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 In 1964, when these
electronics-themed
comics appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine, the world was still
in the process of adopting FM radio after decades of owning AM radios. Radio repair
shops could install conversion kits in many models of radios (still of the vacuum
tube variety, mostly). For that matter in the early days of color TV, conversion
kits were available enable pseudo-color from black-and-white (B&W) sets, using
a spinning color wheel. This was in the pre-throw-away era when it might have been
cheaper to get something repaired or modified than to buy a new model. I grew up
toward the end of that era (born 1958). Anyway, the comic from page 58 pokes a bit
of fun at the extremes some people expected. The page 94 comic reflect the expectation
of soon-to-be-available wrist watches that ran on precision crystals rather than
on a much less consistent spring and escapement mechanism. The Hamilton Pulsar,
the world's first electronic watch
 IMHO, the
future for sustainable
electric power is nuclear, not solar and wind. IEEE Spectrum (and maybe
Australia) seems to agree. "A day after the United States Senate passed legislation
on 18 June to develop advanced nuclear technologies, in Australia, opposition leader
Peter Dutton promised, if elected, to build seven nuclear plants along the coasts
of the island continent. The U.S. legislation passed with a vote of 82-2, but Dutton's
proposal brought forth fierce dispute from both federal and state governments, as
well as energy experts and supporters of green energy. Though Australia has the
world's largest deposits of uranium, it doesn't have any nuclear plants for electricity
generation. In fact, its federal and state laws prohibit their construction. What's
more, the regional governments of the five states Dutton has earmarked for nuclear
plant constructions have all rejected the plan. Several state leaders cited the
high costs involved in establishing a nuclear program from zero..."
 With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils available
for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings! Every stencil symbol
has been built to fit proportionally on the included A-, B-, and C-size drawing
page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components are provided for
system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment, racks, and
more. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good presentation
that can incorporate all provided symbols...
 Crane Aerospace & Electronics, a segment
of Crane Company, has launched mmW-IMA, a family of microwave assembly products.
Crane A&E has a strong heritage of delivering proven high performance microwave
solutions for over 65 years. Crane A&E's mmW-IMA product family supports
2-18 and 18-40 GHz converters and synthesizers with frequency outputs from
0.5 to 22 GHz and 29/43.56 GHz. These products are SOSA aligned in 3U
VPX chassis while exhibiting superior SWaP performance and are designed to support
rapidly growing EW, mmWave, space and other defense applications. The mmW-IMA product
line is available as EAR99 to support our international customers' needs and can
be modified to suit specific customer requirements. "Building on our strong heritage,
Crane A&E is introducing a new line of EW/mmWave and space products designed...
 This thumbnail image of a
Atwater Kent Model 776 Automobile Radio is from the AtwaterKentRadio.com website.
You can see from the picture that the entire radio was contained in a single chassis,
unlike many models of the day that had the bulky RF electronics mounted behind the
dashboard or under a seat, and the listener interface controls mounted separately
in the dashboard. Below is the Radio Service Data Sheet as it appeared in a 1936
issue of Radio-Craft magazine. It was one of six such documents that appeared
- without any description or alignment information included as is normal with the
individual, full page data sheets...
 Anyone who has lived in an area where the
humidity gets so low that getting an
electrostatic discharge jolt when touching a doorknob or or other isolated metallic
object, will appreciate Mac McGregor's discussion with Barney. Appropriately, it
appeared in a February issue of Popular Electronics magazine, the setting
being Mac's Service Shop's Midwestern location - a prime environment for receiving
the annoying zaps. It is a timeless subject for anyone routinely subject to exposed
high voltages of any sort - some being more dangerous than others. Most RF Cafe
visitors already know that technically, it is the amount of electric current through
the body that determines severity of electric shock, not the voltage. However...
