|
 I have written
before about the love-hate relationship a lot of the buying public had with
television and radio repair shops and repairmen - similar to car owners and
mechanics. Lots of jokes and skits (what today is termed a "meme") were created
back in the heyday of in-home entertainment to make light of the situation.
These four
electronics-themed comics from a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine are typical examples. The one from page 111 alludes to an issue that
would almost never be seen today on a TV, unless maybe the AC power supply was
on the fritz. A composite analog broadcast signal contained vertical and
horizontal sync[ronization] components which...
 "Electrostatic
discharge (ESD) protection is a significant concern in the chemical and electronics
industries. In electronics, ESD often causes integrated circuit failures due to
rapid voltage and current discharges from charged objects, such as human fingers
or tools. With the help of 3D printing techniques, researchers at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory (LLNL) are 'packaging' electronics with printable elastomeric
silicone foams to provide both mechanical and electrical protection of sensitive
components. Without suitable protection, substantial equipment and component..."
 Mr. Bob Davis, a seemingly endless
source of little known and/or long forgotten
historical radio and television
technical trivia, apprised me of this short segment from the 1960s Dragnet
television series, starring Sgt. Joe Friday. It features a guy, who turns out to
be a ... well, I won't spoil it for you ... who proudly professes his thirty
year career as a radio repairman. "...started back in the days of the old Crosleys, Atwater-Kents, Farnsworths.
Those were real radios, well built, well designed. Nothing cheap about any of
them. They didn't have transistors in those days, just tubes as big as light
bulbs. That meant heavy chassis, heavy transformers, and we didn't fix them by
simply slapping in a new part, either. We fixed the old parts. I wish...
 A new word has been added to my personal
lexicon: "sphenoidal."
Author John Kraus used it to describe the wedge shape of a
corner reflector. The Oxford Dictionary defines "sphenoid" thusly: "A compound
bone that forms the base of the cranium, behind the eye and below the front part
of the brain. It has two pairs of broad lateral "wings" and a number of other projections,
and contains two air-filled sinuses." This "square corner" configuration - essentially
a "V" shape, is shown to exhibit up to 10 dB of gain while being relatively (compared
to a parabolic reflector) insensitive...
 Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity,
published in 1915, fundamentally reshaped the way scientists understand gravity,
space, and time. It extended his 1905 special theory of relativity, which described
how the laws of physics are consistent for all observers in uniform motion and how
light's speed is constant in a vacuum. However, the special theory did not address
accelerating reference frames or gravitational forces. Einstein's general theory
tackled these limitations by proposing that gravity is not a force in the traditional
sense, but rather a curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy. This profound
insight would alter the course of 20th-century physics, influencing cosmology, black
hole theory...
 "The growing use of artificial intelligence
(AI)-based models is placing greater demands on the electronics industry, as many
of these models require significant storage space and computational power. Engineers
worldwide have thus been trying to develop neuromorphic computing systems that could
help meet these demands, many of which are based on memristors.
Memristors are electronic components that regulate the flow of electrical current
in circuits while also 'remembering' the amount of electrical charge that previously
passed through them. These components could replicate the function of biological..."
 Reading through the news items in the vintage
electronics magazines provides a mixture of important historical facts and figures
along with some predictions on the future of the industry. Some of the predictions
turn out to be amazingly accurate, even though in retrospect they might seem obvious.
Take, for example, Sylvania VP Dr. Robert Castor's foresight about how, "the future
growth of the semiconductor industry lies in a major switch from the production
of individual components to solid-state subsystems that can be used as building
blocks in electronic designs." "Well of course," you might be temped to say; however,
at the time there were still significant hurdles to overcome related to material
purity, wafer size, photolithography...
 Reactel has become one of the industry leaders
in the design and manufacture of RF and microwave filters, diplexers, and sub-assemblies. They
offer the generally known tubular, LC, cavity, and waveguide designs, as well as
state of the art high performance suspended substrate models. Through a continuous
process of research and development, they have established a full line of filters
of filters of all types - lowpass, highpass, bandpass, bandstop, diplexer, and more.
