Friday 15
 Whilst reading articles on semiconductor research
and development in the era of this 1964 Electronics magazine, it often
occurs to me that much of the terminology presented is new to most people in the
electronics field, having been just recently coined by those developing the technology.
To wit, here author Landress shows diagrams of planar and mesa
structures for transistors. We are so familiar by now with those configurations
that it hardly seems there was a time when engineers did not speak so matter-of-factly
of them. Hole and electron mobilities were terms familiar to a niche group of atomic
materials scientists a decade earlier, as were diffusion depth and doping concentrations.
As the 1919 electronics practitioner would confabulate upon matters of thermionic
emission and getter flashing in vacuum tubes ...
 PEI-Genesis is a global leader in the design
and assembly of custom engineered
connectors and cable solutions for harsh environments. PEI develops custom interconnect
solutions that support the harsh environments of the aviation, energy, military,
industrial, rail, and medical sectors worldwide. Proprietary automation in mirrored
factories around the world allows PEI to assemble, from one of the largest inventories
of electronic components, according to customers' specific requirements. PEI-Genesis
has been listed on the related Vendors
listing pages. Free shipping for orders >$40 ...
 Withwave's
Automatic Calibration Module (W1202A) is ideal for users who want fast and easy
calibration for various Vector Network Analyzers (VNA). This module is powered up
via USB or F5.5 DC connector and communicate with VNA via USB or LAN and designed
for full one-port through two-port calibrations of VNAs by One-Push START button.
This module works as host systems, measures and calculates calibration coefficients
and sends it to VNA easily. Most of Electronic Calibration Kits work for same manufacturer's
VNAs only. But, this module provides cost-effective calibration solution for users
by supporting various VNA models: Keysight PNA & ENA series, R&S ZVL, ZVA &
ZVT series, Anritsu ShockLine Series ...
 "A team of Cambridge researchers have found
a way to control the sea of nuclei in
semiconductor quantum dots so they can operate as a quantum
memory device. Quantum dots are crystals made up of thousands of atoms, and each
of these atoms interacts magnetically with the trapped electron. If left alone to
its own devices, this interaction of the electron with the nuclear spins, limits
the usefulness of the electron as a quantum bit - a qubit. Led by Professor Mete
Atature, a Fellow at St John's College, University of Cambridge, the research group,
located at the Cavendish Labor ..."
 Quinstar Technology, an AS9100 certified
aerospace hardware design and manufacturing company in Torrance, CA, is currently
looking for an
Associate Layout Engineer to join our team! We are primarily Looking for a highly
motivated quick learner with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering
or equivalent industry experience who is a US citizen. Should have experience creating
hybrid RF circuit assembly drawings using AutoCAD or equivalent, drafting mechanical
drawings, and/or using Vee test software is desired! Preference given to candidates
with related experience. Primary job responsibilities include supporting MMIC design/development,
reviewing engineering MMIC layouts ...
 Empower RF Systems is a global leader in
power amplifier solutions. Empower RF Systems is an established and technologically
superior supplier of high power solid state RF & microwave amplifiers. Our offerings
include modules, intelligent rack-mount amplifiers, and multi-function RF Power
Amplifier solutions to 6 GHz in broadband and band specific designs. Output
power combinations range from tens of watts to multi-kilowatts. Unprecedented size,
weight and power reduction of our amplifiers is superior to anything in the market
at similar frequencies and power levels
...
Thursday 14
 ConductRF offers an extensive line of
RF and mixed signal cable harnesses and assemblies with custom configurations,
lengths and markings. Thousands of combinations of coaxial, power, and digital and
analog signal connectors available. Flexible phase-stable, low-loss, phase-matching,
high power, and other options per your requirements. Broad insert connector solution
choices including BMA, SMPM, for cable sizes #8, #12 & #16 Custom marking and
ruggedization enhancements capability. Contact ConductRF today and let us help your
project ...
 Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun,
chief designer of the
V−2 rocket that terrorized London in the 1940s and chief
architect of the
Saturn V rocket that launched the first men to the moon
in the 1960s, is quoted as saying, "The best computer is a man, and it's the only
one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor." von Braun was one of many
German scientists conscripted to do the
National Socialist German Workers Party (aka Nazi) regime's
bidding during World War II - formally an Schutzstaffel (aka
SS) officer.
He and his research team
surrendered to the Americans in 1945 after escaping to Austria
when the end of the Third Reich was imminent. His willingness to be part of the
Nazi German war effort is fuzzy; therefore, I have a hard time fully appreciating
his significant contributions to the U.S. space program. Reportedly, von Braun
experienced a genuine
Christian religious conversion that changed his life.
 The
March 2019 issue of the Academy of Model Aeronautics' Model Aviation magazine
contains a letter from Dave Jones, of the
AUAV website.
Mr. Jones informs us that, contrary to popular belief, he was the designer,
builder, and tester of the first frequency hopping spread spectrum
(FHSS) radio control
system (R/C) operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. He developed his system
for the DoD back in the 1990s, many years before Spektrum R/C marketed its first
commercial spread spectrum system in the early 2000s (see my
Spektrum DX6 teardown). Prior to 2.4 GHz systems (now a combo of FHSS and
DSSS), FM and to a lesser extent AM digital proportional R/C systems were primarily
on the 72 (air, 50 channels) / 75 (surface, 30 channels) MHz band (a few on
50/53 MHz for licensed Hams). RF interference and unintentional "stepping on"
frequencies in use often resulted in costly aircraft crashes. The 72 Hz systems
were vulnerable to metal-to-metal noise (a problem in helicopters) whereas the 2.4 GHz
systems are immune. Dave Jones made a
Monkee
of that issue and sent it to the
bottom
of the sea, figuratively speaking. And now you know... the rest of the story.
 Kenneth Wyatt has an article on the EDN website
titled, "Design PCBs for EMI, Part 1: How Signals Move," that should
be useful to anyone looking for tips on the subject. Says Kenneth, "After helping
clients get their products compliant for EMI, I've seen one underlying issue: Poor
PC board design. In my experience, IoT product designers run into problems caused
by poor PC board design. Poor design can cause endless delays when on-board energy
sources disrupt sensitive receiver circuits, resulting in cellular compliance failures.
GPS and Wi-Fi receivers can also lose sensitivity ..."
 Smiths Interconnect currently has a job opportunity
for an
RF Test Technician. Smiths is always looking for curious minds. For new colleagues
who want responsibility and relish a challenge. Those who would like to use their
talents to help make the world safer, healthier, more efficient and more connected.
Job Description: To test and troubleshoot Smiths Interconnect products to ensure
high quality. Duties & Responsibilities: Solid understanding of electronic and
microwave test equipment including VNAs, signal generators, power amplifiers, pulse
generators, o-scopes, multimeters and associated hand tools. Ability to assemble
RF test fixtures and burn-in test fixtures, troubleshoot RF test fixtures and test
setups, documentation of test procedures ...
 "NASA is set to demonstrate a new experimental
type of deep space communications technology on the ISS this spring. Currently,
NASA relies on radio waves to send information between the spacecraft and Earth.
Emerging laser communications technology offers higher data rates that let spacecraft
transmit more data at a time. This demonstration involves
X-ray communications, or XCOM, which has numerous advantages.
X-rays have much shorter wavelengths than both infrared and radio. This means that,
in principle, XCOM can send more data for the same amount of transmission power.
The X-rays can broadcast in tighter beams, thus using less energy when communicating
over vast distances. If successful, the experiment ..."
 Anatech Electronics (AEI) manufactures and
supplies RF and microwave filters for military and commercial communication
systems, providing standard LP, HP, BP, BS, notch, diplexer, and custom RF filters,
and RF products. Standard RF filter and cable assembly products are published in
our website database for ease of procurement. Custom RF filters designs are used
when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements dictate a custom approach.
