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Today in Science History -
 Since 1961, MECA Electronics
has designed and manufactured an extensive line of
RF & microwave
components for in-building, satellite, radar, radio, telemetry, mobile radio, aviation &
ATC. Attenuators, directional & hybrid couplers, isolators & circulators, power
dividers & combiners, loads, DC blocks, bias-Ts and adapters & cables. MECA has
long been the 'backbone' of high performance wired and air-interfaced networks such as
in-building applications, satellite communications, radar, radio communications, telemetry
applications, mobile radio, aviation & air traffic communications ...
 Most of us
here in America recognize the
Packard Bell name from the line of personal computers they sold in the 1980s and
1990s. I owned three of them, beginning with an Intel 80286 model, then an 80486, and
finally a Pentium model. They were in the "pizza box" format that sat on the desk with
the CRT monitor on top; I always preferred that configuration over the tower type. Before
Packard Bell made personal computers, they made personal radios for the desktop beginning
back in the 1930s. That explains why Mr. J.T. Goode, an engineer with Packard Bell, would
write an article in 1947 regarding a method to tune antennas using light bulbs
...
 Be sure to check in on Monday, November 26th,
at around 3:00 pm EST to watch the "live" landing of NASA's InSight
(Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat
Transport) probe on Mars. "Live," of course, is a relative thing when the telecast
is coming from Mars. The physical distance to Mars will be a little more than 89 million
miles away, which corresponds to just tad under 8 minutes for radio waves, so we won't
know how the landing went until that long after the event really occurs. NASA controllers
will still have their usual "7 minutes of
terror" as with Curiosity. InSight will use a combination of old-fashioned rigid,
spring-loaded legs (a la
Viking landers) and a modern automated rocket descent. I'll post
this again on Monday as a reminder.
 Empower RF Systems will demonstrate a suite of
high power solid state transmitting amplifiers at the 55th Annual AOC International
Symposium and Convention - Washington, DC November 27 – 29th , 2018. The equipment suite
consists of the models 2162, 2170, and 2215 providing compact and rugged EA, communications,
and threat emitter capability from 20 to 6000 MHz, and will be housed in Los Angeles
while being controlled and monitored by the Empower booth demonstration team who will
be exercising the system software demonstrating capabilities of the configurable amplifiers ...
 KR Electronics designs and manufactures high quality
filters for both the commercial and military markets. KR Electronics manufactures all
filter types: lowpass, highpass,
bandpass, bandstop and individually synthesizes filters for special applications - both
commercial and military. State of the art computer synthesis, analysis and test methods
are used to meet the most challenging specifications. Please visit their website today
to see how they might be of assistance ...
 "Canadian researchers use scissors and glue to
transform RFID tag into device that can sense its environment. While smart
devices are proliferating in the industrial and domestic environments, concerns remain
that they will not be sustainable unless their need for batteries and/or charging is
removed. Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, are claiming a
major advance in this area through making simple modifications to a radio frequency identification
(RFID) tag, a battery-free device used to make objects machine-readable for the location
and identification, and which are increasingly ubiquitous in common objects ..."
 One of the major advantages of the age of powerful
personal computers - be they in the form of desktop systems, tablets, or smartphone apps
- is that for most
computation-intensive tasks there only needs to be one or maybe at most a few people
smart enough to know how to do them. Everyone else who has to perform the task just needs
to be able to input the proper parameters to ensure a useful output. That is a significant
statement, because in the days before ubiquitous computer availability and incredible
computing power, highly capable engineers, scientists, analysts, and mathematicians either
had to be on staff or an expert external resource was used for difficult and/or time-intensive
tasks. Over time, fewer and fewer people are needed to produce very precise and reliable
results. In many ways, other than the creative intuition involved in concept, creation,
and execution ...
 RevResponse has been offering free high tech whitepapers,
app notes, magazine subscriptions, and books for many years. LinkedIn, as you probably
know, has become a major force in the professional career networking realm. Whether your
goal is to find a new job, properly quit an existing job, locate special interest groups,
research topics on interest, or other such things, LinkedIn is a good first stop. Here
are a few resources currently available: "LinkedIn Mistakes that
Cost You Clients and Credibility," "Maximizing LinkedIn
for Business," "Optimize Your LinkedIn Skills," and "How to Network on LinkedIn
Like a Pro." You're welcome.
Longtime RF Cafe visitor, electrical engineer, and occasional contributor Alan H.
Dewey sent me a note yesterday saying a book for which he helped provide a large amount
of research data has been published by authors Iain Dey and Douglas Buck. "The Cryotron
Files: How the Inventor of the Microchip Put Himself in the KGB's Sights," is an
extensive delve into the background of Dr. Dudley Allen Buck, whose son, Douglas,
conducted an extensive investigation into his father's mysterious death that happened
to coincide with the death of his father's colleague and two other scientists just days
after being visited by Soviet computer experts. Dr. Buck was a superconductivity
researcher during his short, highly productive life. A cryotron, BTW, is a superconducting
switch that would make for very low power supercomputers if it could be made practical
in IC form ...
 MECA Electronics has created an app note titled
"Isolator/Circulator Basics" on their website blog. "An RF isolator
is a two-port ferromagnetic passive device which is used to protect other RF components
from excessive signal reflection. Isolators are common place in laboratory applications
to separate a device under test (DUT) from sensitive signal sources. An RF circulator
is a three-port ferromagnetic passive device used to control the direction of signal
flow in a circuit and is a very effective, low-cost alternative to expensive cavity duplexers
in base station and in-building mesh networks. Examples of both applications will be
covered later in this article. " You can find app notes for power coupler, dividers,
and combiners, passive intermodulation products, hybrid couplers, and more on MECA Electronics'
website blog ...