 Unlike with the Mac's Service Shop episodes
that typically were published in monthly issues that temporally jived with the story
setting, the
Carl & Jerry plots did not necessarily correspond with the month in which
they appeared. For example, the February 1973 "Electrostatics at Work" story begins,
"The sparkling cold winter morning lifted the heart but numbed the fingers as Barney
sprinted quickly over the squeaking snow from his car to the service shop." To wit,
this "How to Haunt a House" story appeared in the February edition of Popular
Electronics magazine. I saved it for Halloween. As always, author John Frye
mixes technical descriptions with the storyline to lend credibility to the teens'
escapades. Modern teenagers...
 At the time of this "News Briefs" feature
in a 1964 Radio-Electronics magazine, satellites were a relatively new
phenomenon. Tiros VIII was already, as the nomenclature implies, the eighth
in the series of ten so-named weather satellites. Tiros, BTW, stands for
Television Infrared Observation Satellites. Tiros VIII was the first to
broadcast images to widely dispersed ground stations that used them for preparing
local forecasts and reports. It was the beginning of the live satellite images on
TV era. In other news, a new type scanning electron microscope was revealed by Westinghouse
which could produce images only 15 millionths of an inch in less than a second.
A gas laser triode was announced by Bell Telephone Laboratories, whose output could
be modulated by a control grid. This was a first step...
 "Positioned between microwaves and infrared
light, terahertz waves are key to pioneering advancements in imaging and diagnostic
technologies. A recent discovery at Tohoku University of a material that can emit
these waves more intensely promises to catalyze significant breakthroughs across
a spectrum of industries. Terahertz waves are being intensely studied by researchers
around the world seeking to understand the 'terahertz
gap.' Terahertz waves have a specific frequency that put them somewhere between
microwaves and infrared light..."
 Anyone other than a complete novice (Ham
pun intended) at radio and antenna work is familiar with the basics types of
directional antennas presented here. However, the universe of people knowledgeable
about such things was very small in 1935, when this article appeared in Short
Wave Craft magazine. An effort to educate operators and designers was really
just beginning. The ½-wave dipoles shown here for the transmitter are somewhat directional
at 2 dBi, and full-wave square loop antennas for receiving have a gain of around
3 dBi. However, the most significant direction-finding feature of a loop antenna
is the comparatively deep null in its radiation pattern in the plane of the wire.
That explains why direction-finding equipment, such as those on aircraft, typically
use a loop antenna. When maximum precision is needed, Yagi, log periodic, parabolic
dish, or other high gain antennas will be used...
 This looks like something from a 1970s issue
of Popular Science magazine. "Imagine it's 2050 and you're on a cross-country
flight on a new type of airliner, one with no fuel on board. The plane takes off,
and you rise above the airport. Instead of climbing to cruising altitude, though,
your plane levels out and the engines quiet to a low hum. Is this normal? No one
seems to know. Anxious passengers crane their necks to get a better view out their
windows. They're all looking for one thing. Then it appears: a
massive antenna array
on the horizon. It's sending out a powerful beam of electromagnetic radiation pointed
at the underside of the plane..."
 David Goins, founder of and chief engineer
for Windfreak Technologies, has written a number of application notes pertaining
to the specification and testing of RF and microwave frequency signal generators.
His "Antenna
Beam Steering" article summarizes how RF signal generators can be an easy tool
used to start testing and understanding concepts of phased array antennas and beam
steering. Specifically, the SynthHD and SynthHD Pro RF signal generators have dual
independent channels that allow independent control of frequency, phase and amplitude
on each channel (0.01°, 100 μs switching time). If both channels are set to
the same frequency, the phase can be adjusted in fine steps across a full 360 degrees...
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of RF Cafe's long-running
series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have never used a spreadsheet
quite like this (click
here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system cascade parameter
and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere $45. Built in
MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook is a cinch and the format
is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than using a multi-thousand
dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all that is needed...
