See Page 1 |
2 | of the January 2025 homepage archives. Tuesday the 14th
 For a few years, each month's edition
of Radio-Electronics magazine included a column entitled "The
Radio Month," which was a collection of a dozen or so relevant news items. The
March 1953 issue reported on transistorized hearing aids (those old vacuum tube
types didn't fit in your ear very well), how the number of TV sets in the U.S. had
out-paced the number of telephones thanks to new UHF channels, the continued rapid
expansion of television in Europe, and the upcoming 1953 I.R.E. Show (Institute
of Radio Engineers) in New York City. Of particular note was the new germanium ore
source discovered in Kentucky - not the first place I think of with a semiconductor
mother lode. At the time, germanium (Ge) was still the primary element used in transistors
and diodes, although silicon was making rapid inroads. The story was germanium sold
for $350 per pound in pure metallic form...
 "MVG, a leader in electromagnetic solutions,
has launched its innovative
Reverberation Chamber, designed to excel in immunity testing and applications
requiring extreme field strengths from 200 V/m to 7000 V/m. The chamber
incorporates a sophisticated paddle system that enhances performance across a broad
frequency range, particularly at lower frequencies, and adheres to the IEC61000-4-21
EMC testing specification. This chamber is ideal for EMC compliance testing in line
with emissions and immunity standards for electrical and electronic products..."
 Immersion Tin, also known as White Tin,
stands out as a RoHS-compliant (lead-free) PCB surface finish ideal for flat surface
needs and fine pitch components. San Francisco Circuits' application of Immersion
Tin involves applying a thin layer of tin onto the copper layer of a PCB, offering
exceptional flatness that supports small geometries and surface mount components.
This finish is also one of the most cost-effective immersion coatings, making it
a popular choice for budget-conscious designs. Despite its affordability, Immersion
Tin has some limitations, including a shorter shelf life (3-6 months) and susceptibility
to tin whiskering. It's primarily used as a sustainable alternative to lead-based
finishes, requiring fewer resources during its application. Its reworkability and
flat surface make it an excellent choice for fine pitch components and BGA assemblies....
 S-units are probably not familiar at all
to non-Hams since they refer to receiver signal levels (the "S" stands for "signal").
It is a relative unit of measure rather than absolute. Technically, the dBm unit
of power is also a relative unit, but it is referenced to a fixed power level of
1 mW - traceable back to primary standards at NIST or any other country's standards
keeper. By contrast, the S-unit - at least originally - is relative to the strongest
useable signal level at a particular receiver's input. An indication of S9 meant
a maximum signal level was present at the input based in part on the receiver's
dynamic range at a certain frequency...
Monday the 13th
 If you believe the claims and the radiation
pattern plots and graphs presented in this 1962 Radio-Electronics magazine
advertisement, then JFD Electronics had a pretty nice
television antenna. Per the data, reception gain was nearly perfectly flat across
the lower channel band (2-6) and across the upper channel band (7-13). That is the
VHF band. Model LPV-11 is featured in the image and the data. It was an 11-element
log-periodic antenna with "9 Active Cells and 2 directors," with an effective range
of 100 miles. UHF, covering channels 14-83, occupied the 470-884 MHz band.
1962, the year of this article, is the same year that the All-Channel Receiver Act
which compelled manufacturers to include UHF reception on all new TV sets. The only
show I remember watching on UHF was Bob Ross (a career USAF technician) painting
"happy little trees" on PBS...
 Here is an advertisement for Delco radios
that I scanned from page 91 of my copy of the April 1945 QST magazine.
"'Control
the Air' has a new meaning today." That's the tag line referring to the need
to dominate wireless communications in the effort to conduct effective warfare.
Radio certainly wasn't a new science in 1945, but secure communications - including
spread spectrum techniques - was a vital technique both for transmitting and receiving
messages and for jamming the communication of our enemies. Even though Hollywood
actress Hedy Lamarr and music composer George Antheil came up with the concept of
frequency hopping spread spectrum in the early...
 Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta
was born on February 18, 1745, in Como, Duchy of Milan, which was then part of the
Holy Roman Empire and is now in modern-day Italy. He was the son of Filippo Volta,
a nobleman of modest means, and Maria Maddalena dei Conti Inzaghi. Volta was the
youngest of seven children. His father died when Alessandro was just seven years
old, leaving the family in financial difficulties. Despite these challenges, Volta
showed an early aptitude for learning and science. Volta received his initial education
at the Jesuit school in Como. From a young age, he demonstrated an intense curiosity
about natural phenomena and developed a particular interest in electricity. Although
his family hoped he would pursue a career in law or the clergy, Volta's passion...
 "On Wednesday, February 20, 1963, Frank
Wanlass delivered a paper at ISSCC at U. Penn., written by him and his co-author
C.T. Sah, describing Fairchild Semiconductor's process in which N AND P-type field-effect,
metal-oxide-semiconductor-triodes have been fabricated from silicon by a planar
diffusion process.' Much more so than the invention of the bipolar junction transistor
in 1947 by Bardeen, Brattain, and Schockley, Wanlass' CMOS process would impact
humanity in unforeseeable ways, perhaps providing the seed to its future extinction
since it forms the basis of almost all ASICs in use today, including those powering
AI..."
 Anatech Electronics (AEI) manufactures and
supplies RF and microwave
filters for military and commercial communication systems, providing standard
LP, HP, BP, BS, notch, diplexer, and custom RF filters, and RF products. Standard
RF filter and cable assembly products are published in our website database for
ease of procurement. Custom RF filters designs are used when a standard cannot be
found, or the requirements dictate a custom approach for your military and commercial
communications needs. Sam Benzacar's monthly newsletters address contemporary wireless
subjects. Please visit Anatech today to see how they can help your project succeed.
 As with most things of consumer, commercial,
and industrial nature, the
battery - more correctly "cell" - science has come a long way in a relatively
short time. Alessandro Volta invented the eponymous voltaic pile in 1799; it consisted
of zinc and copper electrodes immersed in a sulfuric acid electrolyte, thereby being
a wet cell. The first dry cell was the zinc-carbon type invented by Guiseppe Zamboni
(not the guy who invented the ice rink resurfacer) in 1812. Rechargeable dry cells
of the NiCad variety hit the scene in 1899. Then, it wasn't until 1991 - a century
later - that Sony commercialized...
Friday the 10th
 Radar jamming, as with radio communications
jamming, has been a critical piece in military and intelligence realms since the
advent of radar and radio. Early methods involved a brute force transmission of
RF energy in the known band of operation, effectively overwhelming the receiver
input. This is far from the preferred option due to large, heavy, mobile systems
which need to be privy to the exact (or nearly exact) frequency being jammed. Unless
the receiver operates in a very narrow band and/or has some degree of anti-jamming
features, blanking out a signal is pretty easy to do. I've written before how my
turning on a 100 mW radio control...
 Despite all the prefabricated, relatively
inexpensive products available these days, there are still many people who like
to build their own projects. Whether electrical or mechanical - or both - some sort
of enclosure is usually involved. Often, you can cannibalize an existing, retired
project to use its chassis or find a product at Walmart or a home improvement store
that does not cost too much that you can buy just to get its enclosure. Buying a
pre-formed chassis for your project can get expensive, so there are times when the
best option is to obtain a piece of sheet metal (which can also be expensive) and
bend it yourself. If you have never attempted such an endeavor, believe me it
can be pretty challenging, especially with heavier gauge metal...
 Entering 2025, Empower RF Systems is pleased
to announce the company's
25th anniversary and results from the previous year that included capacity expansion
and record business results. The company opened a design center in Syracuse, New
York earlier in the year and recently added 20% more space to its Inglewood, California
design and manufacturing footprint with a second building conveniently located near
Headquarters. The company's unique blend of power amplifier standard products with
common architecture hardware and embedded computing are providing a performance...
