|
 Upon the demise of
Lee de Forest in 1961, Radio-Electronics magazine ran a series
of articles on the life and times of the great inventor. If you are not familiar
with the inventive path which led de Forest to his Audio vacuum tube, I advise
reading some of the articles listed at the bottom of the page. Begin with "How Audions
Were Built," where you will discover that early attempts at modulating and demodulating
audio signals used a candle flame that responded to an electric field. It was from
there that de Forest evolved the Audion. He was the first to utilize a glass
housing evacuated of air, in order to prolong the life of the cathode and to eliminate
noise caused by air current. Interestingly, editor Hugo Gernsback, who was a good
friend of Lee's, convinced him to allow his hands to be photographed for posterity's
sake...
 Dang, I swapped two answers and only scored
an 80%. Haste makes waste, as the saying goes. Don't rush through this 1967
Popular Electronics magazine "Electronic
Angle Quiz" like I did and you'll probably ace it with the greatest of ease
- especially if you have been in the electronics realm at least since the 1980s.
Generation X'ers can have a two-question handicap (might never have seen real-life
example of drawing "A" or "E"). Millennials might only have ever been exposed to
"C," "F," and "J." Hint: Picture "I" should be guessable based on the choice of
answers, even without knowing what it is. When looking at the solution, note it
says "recording" and not "playback." Bon chance...
• Amateur
Radio Participates in World's Largest Naval Exercise
•
India to Reallocate Broadcasting Spectrum for 5G
•
2G's Staying Power
•
Radio Is Most-Trusted Reach Medium
• Commie
Brazilian Judge Threatens to Ban Musk's X
 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...
 Chromaticity is commonly defined as the
quality of color characterized by its dominant or complementary wavelength and purity
taken together. This chromaticity chart plots the human tristimulus color space
according to: x = X/(X + Y + Z), y = Y/(X + Y + Z). Colors along the periphery of
the "horseshoe" plot (spectral locus) are pure, monochromatic, saturated colors.
Less saturated colors approach the center becomes (i.e. it becomes whitish or grayish).
The straight line across the bottom is called the "non-spectral line of purples."
The Chromaticity Diagram software link to the right is an executable file which
presents the 1931, 1960, and 1976 versions of the C.I.E. Chromaticity Diagram, in
either 2-degree or 10-degree observer retina formats, and adjustable gamma...
 It is understandable if, based on this article's
title, "Holes
and the Service Technician," you thought maybe it had to do with semiconductors.
Silicon was beginning to overtake germanium as the substrate of choice when it appeared
in a 1963 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. Electron conduction seemed
intuitive to most people involved in electronics; however, the concept of hole conduction
caused a lot of head scratching. But, I digress. This article discusses how to create
various types of holes in metal. It might seem like a no-brainer task, if you have
ever needed to make precisely shaped and dimensioned holes in metal, you know it
is not always such a simple task...
 Per their homepage, "Since 1946
SAMS Technical Publishing manuals have been the standard that repair technicians
have insisted upon having to provide professional repairs to their customers. Our
original Quickfact manuals and Photofact® manuals have been designed to provide
reliable, consistent repair data for electronics repair technicians, antique electronics
restorers, and hobbyist. SAMS Technical Publishing has been the gold standard in
the repair industry for TVs, VCRs, Radios, etc. Why would you settle for anything
less than the original? For those models and/or chassis not covered by SAMS Photofact®
manuals or Quickfact manuals, we have available OEM owners manuals and service manuals
that can be ordered in both hard copy...
 "ARRL® has expanded member access to its
rich archive of publications. The
ARRL Periodicals
Archive and Search now includes content from two more popular ARRL magazines:
QEX — A Forum for Communications Experimenters, which features technical articles
and columns of interest to radio amateurs and communications professionals; and
NCJ - the National Contest Journal, which covers information, scores, and advice
from the world of competitive radiosport and the contributions of top contesters.
Before accessing the archive, members should ensure they are first logged..."
 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...