 "It's a
dark time for the telecom industry. 5G hasn't provided the ROI that everyone
needs. Layoffs are occurring across the board, and Samsung is the latest vendor
to reconfigure who's doing what. Samsung Electronics is cutting jobs in its network
division, shifting about 700 people out of its 4,000-employee network group and
into other departments, according to media reports. The move, made June 17 and reported
last week in Business Korea, is in response to the cyclical nature of the global
telecom market, which is going though a '5G winter' period that affects the entire
industry. The slowdown in 5G spending is pretty well understood across the industry
as operators shift into lower gear on the 5G deployment front..."
 Decades from now, readers will look back
at today's science magazines reporting on topics such as breakthroughs on quantum
computing and
quantum entanglement the way we now look back at articles from the middle to
latter half of the last century, and be amazed at how the understanding and exploitation
of various technologies was just getting started. This particular 1963 piece in
Electronics World magazine on quantum device is not at all related to the
two aforementioned topics; rather, it introduces the concept of discrete (quantum)
energy levels of atomic electronic orbitals and how they determine photon absorption
and emission. It is a good introduction to or refresher of the phenomenon that relates
photon energy to its wavelength via Planck's constant...
 This Radio Service Data Sheet from a 1936
issue of Radio-Craft magazine covers the
Philco Model 59, 4-tube AC Midget superheterodyne receiver. Evidently there
were at least three versions of this, a tabletop radio, a compact tabletop model
(59C), and an "Owl's Eye" model (59S). I'm not sure what the difference is. Most
- if not all - electronics servicemen had subscriptions to these magazines because
they were a ready source of not just these service sheets, but because of the extensive
articles offering advice on servicing radios and televisions. In fact, many electronics
manufacturers had a policy of supplying service data only to bona fide shops. A
large list is included at the bottom of the page of similar documents from vintage
receiver schematics, troubleshooting tips, and alignment procedures. They were originally
published in magazines...
 The
Lightning Protection Institute (LPI) has been around for a long time; in fact,
it might have been informally founded by Benjamin Franklin ;-) Last year while working
on an installation plan for a friend's solar panel array and equipment room, I found
lots of useful info on the LPI website for best practices of lightning protection.
I was surprised to learn that there was still disagreement among experts as to whether
a raised, grounded surface like the metal roof onto which the photovoltaic (PV)
arrays are mounted tended to reduce or increase the likelihood of a lightning strike.
There are good theoretical arguments on both sides. I tend to think the raised,
broad surface decreases the cloud-to-ground potential and disperses the charge across
a larger area, thus reducing chance of a strike. There is also disagreement whether
the ground for the PV array should be physically connected to the ground...
 It is the opinion of many historians that
in order to better understand the present, you need to know the past. Searching
for one's roots in this world is big business. Online family tree type websites
are used by thousands of people to research their family histories, and some services
don't come cheap. You can even pay someone to dig into your past to assimilate all
available information and put it in a bound, printed volume. Here on RF Cafe, I
research and post a lot of our profession's past. While the individual topics themselves
might not bear significantly on the present, having an insight into the people's
mindsets and progression of technology is - or should be - motivating. No, most
modern televisions
do not process analog signals, use a CRT, have vertical and horizontal hold
adjustments, but then not too far in the future most televisions won't be much like
they are now...
 Here is a type of chart I don't recall seeing
before. This
Tolerance Calculator Graph makes it very easy to quickly determine the upper
and lower extremes of tolerance values for resistors, capacitors, inductors, etc.
It was published in a 1963 issue of Electronics World magazine, and can
actually be used to find the limits for any number, regardless of units. This is
one example of where a physical visual aid can still yield results faster than punching
numbers into a calculator, if a number with just a couple significant figures of
precision is sufficient...
 This is the
electronics market prediction for Denmark, circa 1966. It was part of a comprehensive
assessment by the editors of Electronics magazine of the state of commercial,
military, and consumer electronics at the end of 1965. Unless you can find a news
story on the state of the industry, detailed reports must be purchased from research
companies like Statista. Their website has a lot of charts on Denmark's current
electronics market showing revenue in the consumer electronics segment amounts of
US$1,020 million in 2018...
 One aspect of advertising on the RF Cafe
website I have not covered is using
Google AdSense.
