On a daily basis, I scan the Internet for engineering and science headline news that I believe is of interest to RF Cafe visitors. Items that are not likely to appeal to most people are filtered out, while some off-beat type headlines that are good for a chuckle if nothing else are included. Since "all the news that is fit to print" is not always printed by the mainstream outlets, maybe we in the RF world need a venue of our own to publicize noteworthy tidbits.

So, this space is dedicated to information that will (hopefully) be submitted by you, the visitors. Send me an e-mail with your story, and I will include it

here if it is not known to be publicized elsewhere. News topics can be personal, corporate, or of general interest. Because I do not have a team of lawyers to fight liability lawsuits, unverifiable reports can only be printed with the company's name and product number being redacted.

October 2007

This tidbit was received from an RF Cafe visitor and concerns a well-known company in Ohio.

Well, you might be interested in the <company name> scenario, especially if you have a column that is devoted to industry reports, outside of official, and often misleading official Press Releases.

<company name> was in financial trouble this past summer for a variety of reasons, so they laid off about 12% of their <city> Ohio workforce, many like myself who had seniority. The reasons are many, but one of the surprising changes they made was to raise the price of their famous 2-30 MHz Model XX elements for the ham band (X elements) from $92 to $163 each.

Many, including myself, believe this is due to financial problems and possibly a planned shift away from their historic Amateur Radio market. I was the only amateur radio operator in their sales department and from the inside I can tell you that there was little talk about this decent market.

Interestingly enough, <company name> has been developing a hand-held Spectrum Analyzer for 4 years now, called the <product name>. It was supposed to come out 2 years ago and they still have not introduced it yet. There have been many design problems as well as R&S, Anritsu and many others already introduced units that exceed their 4 year old design's specs.

In the nutshell, it appears things are not going well for the 65 year old company in <city name>. Too bad, but time marches on.