 In 1960, futurists were predicting that within
10 years it would be possible to beam television signals between continents and directly
into homes. It was the eve of Project Echo, which boosted a 100-foot-diameter inflatable
metallized plastic ball into low Earth orbit to reflect signals efficiently back through
the atmosphere. Engineers and scientists were already planning the next best thing -
a satellite that not only reflected, but also amplified, possibly frequency converted,
and would even steer signals that impinge upon it. Envisioned in this article is hundreds
of satellites being available for relaying signals between all regions of the Earth on
then-standard VHF channels. We now have successful
satellite television systems, but they operate at Ku-band due to bandwidth
requirements and need special converters to interface ...
 Rohde & Schwarz USA (R&S USA) has produced
a primer titled, "Fundamentals
of Modern Vector Network Analyzers - Primer." One of the most common measuring tasks
in RF engineering is the analysis of circuits, from simple filters and amplifiers to
complex satellite communication modules. As an extremely versatile test instrument, a
VNA is the ideal equipment for quickly and precisely uncovering signal integrity problems,
such as reflections and crosstalk. This primer describes the fundamentals of vector network
analysis, as well as practical instructions for improving accuracy, performing calibration,
and making typical linear and time-domain measurements. In this primer you will learn
about: Introduction to Network Analyzers Scattering Parameters ...
 Innovative Power Products (IPP) has over 30 years
of experience designing & manufacturing RF & microwave passive components. Their
high power, broadband couplers,
combiners, resistors, baluns, terminations and attenuators are fabricated using the
latest materials and design tools available, resulting in unrivaled product performance.
Applications in military, medical, industrial and commercial markets. Take a couple minutes
to visit their website and see how IPP can help you today ...
 "Intel announced a new
5G chip for smartphones and other gadgets that the company will release
next year. The company said it expects the chip, which supports speeds up to 6 Gbps,
to ship in commercial devices starting in 2020. That timeframe is notable considering
Fast Company reported that Apple will launch a 5G iPhone with Intel's 5G chip in 2020.
The Fast Company report even cited the model number of Intel's chip - 8161 - which is
just one digit off from the name of Intel's chip announced today, the XMM 8160 5G modem.
Intel's Cormac Conroy, VP and GM of the company's communication and devices group, declined
to discuss Apple and Intel's 5G customer prospects ..."
 The
1933 "Century of Progress" World's Fair, held in Chicago, was a big
deal on many fronts. Life in America and around the world was changing rapidly due to
the widespread introduction into homes a decade earlier of electrical and telephone service,
indoor plumbing, and associated appliances. The state of the art was a modern wonder.
Transportation had been made affordable to many families, and leisure time was becoming
more abundant. If it were not for the advent of the stock market crash in 1929, economies
would be thriving because there was so much cool stuff to be had. Many people had taken
up the hobby and/or profession of wireless communications, so a display was included
on the fairgrounds for the craft. An interesting consequence of a combination of noisy
(electrically) electromechanical wonders being promoted
and the desire to demonstrate working amateur radio ...
 ConductRF's
SiteFlex range of ruggedized
Field RF Test Cables are designed Field Test Engineers working in applications that require
on site RF Testing. These cables are directly compatible with Hand-Held Network and Spectrum
analyzers. Common options include: DC to 7 GHz, DC to 9 GHz, DC to 18 GHz,
DC to 27 GHz, DC to 40 GHz, and DC to 50 GHz. ConductRF's
Site-Flex RF Field Test Cables have been designed to support Handheld RF & Microwave
Analyzers. The ruggedized construction includes anti-torque connectors that are firmly
attached to the cables external armor. Crush resistant SF series cable can withstand
1,200 lbs. / sq.in. Additional configurations and lengths are available on request ...
 Remember when the first manned spacecraft transported
astronauts to Mars and then back to Earth in the 1970s - a 13-month round trip? In
the mid-1960s, Electronics magazine reported on the preparations being made
by NASA for Mars travel at the same time they were busy preparing the Apollo mission
to the moon. The world's first manned orbit (Apollo 8) of the moon didn't happen
until in December 1968, a mere seven months before the historic July 1969 Apollo 11
moon landing*, but NASA was wasting no time planning for the next big thing. Of course
you know to date we never have made it to Mars with a manned spacecraft, but the headlines
are still filled with "any day now" projections by SpaceX's Elon Musk (whom I like) and
his contemporaries. Sure, I would love to be alive to witness a manned mission to Mars,
but I'd settle ...
 Centric RF is a company offering from stock various
RF and Microwave coaxial
components, including attenuators, adapters, cable assemblies, terminations, power
dividers, and more. We believe in offering high performance parts from stock at a reasonable
cost. Frequency ranges of 0-110 GHz at power levels from 0.5-500 watts are available
off the sheld. Order today, ship today! Centric RF is currently looking for vendors to
partner with them. Please visit Centric RF today ...
 Microwave Workshops & Exhibition 2018 (MWE2018) will be held on November
28-30, in Yokohama, Japan in the Exhibition Hall D & Annex Hall, Pacifico. Sponsored
by the IEICE APMC Japan National Committee and supported by the Ministry of Internal
Affairs and Communications, the agenda includes workshops in 5 special sessions are allocated
to treat fusion of different technical areas / fields, such as quantum computing and
social infrastructure. 19 regular sessions cover the latest microwave technologies from
active and passive devices to next generation applications and systems such as 5G mobile
communication systems, wireless power transmissions and automotive/vehicular applications.
5 fundamental and 4 introductory ...
Author:
Kirt
Blattenberger
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