 "Pulsed laser deposition, in which a laser
beam ablates a material that is deposited as a film on a substrate, was used to
fabricate the HTS wires. New research reveals that the large-scale, cost-effective
implementation of
high-temperature superconducting wire is increasingly feasible. The future of
our energy systems could be shaped by high-temperature superconducting (HTS) wires.
These advanced materials, capable of transmitting electricity without resistance
at higher temperatures than conventional superconductors, have the potential to
transform the electric grid and make commercial nuclear fusion a reality. Yet these
large-scale applications won’t happen until HTS wires..."
 In this article from a vintage issue of
QST magazine, the author describes the
automatic
antenna switching system which was developed for controlling the forty-odd receiving
antennas at the FCC's Grand Island Monitoring Station (Nebraska). With this system
it required only a matter of seconds for the operator to select any desired antenna
by simply pushing a couple of buttons on the control panel. A similar system could
easily be designed for a lesser number of antennas either for a test range or an
amateur radio operation. Of course modern-day antenna switching equipment does the
job handily and at a good price...
 Here is what dominated the electronics industry
news cycle in 1967, per this June 19767 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine's
"News Briefs" column. A major concern of the Electronic Industries Association was
a serious lack of electronic service technicians, with no program in place to attract
and train a future workforce. The supply of newly available technicians from military
service was drying up since those entering the field after World War II and
the Korean War were already either engaged in the profession or had left it. The
FCC was dealing with a large increase in "pirate" radio stations broadcasting on
licensed bands. It also passed a rule requiring type certification on transmitters,
and dope being smuggled inside electronic equipment ("dope scopes") was experiencing
an uptick...
 "Chip makers continue to claw for every
spare nanometer to continue scaling down circuits, but a technology involving things
that are much bigger - hundreds or thousands of nanometers across - could be just
as significant over the next five years. Called
hybrid bonding, that technology
stacks two or more chips atop one another in the same package. That allows chipmakers
to increase the number of transistors in their processors and memories despite a
general slowdown in the shrinking of transistors, which once drove Moore's Law.
At the IEEE Electronic Components..."
 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...
• NAB Concerned over
Proposed FM Broadcast Station Class
•
Intel Pilots Apprenticeships in Arizona
• FCC Sets
Foreign Content Broadcast Disclosure Rules Date
•
UK Among Top Countries for Broadband Reliability
• The
Cause of Verizon's Big Outage
 Here is another "R-E
Puzzler," this one from the May 1967 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine.
It is a uniquely formatted type of crossword puzzle, where all of the common vertically
connected letters are provided by the creator. All the words to be filled in go
horizontally. All of the clues and words are related to electronics and/or physics.
A couple of the words require familiarity with some of the technology of the era,
like vacuum tubes and peculiarities of CRT type televisions. You will probably be
able to guess everything based on the letters provided. Personally, I prefer the
traditional crossword puzzle format because it is more of a challenge; however,
these "Puzzlers" are a good relief for a Friday afternoon whilst waiting for the
weekend to begin.
 "Nanusens is a MEMS-within-CMOS solutions
provider that was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Paignton, England. It
leverages the research and expertise developed by the founders' previous company,
Baolab Microsystems. Nanusens specializes in developing innovative single-chip solutions
based on
MEMS and CMOS technology, resulting in significant reduction in size and cost
to support next-generation 5G and 6G devices. Innovative Technology Developed by
Nanusens Until now, MEMS sensors are all created using expensive proprietary processes
to build the MEMS sensor structure on the top of a CMOS wafer..."
 Innovative Power Products has been designing
and manufacturing RF and Microwave passive components since 2005. We use the latest
design tools available to build our baluns, 90-degree couplers, directional couplers,
combiners/dividers, single-ended transformers, resistors, terminations, and custom
products. Applications in military, medical, industrial, and commercial markets
are serviced around the world. Products listed on the website link to detailed mechanical
drawings, electrical specifications, and performance data. If you cannot find a
product that meets your requirements on our website, contact us to speak with one
of our experienced design engineers about your project.