The reason is that I never took the time to explore how - or even whether it is
possible - to target a specific website for displaying your banner ads. A couple
display opportunities have always been provided for Google Ads to display, but the
vast majority of advertising on RF Cafe is done via private advertisers. That is,
companies deal with me directly and I handle inserting their banner ads into the
html page code that randomly selects and displays them. My advertising scheme is
what the industry refers to as a "Tenancy Campaign," whereby a flat price per month
is paid regardless of number of impressions or clicks. It is the simplest format
and has seemed to work well for many companies. With nearly 4 million pageviews
per year for RFCafe.com, the average impression rate per banner ad is about 280k
per year (in eight locations on each page, with >17k pages)...
 In 1967, when this National Radio Institute
(NRI) advertisement appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine, allowing
tattoos to be visible on people representing a company's interest was almost
never done. Harley Davidson might have allowed it, or maybe Old Spice after shave
lotion, but certainly not typical from an educational establishment pitching electronics
instruction. The dude in this ad has a clearly, intentionally visible "tat" on his
right arm. It is no accident because the shirt sleeves are rolled up when they don't
need to be, and the right sleeve is up twice as far as the left sleeve. The photographers
wanted readers to see it. My interpretation of it is "D. S.," and then some illegible
character at the end (maybe "jr"). Any guesses as to what it might be?
 You just never know when your number is
going to be called. People who engage in a dangerous activity they love often claim
that if they are going to die in an accident, it would preferably be while engaging
in that activity. It really sucks to die like Army-Air Force Lt. Henry B. Harris
who was an accomplished instrument flight research pilot (and noted
Ham radio operator). Rather
than expiring in an airplane, he met his end as a passenger in a car that was towing
some other pilot in a glider. The story is told in the August 1934 issue of the
ARRL's QST magazine...
 James Clerk Maxwell's inception of the theory
of electromagnetic radiation is compared in this 1930 Radio-Craft magazine
article to if Christopher Columbus had conceptualized the existence of America and
mapped its features based solely on observations of how the known oceans and land
masses interacted. I have always been amazed at the ability of people who formulate
entirely new theories of science, finance, medicine, etc., and manage to detail
and support their ideas with hard data and mathematics. Einstein did so with relativity,
Dalton did so with atomic structure, Darwin did so with evolution, Pasteur did so
with germ theory; the list is long. There are lots of geniuses out there, but a
relative few change the world...
 "Chinese scientists say they have developed
a groundbreaking material that could
give storage chips an almost infinite lifespan. This new type of ferroelectric
material could potentially reduce data center costs and have applications in deep-sea
exploration or aerospace in the future. Ferroelectric materials are commonly used
to make chips for storage and sensing purposes that are critical to artificial intelligence
and other hi-tech areas hit by U.S. sanctions, as a tech war plays out between the
United States and China..."
 Withwave's
Non-Magnetic Coaxial Connectors are widely used in applications that experience
strong magnetic field can cause interference or introduce errors such as quantum
computing, magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) equipment, the aerospace industry. Constructed
of beryllium copper (BeCu) and plating, they features a DC to 40 GHz frequency range
and are available in various interface sizes. Applications include quantum computing
, military & space, and medical devices (MRI). Withwave is a leading designer
and developer of a broad range of RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave test solutions
and subsystems with a focus on electromagnetic field...
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of RF Cafe's long-running
series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have never used a spreadsheet
quite like this (click
here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system cascade parameter
and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere $45. Built in
MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook is a cinch and the format
is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than using a multi-thousand
dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all that is needed...
 The newest addition to RF Cafe's spreadsheet
(Excel) based engineering and science calculator -
Espresso
Engineering Workbook™ (click to download) is a functional Smith Chart that plots
a series of user-defined impedance points. RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook™
is provided at no cost, compliments of my generous sponsors. The original calculators
are included, but with a vastly expanded and improved user interface. Error-trapped
user input cells help prevent entry of invalid values. An extensive use of Visual
Basic for Applications functions now do most of the heavy lifting with calculations,
and facilitates a wide user-selectable choice of units for voltage, frequency, speed,
temperature, power, wavelength, weight, etc. In fact, a full page of units conversion
calculators is included. A particularly handy feature is the ability to specify
the the number of significant digits to display. Drop-down menus are provided for
convenience...