 Douglas McDonald Perham (1885–1967) was
a self-taught radio engineer, machinist, inventor, and an avid collector whose life
intersected with the pivotal moments of the wireless revolution. Born on May 22,
1885, in Duarte, California, Perham grew up in a time when the world of communication
was undergoing profound changes, moving from wired telegraphy and telephony to the
era of wireless communication. Though often overlooked in the official histories
of electronics, Perham was deeply involved in some of the most transformative developments
of the 20th century. Perham's fascination with electronics began in his teenage
years, when he lived in Palo Alto, California. The region, which would later become
synonymous with technological innovation, was already a hotbed of experimentation...
• Military
and Aerospace Electronics Market in 2024
• CWops 2024
Advancing the Art of CW Award
• Electronics
Sourcing Trends in 2025
• AM/FM
Still Critical for In-Car Ads
• November
Semi
Sales up 20.7% Y-o-Y
Thursday the 9th
 Until I read this 1974 Popular Mechanics
magazine article, I thought the term "diode" was unique to the study of electronics.
Meteorologists have also adopter it to describe a phenomenon whereby a tornado funnel
simulates "vacuum
diode." Vacuum is created by air swirling at high speed and oxygen being burned
in a funnel by "positive going" electricity rising to create a pulse generator.
OK, so it is an electrical thing, but still interesting that the physical wind process
facilitates the charges. In fact, that is what led Newton Weller to correlate the
strange whiteout of his television screen with a nearby tornado. His discovery became
a well-known phenomenon later used by people living in tornado-prone areas as a
dire warning to take cover or evacuate...
 "2025 will be make or break for
Open RAN following some small-scale trials but I've still to see the proof that
it can be deployed at scale, on a cost-effective basis. I'm expecting an acceleration
in testing for Low Earth Orbit Satellites for mobile with commercial testing not
too far behind. Closer to home, our merger with Vodafone, once completed, will unlock
£11bn of private investment that will transform UK mobile services through both
our own investment and spurring our rivals to match the improvements that we are
making..."
 In 1935, not much was yet known about the
ionosphere. Its existence was first theorized in 1902 by Arthur Kennelly and Oliver
Heaviside, and Edward Appleton proved its presence in 1924 by conducting a series
of
broadcast experiments, but no direct measurements were possible until rocket-borne
instruments could be launched. An Aerobee-Hi sounding rocket was launched in 1956
as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) project that made the first
actual detection of ionized particles in what is now referred to as the D-layer.
It is therefore forgivable that Hugo Gernsback, normally spot-on in his theories
and postulations regarding RF propagation, incorrectly suggested in this editorial
that based on observed time measurements from Europe to the USA, radio waves...
 "As part of our quest and NASA's 'Tipping
Point' initiative, Nokia Bell Labs will deploy the first cellular
4G/LTE network on the Moon's South Pole during Intuitive Machines' IM-2 mission
[Lunar Surface Communication System (LSCS) ] scheduled for [2025]. While the mission
is complex, our goal is simple. We intend to prove that terrestrial cellular technologies
that connect billions of smartphones on Earth can meet the critical communication
needs of future missions to the Moon and Mars. To accomplish this, Nokia Bell Labs
has completely reconceptualized the cellular network, engineering..."
 Exodus Advanced Communications, is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. We are pleased to announce
model
AMP2074P-LC-8KW, a pulse amplifier designed for Pulse/HIRF, EMC/EMI Mil-Std
461/464 and Radar applications. Providing Superb Pulse Fidelity 1.0-2.5 GHz,
10 kW Typical and up to 100 μsec pulse widths. Duty cycles to 6% with
a minimum 69 dB gain. Available monitoring parameters for forward/reflected
power in watts & dBm, VSWR, voltage, current, temperature sensing for outstanding
reliability and ruggedness...
 In August of 1940, issue No. 24 of
the Radio Trade Digest had a couple major historical announcements. The first is
"F.C.C.
