Homepage Archive - July 2024 (page 3)

Friday the 26th

Thursday the 25th

Wednesday the 24th

Tuesday the 23rd

Monday the 22nd

Thanks to Crane Aerospace & Electronics for Their Support!

Crane Aerospace & Electronics' products and services are organized into six integrated solutions: Cabin Systems, Electrical Power Solutions, Fluid Management Solutions, Landing Systems, Microwave Solutions, and Sensing Components & Systems. Our Microwave Solution designs and manufactures high-performance RF, IF and millimeter-wave components, subsystems and systems for commercial aviation, defense, and space including linear & log amplifiers, fixed & variable attenuators, circulators & isolators, power combiners & dividers, couplers, mixers, switches & matrices, oscillators & synthesizers.

Friday the 19th

Technician's Guide to Good Soldering

As mentioned previously, my professional electronics career began with the U.S. Air Force in late 1978. As an Air Traffic Control Radar Repairman (AFSC3x1), the first phase of training was basic electronics, and a short course on proper soldering techniques. A lot of emphasis was placed on removal of the faulty component without damaging its environment (circuit board, point-to-point chassis connections, etc.), and then to properly install the new component, also without damaging the environment. We learned about forming component leads so as not to stress them mechanically, orientation and placement, cleaning the connections both before and after soldering, and then soldering technique. We also learned how to repair circuit boards (only singe and double sided). As shown in this 1961 Radio-Electronics magazine article entitled "Technician's Guide to Good Soldering," there is a preferred way to tin component...

Microsoft | CrowdStrike Global Failure

You might have noticed earlier today that my RFCafe.com, RFCafe.net, and AirplanesAndRockets.com websites were down (fortunately, they're back up now). According to my web host, it was due to the global outage caused by a CrowdStrike security update affecting Microsoft servers. "Banks, airports, TV stations, health care organizations, hotels, and countless other businesses are all facing widespread IT outages, leaving flights grounded and causing widespread disruption, after Windows machines have displayed errors worldwide. In the early hours of Friday, companies in Australia running Microsoft's Windows operating system started reporting devices showing Blue Screens of Death (BSODs). Shortly after, reports of disruptions started flooding in from around the world, including from the UK, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US: TV station Sky News went offline, and US airlines United, Delta, and American Airlines issued a 'global ground stop' on all flights..."

Bandwidth Compression for Efficient Digital Comms

Bandwidth compression is a major strategy in today's seriously overcrowded communications spectrum. Compression has occurred both through m-ary digital modulation and through downsampling of voice - the latter of which is partially responsible for the crappy quality of cellphones versus old fashioned copper landline telephones. The mathematics of sampling theory are complex to say the least, and its ability to accommodate reliable communications in the midst of incredibly dense interference is amazing. This article appeared in a 1969 issue of Electronics World magazine, near the beginning of digital communications. Probably the earliest form...

EV Motors w/o Rare Earth Elements

"Global efforts to combat climate change hinge on pivoting sharply away from fossil fuels. To do that will require electrifying transportation, primarily by shifting from vehicles with combustion engines to ones with electric drive trains. Such a massive shift will inevitably mean far greater use of electric traction motors, nearly all of which rely on magnets that contain rare earth elements, which cause substantial environmental degradation when their ores are extracted and then processed into industrially useful forms. And for automakers outside of China, there is an additional deterrent: Roughly 90% of processed rare earth elements now come from China, so for these companies, increasing dependence on rare earths means growing vulnerability in critical supply chains. Against this backdrop, massive efforts are underway to design and test advanced electric-vehicle (EV) motors that do not use rare earth elements..."

Case of the Bad Bypass

It seems the title, "Mac's Radio Service Shop" for John Frye's tech tales might have been dropped after Radio & Television News magazine changed its name to Electronics World in May of 1959. The characters' names and roles were all the same, but the title was dropped - probably to not bias the new theme of the magazine. This episode discusses some of the strange ways in which a faulty bypass capacitor can manifest itself. A big part of effective troubleshooting is the experience of "having seen that before." Interestingly, by 1963 vacuum tubes were still in common use, but printed wiring boards had been introduced, along with their propensity for developing broken traces. Also mentioned is why having a safety...