Sam Benzacar's monthly newsletters address contemporary wireless subjects. Please
visit Anatech today to see how they can help your project succeed ...
Wednesday 13
 I, along with probably most other people
my age, habitually associate the brand name of Delco (Delco
Electronics, technically) with General Motors (GM) electrical and electronic
products such as radios, storage batteries, alternators, and spark plugs.
Dayton Engineering Laboratories
Co., of Dayton, Ohio, merged with GM's AC spark plug division in
1974 to become AC-Delco. I bought many sets of AC-Delco spark plugs for my cars
over the years. Nowadays, GM's electronic products go by the name of ACDelco
(no hyphen now). Attempting to research the full provenance of the modern-day AC-Delco
is headache-inducing due to sell-offs to Delphi, Aptiv, and other entities. The
best I can determine is that the contemporary ACDelco is a brand name for products
that might be manufactured by many different companies. This advertisement searching
for electrical and mechanical engineers ...
 Axiom Test Equipment, an electronic test
equipment rentals and sales company, has published a blog post explaining how to
source the right electronic load for your next project. Engineers working with power
circuitry can use this post as a guide towards what specifications are important
to know when selecting a load. The post goes over AC loads, DC loads, combination
AC/DC loads, and whether the load will be used for manual or automatic measurements,
for testing one circuit or unit under test at a time or multiple units under test.
Reliable, high-performance DC and AC electronic loads are available from several
manufacturers and are typically characterized as low, medium, and high-power loads.
Mainframes with interchangeable modules to customize ...
 Rohde & Schwarz has produced a 15-minute
tutorial titled, "Understanding 3rd-Order Intercept Measurements." In Amplifier
design, Third Order Intercept (TOI) is the most common measurement of the devices
linearity. This tutorial explains the fundamentals of Third Order Intercept. It
will include how to measure it and where the pitfalls are so you become aware during
your testing. It's a short 15-minute tutorial so you get what you need quickly and
can continue on with your busy day. You will learn about linearity, harmonics, higher
order products and inter modulation products. We will also cover measurement considerations,
test configurations and what to watch out for ...
 This 1971 article from Popular Electronics
magazine was the twelfth in a long series of features reporting on electronics related
college degrees, technical schools, on-the-job training, military training, areas
of specialty, career planning and options, current hiring practices and companies
doing the hiring, salaries and hourly rates, worker's compensation and insurance,
etc. All the issues of importance today were being covered even half a century ago,
although the names have been changed for some entities. For instance the state employment
bureaus are now referred to as departments of labor and industry; e.g., here in
Pennsylvania, the DLI supplies statistics on labor ...
 Triad RF Systems designs and manufactures
RF power amplifiers and systems.
Triad RF Systems comprises three partners (hence 'Triad')
with over 40 years of accumulated knowledge of what is required to design, manufacture,
market, sell and service RF/Microwave amplifiers and amplifier systems. PA, LNA,
bi-directional, and frequency translating amplifiers are available, in formats including
tower mount, benchtop, rack mount, and chassis mount. "We view Triad more as a technology
partner than a vendor for our line-of-sight communications product line." Please
check to see how we can help your project ... Please check to see how they can help your project
...
 Maybe once quantum computers and übercomplex
physical models of dense urban environments are available for simulation, there
won't be a need for
in-situ empirical testing of wireless coverage, but at this
time the success or failure of impending 5G communications will be dependent on
field tests. Of course part of that testing will be receiving service complaints
from customers due to systems being activated before they are fully qualified -
aka known as the Microsoft product release strategy ;-( This article
titled, "The Critical Role OTA Testing Will Play in 5G," by Lawrence Wilson, in
Microwave & RF magazine touches on the subject ...
 Res-Net Microwave has a complete line of
precision RF & microwave components including attenuators, terminations,
resistors, and diode detectors for commercial, military, and space applications.