Authorizes Commercial F.M.," which assigned 40 UHF (42 - 50 MHz band) commercial
broadcast channels 5 non-commercial channels. Frequencies were changed to 88 - 108 MHz
in 1946. The second major announcement was that Philco (founded in 1892 as Helios
Electric Company, then changed to the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company in 1906)
had become a publically traded company. It required private stock holders to convert
and re-value their holdings to make some of them available for public sale, which
or course they voted for. I don't know how IPOs (initial public offerings) worked
back then...
Wednesday the 8th
 Have you heard of Douglas McDonald Perham
and his
Cavalcade of Electronics? Mr. Perham, born on May 22, 1885, in Duarte,
California, was a trailblazer in the development of early radio and electronic technologies.
His life and work not only advanced the fields of communication and electronics
but also laid the foundation for preserving the history of these transformative
technologies. Growing up in Southern California during the late 19th century, Perham
developed an early fascination with electricity and mechanics. This passion led
him to pursue studies in electrical systems during a period when wireless communication
was emerging as a revolutionary...
 A few years ago, one of America's big-city
mayors made the proclamation, "We're not going to make America great again. It was
never that great." There has been a big push in the last decade to not only erase
the significant accomplishments and sacrifices of America's and Europe's past, but
to vilify those people and institutions that make up that past. Purging the records
and rewriting history is a tried and true method of assuring few have easy access
to archival material documenting the
accomplishments of the nation's past. Along with desiring to provide useful
and interesting material to people seeking technical and historical information,
my motivation is also to keep in peoples' minds the facts of our heritage and who
it was that built the foundations of most of the modern world. To that end, I give
you this advertisement from the inestimable Bell Labs...
 "Taiwan's coast guard believes that a Chinese
freighter
severed a telecom cable off the island's northern coastline last week, and analysts
have flagged the possibility of a gray-zone attack - the same subsea security concern
that Baltic nations have wrestled with over the past year. On Friday at about 1240
hours, Chungwha Telecom notified Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration (CGA) that
a subsea communications cable had been severed just off the coast of Keelung. The
CGA sent a patrol boat to intercept the Hong Kong-owned freighter Shunxin-39, which
was just off the coast of Yehliu. The CGA ordered the freighter to reverse course..."
 Werbel Microwave's model
WM3PD-2-18-S is a wideband 3-way in-line power splitter covering a continuous
bandwidth of 2 to 18 GHz in a compact enclosure measuring 2.25 x 1.00 x 0.38 inches.
The device is RoHS compliant. A proven product in regular production since 2016.
This is a "true" three-way split; not an internally terminated 4-way, with excellent
insertion loss and amplitude balance. This is inherently advantageous over a terminated
4-way because you will save a nominal 1.2 dB of insertion loss and prevent
unnecessary heating within the master enclosure...
 It's always hard getting back into the swing
of the workaday routine after a long holiday week like Christmas through New Year's
Day. Now that you've finished trading stories with workmates about what you did
- or did not - do, take one last moment to lift your spirits by looking at these
electronics-themed comics from vintage issues of Electronics World
magazine. I particularly like the step switches. BTW, these comics make good fodder
for opening your technical presentations. I took the liberty of colorizing them
for you...
Tuesday the 7th
 The March 1967 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine presented these two circuit challenges in their "What's
Your EQ?" feature. Arriving at the correct answer for the Crystal Mike Input
problem requires an intimate knowledge of crystal microphones. I took a stab at
a guess, and was kinda right, but for the wrong reason, technically. Failure admitted.
Black Box type problems can be tricky. Pay attention to what components are excluded,
and don't be afraid to think "outside the box" to figure out what is going on inside
the box...
 People are entering the field of electronics
all the time and many want to learn not only circuit theory and troubleshooting,
but design as well. With all the pre-packaged integrated circuits available that
perform just about every function imaginable, there are still times when you either
want or need to set about designing your own circuit. Interfaces between two circuits,
or to displays and sensors are examples of the kinds of applications that might
need a custom design. That applies not only for RF type circuits that require
impedance matching, but also to low frequency analog and digital circuits. This
article...