Thanks to TotalTemp Technologies for Continued Support!

TotalTemp Technologies has more than 40 years of combined experience providing thermal platforms. Thermal Platforms are available to provide temperatures between -100°C and +200°C for cryogenic cooling, recirculating & circulating coolers, temperature chambers and temperature controllers, thermal range safety controllers, space simulation chambers, hybrid benchtop chambers, custom systems and platforms. Manual and automated configurations for laboratory and production environments. Please contact TotalTemp Technologies today to learn how they can help your project.

Thursday the 18th

What's Your EQ?

Here we go with three more circuit puzzlers from the November 1961 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. The feature title, "What's Your EQ?," is a play on "IQ," but instead of Intelligence Quotient it means Electronics Quotient. The first challenge is a simple application of series and parallel resistance combinations and Ohm's Law. With the Black Box problem, don't hurt your brain too much. The author's solution is unarguably the simplest. The last, "Impossible Voltages," was devised by TV troubleshooting master Jack Darr, who publishes regular columns on the art/science, so few will probably get it right - unless you have experience with circuit containing complex mixes of resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transformers. It evidently stems from an actual case he worked on. Then again...

Clean Layout Technique

Usually an article about clean layout techniques would be about printed circuit board layout; however, this one refers to chassis layout. Having built many electronics chassis in my days as an electronics technician (prior to earning an engineering degree), I have a great appreciation for a professional-looking job. In fact, I chose to build most of my own prototypes as a design engineer as well. Some of the work done by hobbyists that appear in magazines like QST, Nuts & Volts, and the older titles like Poplar Electronics looks pretty darn nice, sometimes like a commercial product - both for kits and homebrews. There are still a lot of people out there who design and build their own equipment. It's a short article, but worth a quick look...

Who Thought It Would Be This Easy?

This meme appeared online, in response to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle claiming there were no counter-sniper agents on the roof of the building where the 20-year-old would-be assassin managed to navigate because the slope would pose an unacceptable danger to expertly trained federales. I'm guessing she has never been on top of any roof in her entire life - not even at PepsiCo where she previously earned her security credentials. Now, having this inside information about what an effective barrier to armed federal agents looks like, you can easily defend your home against an uninvited visit.

Phase Noise Analysis Tool - Free

This "A Phase Noise Analysis Tool for Sparse Numerical Phase Noise Data," article by Shawn Logan, appears in the July 2024 issue of Microwave Journal magazine. He offers the free software tool described therein. He begins: "This article describes a phase noise analysis tool that creates a numerical model from discrete phase noise data. The tool includes an adaptive algorithm to identify spurious deterministic components in the data. It also creates a physics-based numerical model for the random noise component. Despite its apparent simplicity, analyzing the temporal and Fourier characteristics of an oscillator from its phase noise characteristic presents challenges to designers and those wishing to specify an oscillator for an application..."

Modern Capacitors

Capacitor science has evolved at a very rapid rate since the beginning of electronics and electrical circuitry. Since the early Leyden jar (named after the city where it was invented by Ewald Georg von Kleist) type capacitor, continual advancements in materials for electrolytes and metal plates, as well as in packaging, have led to incredibly high storage density, miniature size, high voltage and current, mounting configuration, low ESR, high frequency operation, price, stability, temperature extreme tolerance, and other parameters. It is always instructive and interesting to read the history that has led to the current state of capacitor art. This 1963 Electronics World magazine article does just that...

RF & Electronics Symbols for Visio

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...

Wednesday the 17th

Nature's Invisible Radio Mirror

The International Geographic Year (IGY), which ended up lasting about 18 months, ran from July 1957 through December 1958. One of its main purposes was to explore and quantify the nature of the electrically conductive region of the Earth's atmosphere, within which and through which future sounding rockets, orbiting satellites, and deep space probes would operate. Sputnik launched at the end of 1957, and Echo launched in mid-1960. Both professional and amateur radio operators had already ascertained significant clues about the ionosphere's characteristics by observing its affects on electromagnetic signals. Direct, in-situ measurements confirmed some beliefs while disproving others. More than 65 years later, we know much significantly more about the ionosphere, having sent thousands of craft - including many manned - into and through it. When this "Nature's Invisible Radio Mirror" article appeared...

