What - and Who - Is RF Cafe? "Serving a Thoughtful Blend of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow™ Kirt Blattenberger | Erie, PA
kirtrfc@aol.com Copyright | Disclaimer | Acknowledgements 
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RF Cafe Intro Video
RF Cafe Security Task Force Training
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Melanie and Kirt Blattenberger, RF Cafe staff, in 2007. Here some archived homepage screen captures of RF Cafe, compliments of the Wayback Machine™ RF Cafe really began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The Internet was still largely an unknown entity at the time, and not much was available in the form of WYSIWYG editors; in fact, my early pages were written using Notepad. After a couple years of adding material to the website, I noticed that the hit counter would sometimes record a hundred or more hits in a single day, which clued me in to the reality that other people were finding my site useful. E-mails began arriving with suggestions, corrections, and even a few compliments.  Please click here to find out about advertising on RF Cafe.
That was enough to convince me to expand the presence, so I hijacked web space from my kids' AOL area for storing files, and linked to them from RF Tools. On July 19th of 1999, I purchased the rfcafe.com domain (and also rfcafe.net) and launched the RF Tools content as "RF Cafe." The RF Cafe name was chosen due to its brevity for typing, its simplicity for remembering, and, perhaps most importantly, because it hints at my appreciation for a good cup of coffee. Besides, names like "e-<Something>" and "<Something> Cafe" were in vogue at the time. After many years of handling webmaster duties myself, the demand increased to the point that I could not handle all the many additions and revisions that are performed on a daily basis. I have always had a fulltime job while running RF Cafe, so maintenance consumed the evenings and a good part of the weekends. I scan the Internet daily for interesting headlines, write many commentaries, research day in history items, create the crossword puzzles, constantly search for and generate new content, write spreadsheets and other software, design advertiser ads, choose good books for display, manage the overall website format, and everything else that requires a more in-depth engineering knowledge. Finally, in April of 2007, I left RF Micro Devices (RFMD, now Qorvo) after more than five years with them to work at RF Cafe fulltime. It has been twelve years now (as of 2019), and I truly wonder how I ever got enough done because even now I spend all day and evening working on the RF Cafe and my "Airplanes and Rockets" websites.
RF Cafe currently enjoys the status of being one of the most highly rated engineering websites on the Internet. Weekday page views are often 20,000 or more, and those are honest page hits that don't include every downloaded image file on the page like many sites report. The attraction for my much-appreciated regular visitors is the laid-back atmosphere, the extensive collection of resources, and the daily fresh content. Paying advertisers appreciate the huge amount of exposure to engineers for a ridiculously low price, and nearly instant access to me for service. I plan to grow this empire to the maximum extent possible ;-) Thanks for taking the time to read this, and be sure to drop me an e-mail any time with your suggestions, comments and questions. Please be sure to visit our advertisers in appreciation for their helping to fund the website. Oh, and buy stuff too!!! Kirt Blattenberger Dunn & Bradstreet: 005 660 324 DUNS All editorial content and graphics on this site are protected by copyright and/or trademark law and may not be copied without the express permission of Kirt Blattenberger and RF Cafe, who reserves all rights. Permission to use content on this site is granted on a case-by-case basis. I welcome your request. Please direct your inquiries to Kirt Blattenberger, owner. I do not intentionally violate anyone's copyright; however, on occasion I might use a thumbnail image (just large enough to generate interest) that links back to the owner's website. Uncredited clipart is usually from MS Office,  which I own a license to use; otherwise, it is from a an open source websites like openclipart.org and other images obtained as the result a Bing.com image search using the "Free to share and use commercially" filter. Specifically, U.S. Code 17, Section 107 states: § 107 . Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use40 Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
** Acknowledgments **All trademarks, trade names, copyrights, etc., for entities listed in this production are hereby acknowledged. Inclusion of such references in this production are provided free of charge as a service to engineers and other technical persons in search of goods and services providers. It is the responsibility of any vendor that does not desire to be represented on this Site to provide formal notification for removal of references. ** Privacy **RF Cafe does not set cookies or gather any information from you, except that from time to time I might post something like a user poll that will make sure you don't vote more than once. 3rd-parties that are be represented on the website, such as Google or Bing/Yahoo, may collect whatever their policies stipulate. I would prefer that not be the case, but that is their condition for usage. ** Disclaimer **Due to advanced features used in the creation of this web site, Microsoft Internet Explorer v4.0 or later is required to guarantee proper display of contents. For example, some equations are generated using an (Overline) character. If you do not see the line over the word (Overline) in these sentences, then your browser does not support necessary features. Default font style for this site is MS Verdana. Access to and use of this RF Cafe Internet site (the "Site") is provided subject to these terms and conditions. PLEASE READ THESE TERMS CAREFULLY, BECAUSE USE OF THE SITE CONSTITUTES ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. The Site provides a range of information, and although it attempts to provide Information that is useful, I cannot possibly insure the accuracy of all of the Information at all times, and you should not rely on the information in situations where its inaccuracy would cause you to suffer any significant loss. THE INFORMATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS". RF CAFE, KIRT BLATTENBERGER, AND ITS ASSIGNEES MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS OR SUITABILITY OF THE INFORMATION, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This Site does not sell, resell or license any of the "Products" linked to or otherwise referenced on this Site, unless otherwise noted, and I disclaim any responsibility for or liability related to the Products. Any questions, complaints or claims related to any Product should be directed to the appropriate vendor. The Information is being provided without charge to the user. Accordingly, RF CAFE, KIRT BLATTENBERGER, AND ITS ASSIGNEES SHALL NOT BE LIABLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR UNDER ANY LEGAL THEORY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES THAT MAY BE SUFFERED BY YOU OR ANY OTHER USER OF THE SITE IN CONNECTION WITH OR AS A RESULT OF THE INFORMATION OR THE PRODUCTS REGARDLESS OF HOW SUCH DAMAGES MAY ARISE AND EVEN IF PREVIOUSLY ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. The opinions expressed on this Site are solely those of Kirt Blattenberger, and do not necessarily reflect those of any persons or companies referenced on or sponsored by RF Cafe (although they should if they do not). The privacy of visitors to RFCafe.com is important to me. At RFCafe.com, I recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. I never sell or provide in trade your personal information to third parties. RFCafe.com does not use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit the site. Only if I happen to have the phpBB forums software running does it set cookies. I do not run any programs that attempt to deploy popups or any other obnoxious unrequested window. RFCafe.com uses third party advertisements via Google AdSense to help support the site. You can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with this site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts. In summary, I despise tricks used by other websites to encroach on my privacy and that throw unwelcome content in my face, so I do not do that to anyone else. | 