 "The
Manufacturing Outlook Q4 survey - carried out between 28 October and 27 November
- showed business confidence dipping at the sharpest rate since the pandemic. Despite
output and employment on the rise, and investment levels remaining stable, overall
optimism fell for the first time since Q4 2023. Increased costs are fingered as
the main culprits for the decline, compounded by further cost rises ahead due to
the recent Labour budget. According to the survey, 70% of manufacturers have seen
costs increase by up to a fifth in the last year, while almost one in ten saw costs
rise..."
 Do you know what this is? It and others
like it can sometimes be found in electronics labs. In fact, for many years these
were in my places of work both as a technician and as an engineer. Most people have
probably never seen one. Hint: It is involved with a liquid solution of a specific
chemical makeup, starting out pure and then often other elements are added as doping
agents as required to achieve a specific result. If you think you know what this
mystery item is, or give up, click here
for a photo of it in its native environment, and an explanation.
 You would be forgiven in this era of ubiquitous
cellphone usage for thinking maybe Citizen Band (CB) radios are only used these
days by techno-throwbacks like myself, but the fact is many truckers still use them
for convenience as well as to avoid having all their communications intercepted,
monitored, and recorded by government agencies. It can be a deceiving sense of privacy
though, because police officers often monitor
CB radio transmissions while in patrol cars, and even solicit the assistance
of other CBers in identifying and apprehending suspected transgressors - an advantage
of public, unencrypted conversation afforded law enforcement...
Monday the 6th
 Death by a thousand cuts - Lingchi. That
idiom is often used to describe the slow, sure demise of a person, place, or thing.
This "Electronic
Weather Control" editorial by Hugo Gernsback from a 1963 edition of Radio-Electronics
magazine predicts mankind's ability to control weather on Earth via instruments
in orbit around the planet. Part of the scheme entailed constructing large reflecting
mirrors (the Oberth spatial mirror) to selectively direct sunlight toward Earth
to directly heat the atmosphere. Here is a rare instance where I do not believe
Mr. Gernsback fully thought through the long-term effects of the plan. Whilst the
intention was to minimize...
 Are you old enough to remember when in order
to make a measurement on a circuit board it was necessary to physically connect
an oscilloscope probe to a trace or component lead? "Wait," you say, "What are you
talking about? You still do have to physically connect a probe." Right you are,
but 50 years from now your progeny will be asking that question, just as today I
ask you do you remember when in order to get a "screen shot" of an o-scope or spectrum
analyzer display it was necessary to connect a camera to the front of the CRT? Some
instruments had an(a) output port(s) for driving a
pen plotter, but getting a plotter set up and calibrated...
 "When your car breaks down, you take it
to the mechanic. When a computer chip fails, engineers go to the
failure-analysis team.
It's their job to diagnose what went wrong and work to make sure it doesn't in the
future. The International Symposium on the Physical and Failure Analysis of Integrated
Circuits (IPFA) is a yearly conference in Asia attended by failure-analysis engineers.
The gathering is mostly technical, but there's also a fun part: The Art of Failure
Analysis contest. 'It's all about creativity and strong imagination,' says Willie
Yeoh, chair of the Art of Failure Analysis..."
 Radiosondes are essential instruments in
atmospheric science, providing critical data for weather forecasting, climate research,
and military operations. These lightweight, battery-powered devices are carried
aloft by weather balloons to measure atmospheric parameters such as temperature,
pressure, and humidity. The rawinsonde, an extension of this technology, also measures
wind speed and direction by tracking its position during ascent through the atmosphere.
Together, they have significantly advanced meteorological science since their invention.
The radiosonde was invented in the 1920s by French meteorologist Robert Bureau (known
in meteorologist circles as the weather Bureau - LOL) and independently by Russian...
 It seemed weird to read of
microelectronics device density expressed in parts per cubic foot of semiconductor
substrate. Describing density that way makes some sense when considering 3-dimensional
devices with vertically stacked elements, but this was in a 1963 article in
Electronics World magazine, so that could not have been the case. The motivation,
evidently was to be able to compare microcircuit density with that of the human
brain in terms of neuron density. In fact, there is an interesting chart presented
that shows the evolution in circuit density beginning with vacuum tube circuits,
progressing through the state of the art in 1963, projecting for future years, and
finally peaking with the brain's...