Anatech Intros 3 New Ceramic Bandpass Models

Anatech Electronics offers the industry's largest portfolio of high-performance standard and customized RF and microwave filters and filter-related products for military, commercial, aerospace and defense, and industrial applications up to 40 GHz. Three new ceramic bandpass filters have been announced for July 2024 - a 793 MHz bandpass with a 5 MHz bandwidth, an 806 MHz bandpass with a bandwidth of MHz, and an 847 MHz bandpass with a bandwidth of MHz. All have an insertion loss of no more than 4 dB. Custom RF power filter and directional couplers designs can be designed and produced with required connector types when a standard cannot be found...

Short-Cuts in Radio

It is hard to believe in 1936, a time when cars were huge and dashboards had almost nothing behind them except some heater ducts, that access to something as simple as a radio speaker would be difficult. Evidently it could be, according to the first-place winner of "Short-Cut" in Radio-Craft magazine. There was not then the rat's nest of wires, air bags, and control cables found in modern autos. Voluminous trunks back in the day, and engine compartments that you could almost stand in while changing spark plugs (I once had a 6-cylinder, 1970 Chevy truck that I could do that with) were typical. Compare that to modern weenie trunks barely large enough to hold groceries and engine compartments accommodating front-wheel-drive transmissions and dozens of emission-reduction...

Skeptic's View Beaming Power from Space

This whole concept seems so idiotic as to be dismissible out-of-hand. Who legitimately thinks having high power energy beams raining down from space is a good idea? Evidently some people do. Aside from the danger of coming into contact with a beam, surely there will be a major increase in the ambient EM noise floor worldwide, and the massive orbiting structures would further destroy the night sky. It seems anymore if I am watching a particular area of the sky through my telescope, within a few minutes a satellite will pass through the field of view. Per IEEE Spectrum magazine: "The accelerating buildout of solar farms on Earth is already hitting speed bumps, including public pushback against the large tracts of land required and a ballooning backlog of requests for new transmission lines and grid connections. Energy experts have been warning that electricity is likely to get more expensive and less reliable unless renewable power that waxes and wanes under inconstant sunlight and wind..."

Electronic Crosswords, 1963 Electronics World

Fellow cruciverbalists, here from a 1963 edition of Electronics World magazine is an electronics-themed crossword puzzle for your mid-week enjoyment. You can click on the grid for a larger, printable, write-on-able paper version. If you are an avid worker of crosswords and don't already know it, I have created hundreds over the last two decades. Unlike this crossword from Electronics World (and most others for that matter), RF Cafe's technology-themed crossword puzzles have only hand-picked words related to engineering and science...

RF & Electronics Stencils for Visio

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...

Tuesday the 16th

News Briefs - Echo 1 & Moon Bounce

The Echo 1 communications satellite was launched in August of 1960, shortly before this October 1960 Radio-Electronics magazine "News Briefs" item reported on the preparations made for the first message to be bounded off the metallic film covering its spherical shape. The November 1960 issue of Electronics World magazine included an infomercial from Bell Telephone Laboratories claiming success. While waiting for Echo 1 to be placed into orbit, tests were made of the round-trip signaling system by bouncing signals off the moon. The moon, being about a quarter million miles farther away from Echo's orbit and having a much less radio-reflective surface than Echo, resulted in a significantly weaker received signal. That confirmed the system would perform well with the Echo 1 signal. In fact, as mentioned above...

Designing for EMP Resilience

"Electronics are used to communicate with loved ones, manage finances, fly aircraft, autonomously drive us to work, and even save lives. As we achieve further advances in technology, electronics will continue to lead the way in adapting these technologies into new critical systems and processes. The benefits that electronics have provided us are undeniable. However, there is a significant drawback as the implementation of sensitive electronic circuitry continues to increase our vulnerability to the effects of electromagnetic threats such as an EMP attack. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is defined as a high amplitude, short duration, broadband pulse of electromagnetic energy that can have devastating effects on unprotected electronic equipment and systems. EMPs are historically known..."