 SpaceX and Blue Origin have been in the
news for the last decade for their efforts (some successful, some not) to
autonomously land a spacecraft vertically under its own power. Love it or hate
it, NASA has been doing that for nearly six decades. Granted, it was on celestial
bodies with lower gravitational acceleration than on Earth, but the earliest craft
(Surveyor 1, 1966) had relatively crude electronics aboard, including a Doppler
radar, flight computer, and video camera. The now legendary Apollo Guidance Computer
has been written about extensively, and is a testimony to the brilliance of the
scientists, engineers, managers, operators, and technicians who built and flew it.
Articles like this one in the May 1967 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine...
 The concept of a field effect
transistor (FET) has been around in theory for a long time, but manufacturable
devices arrived in designers' labs not until the early 1960s. This article from
the October 1966 edition of QST magazine gives a good introduction to the physics
of a basic FET as well as the junction FET (JFET) and the insulated gate FET (IGFET),
all of which are still in widespread use today. What you learn about them here is
applicable today. In fact, I swear some of the drawings are the same ones that appeared
in my college semiconductor physics text books (admittedly from the late 1980s,
so not too much of a surprise)...
 Sam Benzacar, of Anatech Electronics, an
RF and microwave filter company, has published his August 2024 newsletter that,
along with timely news items, features his short op-ed entitled "Fixed-Wireless
Access Is Finally Available, and People Love It." His description perfectly
describes the experience I have had with Verizon 5G FWA Internet service since February
of this year. My cost is $45/month, with a fixed price guarantee of four years.
Download speeds are in the 50-60 Mbps realm, and upload is 6-7 Mbps. That
fulfills my needs since I don't watch videos, TV, or use other bandwidth-hogging
services. If there have been any outages, I haven't noticed, even when electric
service is down during a storm. The asymmetrical data rates Sam mentions have always
been a mystery to me - why is that necessary...
 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 average0,000 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...
 Whenever an article about
Comsat pops up, I take the time to read it. Back in the early 1990s, shortly
after graduating from UVM with a BSEE, I got hired at the Comsat headquarters location
in Germantown, MD. Living in Hagerstown, just south of the Pennsylvania border,
meant a 45 mile drive each way, which with the awful northern D.C. traffic on I-70
meant about an hour to hour and a half. Those three years at Comsat were an intense
experience in RF/analog circuit and system design. In fact, I put in so many overtime
hours that it was the equivalent of about four years. My projects included a rack-mounted
RF modem card for Inmarsat Earth stations and a couple S-band and C-band up and
down converter chassis. It was good experience...
 Triad RF Systems is proud to announce the
promotion of Charles Jobbers to Managing Director, a role that reflects both
his outstanding leadership and his commitment to innovation within the company.
Charles' promotion comes at a time when Triad is poised for continued growth as
part of the COMROD family of companies, driven by a relentless focus on advancing
RF technologies and maintaining the highest standards of quality and manufacturing.
Reflecting on his new role, Charles shared his vision for the future of Triad RF
Systems: "As the new Managing Director of Triad RF Systems, I am extremely proud
to reflect on our journey of growth and innovation to date. Our success is rooted
in our total commitment to advancing RF technologies, quality, and manufacturing...
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...
 RF Cafe visitor Richard Diehl wrote to ask
that I post this "TV
Monocle Gives Extra Eye to Wearer" article from a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. Come to find out, Mr. Diehl is the publisher of the LabGuy's World
website, which contains a vast amount of information on vintage video tape equipment
- which explains his interest in this article. The Electrocular, designed by Hughes
Aircraft Company, is an early version of today's helmet-mounted display. As opposed
to modern systems which present the image directly on the display using an LCD substrate,
the Electrocular projected the image from a television-type CRT onto a glass plate
in front of the user's eye. I'm not so sure I would have wanted a device generating
3,000 volts for the electron beam accelerator potential sitting next to my head,
over top of my ear. A cellphone's radiation might be safer...