Friday the 3rd
 The News Briefs section in the May 1967
issue of Radio-Electronics magazine carried a few noteworthy items. The
biggest happening in my book is an increasing manufacturing and use of
solid state laser devices (I didn't know they had been around that early). It
had not been very long ago that lasers consisted of rather bulky assemblies with
high voltage power supplies and arrays of mirrors and lenses. The state of the art
has progressed significantly since then to the point that laser diodes cost pennies
apiece and are far higher quality than the one shown here. A public cry about the
cost of television servicing - an average of $8.95 (B&W)...
 It might not surprise you that "Classic
Radio" is
my favorite column in the ARRL's QST magazine. The January 2025 issue
has an article entitled. "Building
a 1965 Heathkit SSB Transceiver Kit in the 21st Century," (p98) wherein author
Scott Freeberg (WA9WFA) describes how he re-kitted a vintage HW-12 radio - and its
external power supply - which had been built decades ago. He totally unsoldered
and unassembled every component, then cleaned, repaired, and replaced parts as required.
He even placed everything into envelopes, boxes, and bags as would likely have been
the case when originally shipped from Heathkit's warehouse. Unfortunately, you need
to log in to see it, or borrow a copy of QST from a Ham friend.
 The claim of a "non-conducting metal sheet"
as a substrate for
drawing electronic circuit traces seemed suspicious, so I did a search for non-conducting
or at least low conductivity metal, and there is no such thing. The advertisement
says components can be soldered directly to the board without effecting a connection.
Even low conductivity metals to which solder will adhere are good enough electrical
conductors to prevent components from being attached on a common surface without
significant conduction (i.e., short circuits) between them. A pen with conductive
ink...
 I
saw this image on the Gab website. It originated on "The
Ultimate Eighties" page on Facebook, so I linked to there. Isn't that amazingly
clever? It's probably a good guess that the person responsible is not a DEI college
graduate with a degree in <fill in the blank> Studies. The order of the exit
spectrum is correct, with red bent the least and blue bent the most. There may also
be a string of infrared lights at the very top and a string of ultraviolet lights
at the very bottom, but if so, I can't see them :-) A search for similarly
technology-themed Christmas light display did not turn up much - not even this one.
 Battery technology experienced a major technology
evolution in the late 1950s similar to the one that took place in the late 1990s.
Prior to the 50s, most common portable batteries were of the carbon-zinc type and
were not rechargeable. Nickel cadmium (NiCad) cells existed, but were not in widespread
use largely because little was known about the chemistry and how it responded to
various charge and discharge cycles. Mercury, NiCad, NiMH, alkaline-manganese, began
gaining popularity in applications requiring longer battery life and more consistent
discharge characteristics. In the 2000s, LiPo and LiIon underwent a similar evolution.
Still, all the aforementioned battery types are in use today, so this Electronics
World magazine...
• 7
Troubling Tech Trends of 2024
• Private
5G Going Mainstream in 2025?
• Canadian
Startup Strengthens Supply Chain
• ARRL
Kids Day - January 4, 2025
• Wolfspeed Wins
$750M Chips Act Award
Thursday the 2nd
 If I told you I just learned that there
exists an ionized region of the upper atmosphere which affects electromagnetic waves,
and is modulated in intensity and size by activity on the sun, you would understandably
respond with something like, "Where have you been. Tell me something we haven't
known for half a century." Sure, but in 1960 when this "Ionized
Band Encircles the Earth" article was printed in Radio-Electronics
magazine, it was news to most people. The presence of an ionosphere had been theorized
and shown to be existent based on ground-based experiments beginning a few decades
earlier, but it was not until the IGY space...