The Amazing Transistor

Less than half a decade had passed since the invention of the transistor when Radio & Television News magazine editor Oliver Reed wrote this piece extolling the virtues of the transistor and how "it may well revolutionize the entire electronics industry." If you have followed a lot of my postings from the vintage electronics magazines here on RF Cafe, you are well aware that there was a lot of resistance to and doubt about the future of semiconductors. Naysayers had the same kind of reaction to the advent of the horseless carriage (automobile) and locomotive, relativity and quantum mechanics, and even curative medicines. Point contact transistors were still largely in use, but were costly compared to the relative simplicity and low cost of junction transistors once the manufacturing details were worked out - which, as we now know, happened very rapidly. By 1965 the process was so refined that Gordon Moore formulated his eponymous law...

Exodus AMP4022DBP-4KW X-Band Pulse SSPA

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 Advanced Communications' AMP4022DBP-4KW X-Band, 8-12 GHz Pulse Amplifier, which is designed for Pulse/HIRF, EMC/EMI Mil-Std 461/464 and Radar applications. Providing Superb Pulse Fidelity and up to 100 usec pulse widths. Duty cycles to 6% with a minimum 66 dB gain. Available monitoring parameters for Forward/Reflected power in Watts & dBm, VSWR, voltage, current, temperature sensing for outstanding reliability and ruggedness for compact integrations...

A Bonus for CATV Subscribers: Cable FM

According to a plethora of news reports in the last few years (many links links posted on RF Cafe), the "cord cutting" phenomenon is having a significant impact on cable media providers. Consumers long ago grew tired of the monopolistic practices of corporations forcing mostly unwanted programming onto everyone and then trying to convince them that they were getting a good deal if the cost per channel was considered. No one bought that argument, but it didn't matter because there was no competition for service. PUC efforts to force prime line owners to rent out "space" in an attempt to provide competitive products has never worked, but that doesn't keep PUCs from trying (job security). The advent of wideband wireless service has opened...

Promote Your Company on RF Cafe

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...

Monday the 15th

Electronics-Themed Comics

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

Mac's Radio Service Shop: TV and the Little Guy

"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 and/or insidious and/or jealous actors. More than one accomplished businessman has advised me that being more aggressive would pay big dividends...

Australia Debates Going Nuclear

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..."

Our Radio Communications Threatened?

As far as I know, Radio-Electronics magazine editor Hugo Gernsback's fear that intergalactic signals (not from alien life forms) might someday interfere with terrestrial communications has not been a problem. His primary concern is if something like a supernova occurs close enough to Earth to emit sufficient energy in our communications bands to disrupt or even completely prevent radio operation. Such a scenario is possible, if not improbable. If you want to call it good news, the fact is astronomers have so thoroughly scanned, analyzed, and cataloged the heavens that if there was a star on the verge of going supernova, we would know about it. Even if such an occurrence is imminent but the star has not been directly observed because the electromagnetic energy has not yet reached us, signs of the event would be detectable - like a disturbance in the force along its path leading to Earth. Whilst on the subject of novae...

RF & Electronics Stencils for Visio

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...

Electronics-Themed Comics

These three electronics-themed comics appeared in the February 1953 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. The first one showing the television repairman employing contortionist technique in order to tweak the picture is pretty good. I have seen an advertisement in one of these magazines offering a deflection coil alignment signal generator box that had a mirror mounted inside the cover specifically for doing the job that tech is doing in the comic. Another comic no doubt hit home with in-home servicemen of the day; at least the owner was honest. The other plays off a brand of humor common in the day that demonstrated the public's fascination with all the newfangled technology showing up every day...

Withwave Precision SMPS Adapters

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 s Precision SMPS Adapters are between-series types designed based on precision microwave interconnection technologies for materials and machining. These precision microwave connector interfaces ensure excellent performance up to 67 & 110 GHz, over a temperature range of -65 to +165° C. Typical VSWR is DC to 67 GHz: 1.30:1, DC to 100 GHz: 1.50:1, and DC to 110 GHz: 1.80:1...