 This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, Baseball Caps, and more, all sporting my amazingly clever "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design. These would make excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids,
significant others, and for handing out at company events or as rewards for excellent
service. My graphic has been ripped off by other people and used on their products,
so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. I only make a couple bucks
on each sale - the rest goes to Cafe Press. It's a great way to help support RF
Cafe. Thanks...
|
 "Unfortunately,
good technical ability and good business ability do not always grow naturally
on the same figurative tree." That line by "Mac," (Mac McGregor) is all too true
for lot of us, and I definitely include myself as part of "us." I have often paraphrased
the line by Dr. McCoy on Star Trek as, "Dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a salesman."
Part of the reason RF Cafe has pretty much remained at the same level of income
over the years is due to my unwillingness to make performance guarantees to anyone
in return for pay - other than to not do anything intentional that will harm them.
My advertisers choose to do so based on RF Cafe's reputation for unbiased (mostly)
presentation of information and abstention from the form of political correctness
that sacrifices efforts of hard working people to spare the fragile feelings of
slothful ad/or insidious and/or jealous actors. More than one accomplished businessman
has advised me that being more aggressive would pay big dividends...
 Prior to the advent of high power microwave
transmitters like the kind used in radar systems, not a lot of research was put
into how exposure by the general public to the radio waves might affect health and
well being. There was plenty of experimentation and development regarding use of
electromagnetic energy for medical and industrial purposes, but those applications
were within isolated areas with controlled access of personnel. This "Radio
Waves & Life" article in a 1960 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine
reported on the relatively new science. Little did the author know that half a century
later, human exposure to radio waves, particularly in the cellular and WiFi bands,
would be the subject of intense scrutiny. He would probably also be shocked to learn
that in early 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services' National Toxicology
Program (NTP) cancelled any further investigations into radiation exposure...
 After World War II had been won, the
War Assets Administration made good on the government's promise to reward citizens
for performing their patriotic civil duty whereby they participated in the collection
of recyclable material made of plastic, glass, rubber, metal, and cloth. Magazines
and newspapers had frequent coverage of bottle, metal, and tire drives showing children
pulling Radio Flyer wagons loaded to overflowing with such items gathered from trash
piles and soliciting neighborhood residents for anything that could be spared. Waste
of precious resources was a thing of shame. "Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do,
or Do without" was the slogan de jour. Ham radio operators contributed mightily
to the war effort by donating and/or selling meters, tubes, transformers...
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF &
Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols"" that works well with Microsoft
Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™. This is an equivalent of the extensive
set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch, connector, waveguide, digital, analog,
antenna, and other commonly used symbols for system block diagrams and schematics
created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000+ symbols was exported individually from Visio
in the EMF file format, then imported into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format
allows an image to be scaled up or down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes
can be resized in a document and still look good. The imported symbols can also
be UnGrouped into their original constituent parts for editing...
 When Radio-Electronics magazine
owner-editor Hugo Gernsback wrote this
Interstellar Communications article in 1960, his mention of "hundreds of billions
of stars flung throughout the vastness of space" with "hundreds of millions of planets
similar to our own earth which orbit around stars like our own sun" was based on
a known universe significantly smaller than the one we now know. Once the Hubble
Space Telescope's optics were corrected in 1993, our view of the universe grew by
many orders of magnitude. Earth-based and space-based telescopes have improved significantly
since then, especially their cameras, along with post-processing of images, to where
the extents of our observable universe extends to nearly the edge of the Big Bang.
Additionally, whereas no exoplanets had been observed in 1960, a few thousand are
now documented, many of which are considered "Goldilocks Planets," believed to have
Earth-like environments. Regarding intelligent, sentient...