 "On 18 February 2024, a missile attack from
the Houthi militants in Yemen hit the cargo ship Rubymar in the Red Sea. With the
crew evacuated, the disabled ship would take weeks to finally sink, becoming an
symbol for the security of the global Internet in the process. Before it went down,
the ship dragged its anchor behind it over an estimated 70 kilometers. The meandering
anchor wound up severing three fiber-optic cables across the Red Sea floor, which
carried about a quarter of all the Internet traffic between Europe and Asia. Data
transmissions had to be rerouted as system engineers realized the cables had been
damaged. The world's
submarine fiber-optic
lines carry more than 95 percent of intercontinental Internet communications.
These tiny, drawn-out strands of glass fiber..."
 The April 1933 issue of the American Radio
Relay League's monthly publication QST (Q-code for "general call to all
stations") was
chock full
of gags, much to the delight of readers based on subsequent letters to the editor.
The editors must have felt a need to alert readers that some of the material was
not to be taken seriously since the Table of Contents lists them as being in the
"April Fool Section." I have posted a few of them. As with so many of these vintage
articles, being privy to the customs and equipment of the era is essential to "getting"
the joke. I will refrain from spoiling these, but if you need some insight from
an old guy...
 The basics of
power transistor specification and selection have not changed much since they
became widely commercially available in the 1960s. Although available package shapes,
power handling, cutoff frequencies, and other parameter options have been greatly
expanded, still the most important aspect is not just selecting a power transistor
but properly mounting it to ensure that the rated heat dissipation capacity will
be realized. That can mean thermal grease, a heat sink, a fan, and even ducting
or water cooling. This 1963 Electronics World magazine article touches
on some of those considerations and how to effectively deal with them...
Wednesday the 1st
 When this "MOSFETs
- What They Are and How They Work" article came out in a 1969 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine, the devices were fairly new on the component scene, and most people had
no idea what they were or how they worked. For that matter semiconductors were still
an enigma to many electronics enthusiasts who were not also engineers or technicians.
Mr. Tom Haskett endeavored to do something about that. MOSFET, most people
by now know, stands for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor. It differs
significantly from a standard junctions type transistor (PNP or NPN)...
 "Would the Citizens Broadband Radio Service
(CBRS) industry consider moving from the
3.5 GHz to the 3.1-3.3 GHz portion of the band, as AT&T has suggested it
do? That's a hard no for the foreseeable future, according to Stephen Rayment, president
of the OnGo Alliance. And no, he's not entertaining questions about how much money
it would take to get them to change their mind. 'It would be like telling the Wi-Fi
guys they've got to move out of 5 GHz. You can imagine what their reaction to that
would be,' Rayment told Fierce. 'I think we have the same reaction.' The alliance's
take on AT&T's proposal is important as OnGo is the single bigges..."
 Has it really been 25 years? The Y2K (aka
the "Millennium Bug") era refers to the period leading up to the year 2000, when
many computer systems were at risk of failure due to a programming flaw. The problem
arose because many computer systems used two-digit codes to represent years, with
the assumption that the first two digits were always "19." This meant that when
the year 2000 arrived, these systems would interpret the year 2000 as "00," potentially
leading to errors and system crashes. I vividly recall the few years leading up
to Y2K, as the concern rose to a panic level. People were abandoning their homes
in the city and moving to the mountains, prairies, and desert in order to avoid
the certain apocalypse when the entire world's systems of money, utilities, transportation,
health care...
 Here for the first day of the new year are
three
electronics-themed comics from vintage issues of Electronics World
and Popular Electronics magazines. My favorite is the page 84 comic where
the sign on the Telco Rectifier Components president's wall is apropos. Maybe one
of the interview questions for job applicants was #1: "Did you notice the sign on
the wall in the waiting room," and #2: "Did you 'get it?,' and please explain."
In 1956 when that comic appeared, AC-to-DC power supplies used high voltage vacuum
tubes, typically 300 volts or more. Hefty capacitors were needed to remove
enough ripple from the "top" of the DC to render it undetectable...
These archive pages are provided in order to make it easier for you to find items
that you remember seeing on the RF Cafe homepage. Of course probably the easiest
way to find anything on the website is to use the "Search
RF Cafe" box at the top of every page.
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