Cable TV - Where It Is & Where It's Going

According to this 1972 article in Popular Electronics magazine, cable television began around 1950. The system was very different that what we have nearly 70 years later. The familiar acronym CATV does not stand for CAble TeleVision, but rather Community Access TeleVision. CATV, as originally implemented, was a means of bringing broadcast TV to areas either too remote or too shielded from over-the-air (OTA) RF signals to provide good signal reception. Depending on the need, CATV could range from re-broadcasting of signals into targeted areas or sending signals through cable (originally unshielded) to individual homes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Thwart Semiconductor Espionage

The semiconductor industry's technological advances make it a prime target for espionage, facilitating protective measures and design strategies to protect intellectual property. While the semiconductor industry continues to become more lucrative, with revenue projected to increase to $630 billion in 2024, it's also a prime target for espionage and theft. Several trends are influencing the espionage landscape, including an increased focus on cyber and economic espionage and state-sponsored activities. Cyberattacks, hacking, and other sophisticated techniques have also evolved and become more prevalent. For instance, the U.S. government continues to uphold a ban on importing and exporting artificial-intelligence (AI) chips to China...

Strange Substance Set to Change Technology

Researchers discovered that nickel iodide exhibits exceptional magnetoelectric coupling, making it highly suitable for use in high-speed and energy-efficient technologies such as magnetic memories and quantum computing. The layered multiferroic material nickel iodide may be the best candidate yet for devices such as magnetic computer memory that are extremely fast and compact. Multiferroics and Nickel Iodide For decades, scientists have been studying a group of unusual materials called multiferroics that could be useful for a range of applications including computer memory, chemical sensors and quantum computers. In a study published in Nature, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Max...

Breakthrough in Laser Nanofabrication

Researchers have developed a novel technique for nanofabrication within silicon that allows for the creation of buried nanostructures with feature sizes down to 100 nm. By utilizing spatially-modulated laser pulses, they have achieved unprecedented control and precision in creating nanophotonic elements, offering significant potential for advancements in electronics and photonics. A new method enables precise nanofabrication inside silicon using spatial light modulation and laser pulses, creating advanced nanostructures for potential use in electronics...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Promote Your Company on RF Cafe

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...

RF Cascade Workbook

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...

RF & Electronics Stencils for Visio

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...

RF & Electronics Symbols for Office™

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 & Electronics Symbols for Visio

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...

Get Your Custom-Designed RF Cafe Gear!

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...

Espresso Engineering Workbook™ for Excel

The newest release of RF Cafe's spreadsheet (Excel) based engineering and science calculator is now available - Espresso Engineering Workbook™. Among other additions, it now has a Butterworth Bandpass Calculator, and a Highpass Filter Calculator that does not just gain, but also phase and group delay! Since 2002, the original Calculator Workbook has been available as a free download. Continuing the tradition, RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook™ is also 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 (VBA) 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...

How to Target RFCafe.com for Your Google Ads

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 about0k per year (in eight locations on each page, with >17k pages)...

Update Articles

June 1969 P-E, Kohler p45

August 1969, Hobnobbing Harbaugh p68

New Articles

5/31/2024  Radio-Electronics June 1968 "20 Unijunction Transistor Applications Part 1"

5/31/2024 Radio-Electronics June 1968 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

5/30/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1968 "News Briefs"

5/29/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1962 "Precision Apparatus Company Test Equipment Ad"

5/27/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1962 "What's Your EQ?"

5/27/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1962 "Traffic Jam Ahead on Short Waves"

5/27/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1962 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

5/27/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1962 "Telstar - Giant Step into the Future"

5/27/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1962 "News Briefs"

5/27/2024 Radio-Electronics June 1967 "R-E Puzzler"

5/24/2024 Radio-Electronics June 1967 "News Briefs"

5/24/2024 Radio-Electronics June 1967 "Our Electronic Future"

5/24/2024 36 Radio-Electronics May 1967 "Comsat: Communication in the Space Age"

5/23/2024 Radio-Electronics May 1967 "What's Your EQ?"