 Withwave is a leading designer and developer
of a broad range of RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave test solutions and subsystems
with a focus on electromagnetic field analysis and signal processing. Withwave's
High-Speed, High-Density Multicoax Cable Assemblies (WMX series) provides
a wide range of multiple coax connectors and flexible cable assemblies with a choice
of 20, 40, 50, 67 & 100 GHz configurations based on precisions and superior
high frequency cabling solutions. Vertical Mount and Edge Mount options. The WMX
series is an excellent signal integrity solution for bench-top and automated test
equipment to meet increasing demands of the semiconductor and optical test industries...
 Banner Ads are rotated in all locations
on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each
weekday. RF Cafe
is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world.
With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in
favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images.
Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 280,000 times per year! New content
is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough
to spider it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found
in a Google search within a few hours of being posted. If you need your company
news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...
 We tend to take for granted "standards"
that have been in place and working well ever since they were instituted long ago.
Some - maybe most - standards evolve over time with user preferences driving the
end result; they tend to continue evolving. Examples include keyboard layout, advertising
and product color selection, and test instrument front panel configurations. Other
standards are driven by technology improvements. More and more often it seems, standards
are being set by industry groups that want to assure interoperability and exchangeability
amongst products and users. Often this kind of standard is driven by government
imposed regulations. Wireless communications is a prime instance of the latter.
This article is an example of a combination of standards motivators since it considers
user experience preferences with scientific research to determine how best to implement
a radio tuning dial. This was done nearly a century ago when a large...
 Werbel Microwave's WM2PD-0.5-18-S is a
wideband 2-way in-line power splitter covering the continuous bandwidth of 500 MHz
to 18 GHz in a compact enclosure measuring 4.75 x 1.00 x 0.50 inches.
The device is RoHS compliant but may be ordered specially with lead solder for military
applications. The wide bandwidth covers many of the military radio letter octave
bands in one unit. High isolation between outputs of 20 dB typical. Connectors
are stainless steel for high durability. One product covers the upper band of UHF,
L-band, S-band, C band, X-band and Ku-band. Our unique design, assembled and tested
in USA...
 Amplifier Solutions Corporation (ASC) is
a manufacturer of amplifiers for commercial & military markets. ASC designs
and manufactures hybrid, surface mount flange, open carrier and connectorized amplifiers
for low, medium and high power applications using Gallium Nitride (GaN), Gallium
Arsenide (GaAs) and Silicon (Si) transistor technologies. ASC's thick film designs
operate in the frequency range of 300 kHz to 6 GHz. ASC offers thin film
designs that operate up to 20 GHz. ASC is located in an 8,000 sq.ft. facility
in the town of Telford, PA. We offer excellent customer support and take pride in
the ability to quickly react to evolving system design requirements.
With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils available
for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings! Every stencil symbol
has been built to fit proportionally on the included A-, B-, and C-size drawing
page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components are provided for
system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment, racks, and
more. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good presentation
that can incorporate all provided symbols...
 If today's electronics magazines had
comics in them (which they generally do not), the themes might often include
people glued to their cellphones, monster size flat screen TVs, sentient "smart"
devices in every realm of existence, etc. In the 1960s when these three comics appeared
in Radio-Electronics magazine, amongst the most popular topics were television
repair scenarios (griping about charges, owners trying to fix their own sets, frustration
at malfunctioning sets), sophisticated stereo equipment, women's lack of understanding
about electronic things, and TV antenna installations. Being very familiar with
trends from the early days of electronics up through today, I can usually "get"
what's happening in the comics, but sometimes I'm left wondering. The page 98 and
page 112 comics are obvious enough. My guess is the gag on the page 129 comic is
not just that the repairman is waylaid with having to repair all those TVs, but
that the manager wanted to only pay for one on-site service charge. See the huge
list of comics at the bottom for other examples.