 In 1969 when this article appeared in
Electronics World magazine,
laser technology was still in the realm of rare earth elements and bulky gas
chambers with monster power supplies. Efficiencies for conversion of input line
AC power to output laser light power was measured in the low single digits. Real
science was a long, long way from the predictions of science fiction in terms of
size and capability of lasers. Although laser technology has made much better progress
than futurists' visions of flying cars and nuclear fusion power generation, we are
just now deploying the first serious laser weapons. Semiconductor-based lasers have
enabled incredible advances in local communications...
 Hugo Gernsback was well-known not just for
his technical prowess, but for an uncanny ability to predict future developments
in electronics, transportation, and production methods. Barely three years had passed
since Messrs. Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain, announced their invention of the
transistor when this editorial titled, "Transistor
Transition" appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine. Gernsback mentions the concept
of "appliqued circuits" (i.e., printed circuits) and "roll-up display" transistor
picture tubes (i.e., flexible displays), and "pocket radios" that can be held up
to the ear. Production prices for transistors at the time were about $8 apiece,
which is the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $95 in 2024...
 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
Cryogenic Low Noise Amplifier using InP HEMT(High Electron Mobility Transistor)
technology offers high gain and low noise figure characteristics (NF: 0.04-0.05 dB)
for C-Band (4-8 GHz) applications such as quantum computing and space communications.
This LNA is tested and verified using Withwave's 4 K cryogenic measurement
system...
 LadyBug Technologies was founded in 2004
by two microwave engineers with a passion for quality microwave test instrumentation.
Our employees offer many years experience in the design and manufacture of the worlds
best vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, power meters and associated components.
The management team has additional experience in optical power testing, military
radar and a variety of programming environments including LabVIEW, VEE and other
languages often used in programmatic systems. Extensive experience in a broad spectrum
of demanding measurement applications. You can be assured that our Power Sensors
are designed, built, tested and calibrated without compromise.
|
 Modelithics® is excited to announce the
release of the Modelithics
COMPLETE+3D Library v24.3 for Ansys HFSS™.
The release is compatible with Ansys HFSS 2024 R2 and is backward compatible
with previous Modelithics library releases. Included are new models for
non-linear varactor diodes from Infineon and MACOM. In addition, Modelithics is
also introducing 3D Brick EM Models™ for resistors. Modelithics v24.3 for HFSS
includes 4 3D Brick EM Models for KOA and Vishay resistors as well as 1 Kemet
C0201 capacitor. These components coupled with their circuit simulation
counterparts represent almost 2,300 components...
 "Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories
of the U.S. have used silicon photonics to perform the
quantum
sensing technique atom interferometry, an ultra-precise way of measuring acceleration,
which could enable a kind of quantum compass for navigation when GPS signals are
unavailable. 'Accurate navigation becomes a challenge in real-world scenarios when
GPS signals are unavailable,' says Sandia scientist Jongmin Lee. In a war zone,
these challenges pose national security risks, as electronic warfare units can jam
or spoof satellite signals to disrupt troop movements..."
 When I first began designing circuits in
the 1990s using
active filters, the upper frequency was limited to a few tens of kHz because
of the gain-bandwidth product of the available amplifiers. That made them useful
in baseband circuits, but that was about it. There were also issues with the noise
figure and intercept points and intermodulation product levels. Today, you can get
fully integrated and programmable active filters which operate at tens of MHz and
beyond, and with much better RF-type specifications. That makes them useful in low
intermediate frequency (IF) circuits as well as at baseband. BTW, this article is
one of about ten dealing with filter types in the April 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine...
 I bought the 5th edition of Van Nostrand's
Scientific Encyclopedia back around 1980. The book is four inches thick and is so
heavy that it is cumbersome to read. It changed to two volumes at the 6th edition,
and the current 10th edition is three volumes. According to Wikipedia, David Van
Nostrand was born in 1811, and began his publishing company in 1848. Master Van Nostrand
had assumed soil temperature long before this advertisement for his "International
Dictionary of Physics and Electronics" appeared in a 1961 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. In fact the term "electronics" had not yet been coined (c1901). It looks
like it could easily be four inches thick. FYI, here are definitions for the example
words given in the ad: cybotaxis - a transient orientation of molecules in a liquid
revealed by X-ray diffraction; ylem - primordial substance from which all matter
is formed...