5/23/2024 Radio-Electronics May 1967 "World's Toughest R/C Job - Guidance in Outer Space"

5/22/2024 Radio-Electronics May 1967 "News Briefs"

5/22/2024 Radio-Electronics May 1967 "R-E Puzzler"

5/22/2024 Radio-Electronics May 1967 "Imaginary Numbers Are a Cinch - Part 1"

5/20/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1968 "Imaginary Numbers Are a Cinch - Part 2"

5/20/2024 Radio-Electronics December 1967 & January 1968 "Comics"

5/20/2024 Radio-Electronics December 1967 "Rotary Stepping Switches - They're Everywhere"

5/16/2024 Radio-Electronics November 1967 "What You Should Know About X-Ray Radiation in TV Sets"

5/7/2024 Radio-Electronics November 1967 "Rotary Stepping Switches - They're Everywhere"

5/7/2024 Radio-Electronics November 1967 "Hugo Gernsback Obituary"

5/7/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1962 "Our Patent Problem - A Proposed Solution"

5/3/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1962 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

5/3/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1962 "Mallory - Tips for Technicians" Ready 5/3/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1962 "News Briefs"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1962 "What's Your EQ?"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics July1962 "Handling the Metric Prefixes"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1962 "Bell Telephone Laboratories­­­"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1962 "News Briefs­­­"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1962 "Can You Name These Strange Electronic Effects?"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1962 "Electronic Navigation in Flight"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1962 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

5/1/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

4/30/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "Amphenol Polyfoam® Coaxial Cable"

4/30/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "­­­News Briefs"

4/30/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "Seeing is Believing in Cathode Research"

4/30/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "Electronic Cooling & Heating"

4/29/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "Future of Service Industry"

4/26/2024 Radio-Electronics January 1962 "What's Your EQ?"

4/26/2024 Radio-Electronics February 1962 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

4/25/2024 Radio-Electronics February 1962 "News Briefs"

4/25/2024 Radio-Electronics February 1962 "Bell Telephone Laboratories Ad"

4/25/2024 Radio-Electronics February 1962 "FM Antennas for Better Listening"

4/25/2024 Radio-Electronics February 1962 "What's Your EQ?"

4/17/2024 Radio-Electronics March 1962 "What's Your EQ?"

4/17/2024 Radio-Electronics March 1962 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

4/17/2024 Radio-Electronics March 1962 "News Briefs"

4/17/2024 Radio-Electronics March 1962 "Electronic Careers in the Navy"

4/16/2024 Radio-Electronics March 1962 "Unexplored Electron Gap"

4/16/2024 Additional Text for Radio-Electronics June 1961 "What's Your EQ?"

4/16/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1961 "News Briefs­"

4/16/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1961 "RCA Electron Gun"

4/16/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1961 "Comics"

4/16/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1961 "Clear Road for FM Stereo"

4/16/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1961 "Radio Power"

4/15/2024 Radio-Electronics July 1961 "What's Your EQ?"

4/15/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1961 "News Briefs"

4/12/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1961 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

4/12/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1961 "Howard W. Sams & Co. Photofact Ad"

4/9/2024 Radio-Electronics August 1961 "What's Your EQ?"

4/9/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1961 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

4/9/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1961 "News Briefs"

4/9/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1961 "What Did de Forest Really Invent?"

4/9/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1961 "D. Van Nostrand Company International Dictionary of Physics and Electronics"

4/5/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1961 "What's Your EQ?"

4/4/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "Universal Replacement Parts Kit from Standard Kollsman Industries"

4/4/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

4/4/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "Sporadic-E Opens New Horizons"

4/3/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "Radio Shack Realistic Kits Ad"

4/3/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "Bell Telephone Laboratories Ad"

4/3/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "News Briefs"

4/3/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1961 "What's Your EQ?"

4/3/2024 Radio-Electronics November 1961 "Howard W. Sams Photofact Ad"

4/2/2024 Radio-Electronics November 1961 "News Briefs"

4/2/2024 Radio-Electronics November 1961 "New Link in US Defense - Pacific Scatter"

4/1/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1960 "Magic Carpet Antenna Ad"

3/28/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1960 "News Briefs"

3/28/2024 Radio-Electronics September 1960 "Electronics-Themed Comics"

3/28/2024 Radio-Electronics October 1960 "Electronics-Themed Comics"