelerate the
Evolution to Next-Gen Radar
•
Opportunities for High Frequency
Materials in 5G and the IoT
•
How Trump's New FCC May
Affect You <more...>
"The International Amateur Radio Union Region
1 (IARU-R1) Monitoring System (IARUMS) newsletter reports a mysterious 'foghorn'
- a Chinese over-the-horizon (OTH)
burst radar - is operating in Amateur Radio bands. 'We observed
the mysterious foghorn on 7, 10, and 14 MHz,' the newsletter recounted. 'This is
a Chinese OTH radar, which is often jumping, and sounding like a foghorn.' The signal
is frequency modulation on pulse (FMOP) with 66.66 sweeps-per-second bursts "
"Researchers from Brown University have shown
experimentally how a unique form of magnetism arises in an odd class of materials
called Mott insulators. The findings are a step toward a better understanding
the quantum states of these materials, which have generated much interest among
scientists in recent years. The study, published in Nature Communications, helps
to confirm novel theoretical work that attempts to explain "
Tuesday 14
No it's not a college engineering class prank
like the yearly piano drop at MIT's Baker House or University of British Columbia
in Vancouver engineering students dangling a VW Bug from the Golden Gate Bridge.
This is water "dunking" test carried out by a
television manufacturer to assure that its products can survive
an accidental exposure to moisture. I assume the water below is fresh water and
not salt water. Vacuum tube TV sets were at a great disadvantage for survivability
compared to modern solid state sets with LCD displays
"U.S. military researchers will use an online
Webcast to brief industry later this month on a new initiative to determine if humans
and other living things can communicate with one another biologically with radio
waves without the use of conventional antennas or RF transmitting equipment. Officials
of DARPA in will present a Webcast from 1 to 2:30 p.m. eastern time on Tuesday,
21 FEB 2017, concerning the upcoming
RadioBio program. The RadioBio "
"It's 1956.
Korea is finally quiet. Elvis is king. <--
a great epochal opening! Texas Instruments has started producing the first
silicon transistors to challenge the prevailing germanium products. Shockley Labs
has set up shop in what will become known as Silicon Valley, and a team of Army
scientists has patented a way of creating
electronic circuitry by etching the patterns printed on a copper-clad
board. It's the beginning of a new era in electronics and of a new industry publication.
Rogers "
"Interviews are vulnerable times. There aren't
many things more nerve-wracking than walking into a room of people you desperately
want to impress. In a new survey from CareerBuilder, employers shared the most memorable
job
interview mistakes candidates have made and how body language
can hinder their chances of moving forward in the interview process. According to
the nationwide survey, conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder
from "
"This week, researchers at Hiroshima University
showed off a new
terahertz transmitter that is just as powerful as its predecessors,
but should ultimately prove more affordable for commercial applications. In a demo
at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, they presented
a device capable of delivering data at breathtaking speeds of more than 100 gigabits
per second at a frequency of 300 gigahertz. At its very best "
Monday 13
"Electronic warfare (EW) experts at the Raytheon
Co. are helping the U.S. Navy develop advanced networking of secure real-time tactical
data links to coordinate weapons firing,
EW jamming of enemy radar and communications, and foil enemy attempts
eavesdrop on Navy communications. Officials of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft
Division in Lakehurst, N.J., announced an $11.8M contract this week to the Raytheon
Integrated Defense Systems segment for the Communications and Interoperability for
Integrated Fires (CIIF) "
Even with all of today's prefabricated components,
gizmos, and tools - at incredibly cheap prices - there are still many people who
prefer to make their own non-standard parts and even tooling when tinkering on a
project. Many hobby magazines have monthly columns dedicated to
hints, tips, shortcuts, ideas, etc. to solve, remedy, conquer,
etc., the many kinks, problems, challenges, twists, hitches, snags, etc. of the
task at hand. The aforementioned words can be found in the titles of those columns.
Short Wave Craft magazine ran a feature titled "$5.00 for
"Panasonic Corporation in collaboration with
Hiroshima University and National Institute of Information and Communications Technology,
Japan have developed a THz transmitter capable of transmitting digital data at a
rate exceeding 100 gigabits per second over a single channel using the
300-GHz band. This technology enables data rates 10 times faster
than that offered by the5G which are expected to appear around 2020 "
Saelig
(notice their fresh new logo) sells and supports a
wide range of electronic control and instrumentation equipment and components to
customers ranging from Fortune 500 industrial users, military, educational institutions
and hospitals to individual end-users. They've found remarkable test equipment and
components from around the world with specs or prices you won't find anywhere else.
Please visit Saelig today for your test equipment needs
PU - I hate to think what these might smell
like when they overheat! "Li-S could be an attractive alternative to Li-ion
in batteries, as sulphur has high specific capacity (1.675 Ah/g) and high energy
density (2.6 Wh/g). However, the cells do not last long, and sulphur is not
very conductive. Spreading the sulphur over and within a porous carbon electrode
could help, but which electrode structure is best? Researchers "
For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new
crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, and other technical words. Clues in this puzzle with an asterisk
(*) are pulled from this past week's
(2/6 - 2/10) "High Tech News" column on the RF Cafe homepage
(see the Headline Archives page for help). Enjoy