 "Chronic wounds are open wounds that heal
slowly, if they heal at all. For example, sores that occur in some patients with
diabetes are chronic wounds. These wounds are particularly problematic because they
often recur after treatment and significantly increase the risk of amputation and
death. Unfortunately, the existing treatment options for chronic wounds are costly,
creating additional problems for patients. Now, researchers have developed an inexpensive
bandage that uses an electric field to promote healing in chronic wounds. In animal
testing, wounds that were treated with these
electric bandages healed 30% faster than wounds treated with conventional bandages..."
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...
 "Researchers have demonstrated a technique
for printing
thin metal oxide films at room temperature, and have used the technique to create
transparent, flexible circuits that are both robust and able to function at high
temperatures. The paper, 'Ambient Printing of Native Oxides for Ultrathin Transparent
Flexible Circuit Boards,' was published August 15 in the journal Science. 'Creating
metal oxides that are useful for electronics has traditionally required making use
of specialized equipment that is slow, expensive, and operates at high temperatures,'
says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work..."
 I saw this ad for a new
EMI
tape for use in lining enclosures and sealing around edges. Per the website,
applications include: "Alternative to classical shielding cabinet solution, EMC
noise suppression, magnetic decoupling, SAR reduction, avoiding cavity resonances,
prevention of electrostatic discharge, housing and openings between PCB's, on IC's,
processors and controllers, on cables which need high flexibility and LCD/LED monitors.
Frequency range from 100 Hz - 25 GHz, extremely flexible, 0.072 mm
thickness, isolated and non-isolated versions, self-adhesive backing, absorber layer
permeability of 100..."
 It is probably safe to say that the vast
majority of cellphone users never consider that their cherished
devices
are fundamentally radios, and with that capability they would be merely powerful
PDAs. Even less likely to be thought about is that as wireless devices, an antenna
is needed to establish communications. Up until the early 2000s, most cellphones
had some form of obvious antenna protruding from the case - either an extendable
type or a molded stub around an internal antenna. Operational frequencies at the
time were primarily in the 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz
bands, with 1/4 wavelengths of about 3.5 inches, 3.3 inches, 1.6 inches, and
1.5 inches, which was convenient given the physical size of phones. Always
seeking to develop new features to outclass the competition...
 When I was in high school, if someone placed
me in a classroom where
imaginary numbers (whatever they were?) were to be taught - and I was expected
to learn about them - I likely would have gone into an anxiety-induced stupor. My
plans were to be an electrician, and I was pretty sure electricians didn't need
to know about imaginary numbers. By the time I began taking courses toward an electrical
engineering degree, I quickly gained an immense appreciation for the power of complex
numbers. Anyway... in this second installment of a three-part series, the author
educates George (whether real or imaginary - see what I did there?) on the virtues
of manipulating complex numbers when dealing with electric circuits which are not
purely resistive. The title, "Imaginary Numbers Are a Cinch," omits...
 Antennas have been deployed in difficult
environments using many ingenious methods over the years both by professionals and
amateurs. The process typically involves first propelling a lightweight string or
wire across and/or up to a supporting structure (a tower, tree, building, whatever)
and then using that lead line to draw the antenna and its accompanying coaxial or
twin lead cable into its final position. Sometimes simply tying a line to a rock
and tossing it over a tree branch does the trick, but usually deployment requires
a more powerful launch such as a a bow and arrow or even a model rocket. Many years
ago R/C Modeler magazine reported on a large radio controlled airplane that towed
a lead line...
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 average0,000 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...