 Although you wouldn't know it from the title,
this is actually another of John T. Frye's "Mac's Radio Service Shop" stories.
MPATI stands for "Midwest
Program on Airborne Television Instruction," and was a pre-satellite-era system
for broadcasting educational programming to areas that otherwise did not experience
good quality over-the-air reception. It appeared in the May 1963 issue of Electronics
World magazine. DC-6 airplanes were outfitted with a transmitter and a hydraulically
stabilized antenna, and would fly for many hours at a time to provide rural areas
with classroom instruction via TV. Purdue University, in Indiana, played a key role
in the program. MPATI is a obvious spin-off of the Stratovision system experimented
with by Westinghouse Electric Corporation and The Glenn L. Martin Company in the
mid 1940s...
 Mr. Lothar Stern, of Motorola Semi, published
a 3-part series on
transistor theory in Popular Electronics magazine in 1973. This is
part 3. Part 1 introduced the basics of the bipolar transistor, and Part
2 addressed transistor circuit configurations - common emitter, common gate, common
collector, Darlington, differential - as well as presenting gain equations and delving
a bit into the physical construction of the semiconductor elements. Finally, the
author talks about the newest processes in use at the time and what was available
for low power and high power RF applications. In 1973, high power semiconductors
were just pushing past the 100 MHz barrier. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium
nitride (GaN) were still in university and corporate laboratories being prepared...
 The 1990 edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac
(OFA) had a pretty good set of "Old and
New Mathematical Puzzles." Up until around the late 1960s, some of the puzzles
were very esoteric, often requiring one be privy to certain standards or norms.
Some were downright weird. Beginning around 2005, the OFA editors sometimes omitted
the puzzles altogether or only included simple ones, so as not to harm anyone's
feelings if he/she couldn't figure it out (seriously). Puzzles are rated for difficulty
levels 1 through 5, with 5 being the hardest. Solutions are provided for up through
difficulty level 4. Sometimes, difficulty level 5 problems are harder because they
require a lot of guesses and iterations to arrive at a solution...
 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
the
Exodus Model AMP2030D-LC, ideal for broadband EMI-Lab, Comm. and EW applications.
Class A/AB linear design for all modulations & industry standards. Covers 1.0
to 6.0 GHz, producing 600 W minimum, 400 W P1dB and 58 dB minimum
gain. Excellent flatness, optional monitoring parameters for Forward/Reflected power,
VSWR, voltage, current and temperature sensing for superb reliability and ruggedness.
Integrated in our compact 10U chassis weighing approximately 50 kg...
Banner Ads are rotated in all locations
on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each
weekday. RF Cafe
is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world.
With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in
favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images.
Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 280,000 times per year! New content
is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough
to spider it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found
in a Google search within a few hours of being posted. If you need your company
news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...
 Parts 1 and 2 of this series covered the
theory of nuclear physics and laboratory investigation devices. This final installation
talks about commercially available test instruments for detecting and measuring
nuclear radiation levels. My introduction to
Geiger counters was in the old The Adventures of Superman television show where
they were used by villains to verify that their stash of Kryptonite would be sufficient
to disable our superhero. I could not find anywhere whether Kryptonite's emission
type is alpha particles (helium nucleus; i.e., 2 protons and 2 neutrons), beta particles
(electron), gamma rays (electromagnetic waves), or some other form. Multiple designs
of detectors are used based on radiation type and strength to be measured...
 Transcat | Axiom Test Equipment, an electronic
test equipment rental company has published a new blog post that covers how
thermal imagers can be used to detect temperature overloads in electrical and
mechanical equipment, and what to look for when selecting the one for your project.
Electronic performance is affected by temperature, with heat sources inside and
outside a device or system. High-power amplifiers exhibit rises in temperature from
the heat of semiconductors and must be equipped with cooling for safety and longevity.
Other electronic designs can suffer performance degradations when placed too close
to heat sources or even when exposed to sunlight. Fortunately, the temperatures
of electronic equipment can be measured quickly and accurately without making physical
contact, with the aid of IR...