Products range from the small flange type to large 2,000 watt connectorized power
attenuators and/or terminations at frequencies up to 26.5 GHz. In-house photo
etch and laser trim capability. Please check out Res-Net Microwave's website
to see how they can help with your current project ...
Tuesday 12
 Saelig Company, Inc., has introduced the OC51T
series of surface mount miniature
oven-controlled crystal oscillators (OCXO) from frequency control specialists
Euroquartz. These square-wave frequency sources are housed in a tiny surface-mount
package and offer optimal frequency stability from a quartz IT-cut crystal. The
OC51T series is available in frequencies from 10 MHz to 40 MHz and comes
in a 9.7 x 7.5 x 4.1 mm miniature 4-pad package with 3.3 and 5.0 V supply
voltage options. With voltage control as standard, OC51T OCXOs deliver a frequency
stability ...
 If you look through the hundreds of
technology-themed comics that appeared various electronics magazines, many deal
with the trials and tribulations of television repair and service. That is because
in the introductory era of TVs, people were, understandably, infatuated with being
able to not just hear but see what was happening in the broadcast. Radios and phonographs
got a lot of coverage as well. Storylines involving a guy on the roof installing
or repairing an antenna were considered particularly funny, especially if it depicted
someone hanging precariously from a lead-in cable or a ladder rung. This comic addresses
the all-too-common situation where sometimes a better picture was obtained using
a makeshift antenna than with a bona fide, professionally designed antenna ...
 ANSYS
is offering this free whitepaper titled, "EMI Scanner."
This capability provides automatic and customizable EMI design rule check of PCBs.
EMI Scanner can quickly identify areas of potential interference on your PCB design
prior to simulation. EMI issues traditionally have been difficult to simulate and
require hours of computational time. This new feature included within ANSYS SIwave
and ANSYS HFSS quickly identifies potential trouble spots that require further investigation.
It eliminates errors and speeds time to market ...
 Astro Pak
on-site and in-plant chemical cleaning
services. On-site and in-shop services in precision cleaning, passivation,
electropolishing, pickling & passivation, oxygen cleaning, derouging, sanitization &
biofilm removal, hydrostatic & pneumatic testing, media blasting, cleanroom
services. Same Day emergency service available. Astro Pak has been added to
the RF Cafe
Metal
Preparation & Finishing Products & Services webpage.
 Thanks to Chuck U. for providing new
Watkins-Johnson (WJ) Tech Notes v10-3 and v15-2, and an improved copy of v5-2.
A lot (but not all) of the TNs that I had or other people sent to me are made from
B&W copies from old scanners, so the quality is not super good. Chuck's versions
appear to be scanned from the originals in color, so they're very good ...
PCB Directory is the largest directory of Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Manufacturers,
Assembly houses, and Design Services on the Internet. We have listed the leading
printed circuit board manufacturers around the world and made them searchable by
their capabilities - Number of laminates used, Board thicknesses supported, Number
of layers supported, Types of substrates (e.g., material, flexible, rigid), Geographical
location, and more ...
 "In recent years, electronic data processing
has been evolving in one direction only: The industry has downsized its components
to the nanometer range. But this process is now reaching its physical limits. Researchers
at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) are therefore exploring
spin waves or so-called magnons - a promising alternative for
transporting information in more compact microchips. Cooperating with international
partners, they have successfully generated and controlled extremely short-wavelength
spin waves. The physicists achieved this feat by harnessing a natural magnetic phenomenon,
as they explain in the journal Nature Nanotechnology ..."
Monday 11
 ConductRF is continually innovating and developing
new and improved solutions for RF Interconnect needs. See the latest
TESTeCON RF
Test Cables for labs. ConductRF makes production and test coax cable assemblies
for amplitude and phased matched VNA applications as well as standard & precision
RF connectors. Over 1,000 solutions for low PIM in-building to choose from in the
iBwave component library. They also provide custom coax solutions for applications
where some standard just won't do. A partnership with Newark assures fast, reliable
access. Please visit ConductRF today to see how they can help your project!