 In this final installment of an "All
About IC's" series that appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine in 1969,
author Bob Hibberd discusses how passive components are fabricated in silicon as
part of an integrated circuit. MOS and junction capacitors and diffusion resistors
were cutting edge technology in the day. Although not discussed here, small value
inductors could be made with printed metal on the die. The relatively low frequencies
of IC's (a few MHz at best) meant that most inductive components had to be realized
in the form of a gyrator because there was not enough area available to print a
useful wire inductor. Hibberd also describes the dicing...
 Note: The
tax-related information presented in this 1966 Popular Electronics
magazine article is almost certainly outdated and invalid. My purpose for posting
it is to provide some insight into potential tax advantages available to anyone
engaging in a small business. The IRS provides multiple classifications for businesses,
including the simplest, Sole Proprietor, where essentially you report your business
gains and losses as part of your personal income tax filings. The next step up is
a Limited Liability entity where some formal paperwork is filed to isolate personal
liability from business liability. From there you can incorporate and have the company
be a stand-alone taxable entity that pays its employees. Each has unique advantages
and disadvantages, but all permit you to deduct qualified expenses from your reportable
income. Even though RF Cafe is a sole proprietorship...
Innovative Power Products has been designing
and manufacturing RF and Microwave passive components since 2005. We use the latest
design tools available to build our baluns, 90-degree couplers, directional couplers,
combiners/dividers, single-ended transformers, resistors, terminations, and custom
products. Applications in military, medical, industrial, and commercial markets
are serviced around the world. Products listed on the website link to detailed mechanical
drawings, electrical specifications, and performance data. If you cannot find a
product that meets your requirements on our website, contact us to speak with one
of our experienced design engineers about your project.
 Filtering, timing, coupling, and energy
storage are the most common uses for
capacitors (not to mention their use in electronic component sculptures). Metallized
paper or plastic, plastic film, mica, ceramic, electrolytic, and a few other capacitor
types have been around for a long time, with newer formulations of electrolytics
providing higher charge storage density, lower leakage, greater stability, lower
cost, wider operational temperature ranges, more robust construction, etc. We now
have supercapacitors that look as much like storage batteries (and are replacing
them in some applications) as they do capacitors. This 1966 Popular Electronics
magazine article provides a good synopsis of many of these issues...
 Magazines usually provided at least a brief
description on the circuit functionality for each of the radio models presented
in schematic format. The January 1947 issue of Radio News published schematics
and parts lists for six sets, including this for the
Farnsworth models EC-260, EK-262, EK-263, EK-264, and EK-265, but not a word
about any of them accompanied it. One thumbnail image is the SAMS Photofact from
an eBay auction, and the photo thumbnail is from the RadioMuseum.org website. These
are posted as part of my ongoing effort to make the information available to those
who repair...
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 average0,000 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...
 This is a dumb graphic. "Researchers at
QuTech developed
somersaulting spin qubits for universal quantum logic. This achievement may
enable efficient control of large semiconductor qubit arrays. Over twenty years
after Loss and DiVincenzo's proposal for quantum computation with quantum dots,
QuTech researchers have realized these concepts using germanium to facilitate spin
control. This approach simplifies the electronics needed for quantum computing,
demonstrating effective control over extended quantum dot arrays. Quantum Dot Qubits
In 1998, Loss and DiVincenzo published the seminal work..."
 It has been over a year since I have worked
on any old electronics gear, so the need for hand-dandy
color code charts has not been at the top of my list for publishing. My bad.
Every day there are untold thousands of people hard at work - although most wouldn't
consider it work - restoring and maintaining a bit of world history. Many - probably
most - of these components and markings will never be seen by the vast majority.
If you do a search on the RF Cafe website, you will find many types of color code
charts that were published in magazines over the decades by the likes of Electronics
World, Popular Electronics, Radio & TV News, Short
Wave Craft, etc...
 A series of three articles appeared in 1973
issues of Popular Electronics magazine that conducted a high-level review
- or introduction if you've never seen it before - of
DC circuit analysis. In this first installment from the May issue, Professor
Arthur Seidman, of the Pratt Institute, covers a variety of subjects starting with
direct current (DC) circuit theory. Ideal current and voltage sources, units and
notations, Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's law, resistors, capacitor and inductor charge
and discharge curves, series and parallel circuits, power calculations, conductance,
and other good stuff is covered. There is even (gasp) a bit of calculus presented...