 With more than 1000
custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Symbols available
for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings! Every object has
been built to fit proportionally on the provided A-, B- and C-size drawing page
templates (or can use your own). Symbols are provided for equipment racks and test
equipment, system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, and schematics. Unlike previous
versions, these are NOT Stencils, but instead are all contained on tabbed pages
within a single Visio document. That puts everything in front of you in its full
glory. Just copy and paste what you need on your drawing...
 Seeing a reader name of Qutaiba Bassim El-Dhuwaib
would not seem unusual in one of today's technical magazines, but having it appear
in a 1964 issue of Radio-Electronics was definitely a rarity. Such was
the case with this first "Black
Box" circuit challenge submitted by the aforementioned subscriber. I took a
WAG at the answer and got it right, but without considering the theory behind it.
Fortunately, Mr. El-Dhuwaib provides that gory detail for us. It is a pretty clever
scheme for effecting a phase shift while not affecting the magnitude. The second
mystery circuit requires being familiar with types of meter movements commonly used
in DC and AC voltmeters. Having begun in the craft prior to the advent of digital
multimeters (that includes me) helps. Such circuits were probably more intuitive
to designers in the days of analog...
 Back in May, the American Radio Relay League
(ARRL), the world's largest amateur radio organization, reported a
major service
disruption. Not a lot of information has been divulged, but it appears to involve
member and processing information. Even the phone system was down for a while. Several
services, such as Logbook of The World® and the ARRL Learning Center, were affected,
as well as mailing of hard-copy magazine editions (which indicates member addresses
might have been involved). Per the ARRL:
"On or around May 12, 2024, ARRL was the victim of a sophisticated network attack
by a malicious international cyber group. ARRL immediately involved the FBI and
engaged with third party experts to investigate. This serious incident was extensive
and categorized by the FBI as “unique,” compromising network devices, servers, cloud-based
systems, and PCs. ARRL management quickly established an incident response team.
This has led to an extensive effort to contain and remediate the networks, restore
servers, and staff are beginning the testing of applications and interfaces to ensure
proper operation."
 In
CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous
Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course
of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, --
That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness...
 "Researchers have successfully manipulated
the structural properties of magnetite using
light-induced phase transitions. This technique uncovered hidden phases of magnetite,
paving the way for new approaches to material manipulation in electronics. 'Some
time ago, we showed that it is possible to induce an inverse phase transition in
magnetite,' says physicist Fabrizio Carbone at EPFL. 'It's as if you took water
and you could turn it into ice by putting energy into it with a laser. This is counterintuitive
as normally to freeze water you cool it down, i.e. remove energy from it.' The study
discovered that using specific light wavelengths for photoexcitation the system
can drive magnetite..."
 TEMWELL Corporation is a worldwide expert
and company in designing & manufacturing RF helical bandpass filters since 1994.
For
the entire month of July, you will receive a discount of 50% off all filters!
We have designed and built up over 5000 completed spec sheets online for displaying
all our excellent capability. Furthermore, in order to satisfy more RF engineers
and develop projects all over the world, our engineers have designed diplexers and
duplexers for 5G, VHF, UHF, TETRA cavity duplexers, helix cavity diplexers, LTE
low PIM diplexers, and coaxial duplexers ...
 When I think of the
first space station, what comes to mind is the Russian Salyut 1 (c1971),
and then America's Skylab (c1973). This "News Briefs" feature in the December 1960
issue of Radio-Electronics magazine claims there was an earlier space station
- the Courier. OK, NASA might have called it a space station, but it wasn't a manned
space station like the aforementioned were. It launched in early October of that
year. Courier 1B (its full designation) was the world's first active repeater
satellite, which could receive a message (text, image, voice, or data), store it,
then transmit it later. A few details regarding its operation are provided. Also
in the news was research into using "ball lightning" as a weapon. That's right,
shoot a ball of searing hot plasma toward the enemy to obliterate it - or at least
scare the bejeebers...
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