 ANSYS is offering this free whitepaper titled,
"5G and the
Connected Vehicle." Combining fully autonomous (AV) technology with 5G-delivered,
high-speed and low-latency wireless data promises a safer, more user-friendly driving
experience. This impending merger is a result of the developing 5G infrastructure
that will provide reliable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I)
and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity for a variety of new, real-time communication
services. The simulation of these connected systems is key to assessing their performance
and limits before deployment to ensure maximum performance and reliability ...
 Half a decade after Texas Instruments (Jack
Kilby, 1958) and Fairchild Semiconductor (Robert Noyce, 1960) produced the first
semiconductor integrated circuits, General Electric must not have been too confident
that the newfangled technology was going to take hold. This 2-page spread from a
1964 issue of Electronics magazine, promotes their "Compactron"
integrated circuit vacuum tubes. The Compactron is a building block concept where
standardized stages of diodes, triodes, pentodes, etc., are encapsulated in a single
vacuum tube package with necessary input and output pins for connecting external
components. The incentive was smaller volume, lower parts count, lower power supply
current, simpler chassis wiring or circuit board layout, and greater ruggedness.
One source I found showed the availability in 1962 of 24 distinct Compactron models ...
 Call me obsessive, but the switch to and
from DST has bugged me not so much for its existence, but for butthead politicians
that won't keep their hands off of it. A few years ago I wrote a piece titled, "A Graphical Look at
Daylight Saving(s) Time," to deal with it, and then again last year with, "Daylight
Saving(s) Time vs. Standard Time." Research the history of DST and you will
see how often Congress has changed the days - always for good reasons, don't you
know. In 1958, the year of my birth, DST began on April 27th
 (vs. March 10th this year), and ended on September
28th (November 3rd this year) - See 1958 Old Farmer's Almanac pages. What else can
I say on the matter?
 Whitepapers, pamphlets, books, magazines,
and chapter examples listed here are a small sample of a lot of new items that are
offered for FREE through
TradePub. The publishers make them available to qualifying people as a promotional
campaign for their full line of offerings. Whitepaper topics include careers, manufacturing,
and engineering, while magazine titles include
Microwave Engineering Europe,
Electronic Design, and
Microwave Product Digest. Note: I earn a few pennies (literally)
when you download one of these or the many other pubs available, so please help
yourself ...
 "All the amazing carbon-nanotube logic circuits we've heard about over the years have
a dirty secret: Some of those nanotubes are metallic rather than the semiconducting
type that's wanted. This tiny fraction of bad tubes is no big deal for logic circuits.
They add a bit of noise, but nothing the digital nature of logic can't deal with.
The problem has been analog circuits. For analog, that stray metallic nanotube may
as well be basilisk venom. 'A single metallic [carbon nanotube] causes a complete
circuit failure in a simple amplifier,' Aya G. Amer explained to engineers at the
IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference last week in San Francisco ..."
 Axiom Test Equipment
allows you to rent or
buy test
equipment, repair
test equipment, or sell
or trade test equipment. They are committed to providing superior customer service
and high quality electronic test equipment. Axiom offers customers several practical,
efficient, and cost effective solutions for their projects' TE needs and is committed
to providing superior customer service and high quality electronic test equipment.
Please check out Axiom Test Equipment today! ...
Sunday 10
 Since 2000, I have been creating custom
science-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising benefit and pleasure
of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. The jury is out on whether or
not this type of mental challenge helps keep your gray matter from atrophying in
old age, but it certainly helps maintain your vocabulary and cognitive skills at
all ages. A database of thousands of words has been built up over the years and
contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science, physical, astronomy,
mathematics, chemistry, etc. You will never find a word taxing your knowledge of
a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some obscure village in the Andes mountains.
You might, however, encounter the name of a movie start like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical
location like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons which, if you don't already know, might
surprise you ...
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