 The
General Electric C-62 radio was (is) a battery-operated tabletop model. No photos
of actual radios could be found online, but the thumbnail to the left of an advertisement
appears on the RadioMuseum.org website. Two 67.5 V "B" batteries provided power.
You would be forgiven for believing such batteries are no longer available today
since nowadays the most familiar types are 1.2 V and 1.5 V "A," "C," and
"D" cells, and the 9 V "transistor radio" battery - which should be renamed
the "smoke detector battery" since few pocket-type transistor radios remain. Less
prominent in the retail venue but ubiquitous in electronics and power tools...
 RF Cafe website visitor Richard Diehl recently
contacted me in search of the "TV
Monocle Gives Extra Eye to Wearer" article in the September 1962 issue of
Radio-Electronics magazine. Come to find out, Mr. Diehl is none other
than the progenitor and still current publisher of the
LabGuy's World website, which contains a vast amount of information on vintage
video tape equipment (hence, his interest in the TV Monocle article). He is a fellow
traveler along the road of website creation, having had a World Wide Web presence
since October 1997 - predating RF Cafe by a year and a half! Dig this: "These pages
were originally created with Netscape Composer and are now maintained solely with
Microsoft Notepad..."
 Aegis Power Systems is a leading supplier
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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 average0,000 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...
 September 1962 was a big month for reporting
on new developments in the electronics world. The "News Briefs" column in Radio-Electronics
announced the world's
first electron microscope capable of imaging individual atoms. It could not
resolve electrons or protons and neutrons in the nucleus, just the outline of the
entire atom. Those concentric rings around the central blob are not electrons "orbiting"
the nucleus, but are a diffraction effect. Also mentioned is the requirement for
UHF channels to be included on new television sets. The law abused the 10th Amendment
by applying it to interstate sales - typical of the Government. Radar-controlled
traffic lights...
 If you like word puzzles, then maybe you'll
want to give this
word search with names of common electronics components hidden within a matrix
of random letter a go. It appeared in the July 1965 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine. Keep that in mind while searching for the Mystery Word since some might
not be overly familiar to latecomers. Interestingly, in the original hard copy was
missing the word for #23. I needed to look in the given solution to find it and
add it to the list. Enjoy.
 When you were a kid, did your mother warn
you about sitting too close to the television because doing so would cause you to
be near-sighted or otherwise "ruin" your eyes? Mine did, and I'm now very near-sighted,
but it is doubtful that sitting too close to the TV is the reason. In fact, according
to Linus Van Pelt's comments to his sister, Lucy, in this 1962 Peanuts comic strip,
ophthalmologists tried to counter the misconception about too-close boob tube viewing.
There is another strip where Linus challenges Lucy's assertion that reading in dim
lighting can hurt your eyes. The real concern as it turns out, according to professional
alarmists, was the massive doses of
x-radiation pouring out of the front of the early color TV sets. To hear the
distractors tell it, you could almost...
 In 1936, the FCC was busy regulating radio
broadcasting via transcription programs (pre-recorded segments), deciding that listeners
deserved to be warned at least every 15 minutes that they were not listening to
a live announcer. A note on the
death
of ARRL founder Hiram Percy Maxim was reported to have succumbed to a throat
infection, which (my conjecture) might have proven non-fatal had penicillin been
in use in the day. Mr. Maxim is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Hagerstown,
Maryland. Miniature "pocket-sized" radio transmitters and receivers were introduced
for those who wore jackets with pockets large enough to hold a box the size of a
1-liter bottle of soda pop. Lawsuits were already being launched by music owners
against radio broadcast stations over royalties. Dr. Compton, of Compton Effect
fame, was measuring cosmic rays aboard ships, and some of the first radio-assisted
blind landings were being performed in Germany...
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