Established in 1979. Please contact Reactel today to see how they might help your
project.
 2012 came and went more than a decade ago.
The date was 50 years in the future back in 1962 when Radio-Electronics
magazine editor Hugo Gernsback asked industry leaders to cogitate on possibilities
of the
state of electronics in 2012. Let's see how they did. One guy predicted our
communications would be in the 100 THz to 1,500 THz band, using 2 decimeter
antennas. Nope. Another believed we would be communicating with aliens on a regular
basis. A military dude partly hit the mark by predicting 2- and 3-year-olds would
be sitting in front of "televideo screens" (cellphones) learning Esperanto and "other
basic studies." Bell Labs believed most audiovisual material, along with commerce,
would be done electronically; i.e., the World Wide Web. I'm not quite sure how to
interpret the IT&T guy's prediction of replacing microwave space transmission
with light wavelength waveguide transmission. Seems bassackward to me...
 Here is a unique approach to discouraging scam
callers. A lot of scam calls are themselves AI, so can one AI detect and aviod another?
"Gangster
Granny! Meet Daisy: O2's new weapon against scammers. O2 has unveiled its new,
unique weapon in its fight against scammers: Daisy, an AI-powered assistant designed
to keep fraudsters talking and waste their time. As part of Virgin Media O2's 'Swerve
the Scammers' campaign, Daisy's mission is to distract scammers with realistic,
rambling conversations, helping protect potential victims while raising awareness
about fraud. Her lifelike conversations, peppered with stories about family or hobbies
like knitting, have kept fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes..."
Albert Einstein's
special theory of relativity, a milestone in physics, transformed our understanding
of space, time, and energy (mass). The theory, published in 1905, stemmed from Einstein's
efforts to resolve inconsistencies in classical physics, specifically between Newtonian
mechanics and electromagnetism as formulated by James Clerk Maxwell. By reconceiving
space and time as interconnected and relative to the observer's frame of reference,
Einstein established a framework that had profound implications for science and
technology. To understand how this groundbreaking idea emerged, one must consider...
 Werbel Microwave's Model WM2PD-0.5-26.5-S
is a wideband 2-way in-line power splitter covering of 500 MHz to 26.5 GHz with
excellent return loss, low insertion loss, and high isolation performance. With
ultrawideband performance, amplitude balance is typically 0.24 dB and phase
unbalance is typically 2.6°. Insertion loss is low for the bandwidth, coming in
at a typical 1.2 dB above 3 dB splitting loss. Return loss 16 dB
typical. Isolation 18 dB typical. The device is precision-assembled and tested
in the USA...
 If you wanted a career as an
electronics technician at the end of World War II, the world was your oyster
- so to speak. Electronics and communications trade magazines and publications like
Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Science ran a plethora of ads
monthly that offered unlimited opportunity to men seeking a career servicing the
burgeoning market of postwar technological marvels. Even though the enclosures were
not yet being marked with "No user serviceable parts inside," that fact was most
people were not qualified - nor did they want - to monkey with the guts of radios,
televisions, and other household appliances... (I provide a simulation to show the
true zener diode circuit output)...
 Take time out of your busy workday to look
at these three
electronics-themed comics from the February 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics..
The page 32 comic reminds me of sometime in the late 1970s while working as
an electrician (prior to enlisting in the USAF) when I was doing side jobs, and
a guy had me wire up a receptacle for his big 25" screen (CRT) which he had mounted
in a wall, with the chassis sticking out the back. It was in an upstairs room in
a Cape Cod style house with lots of room behind the wall. He was a "man cave" pioneer
with a full suite of high quality audiovisual equipment - even a Betamax machine!
The page 81 comic exhibits the irony that would have existed in the day if
American-made electronics equipment had been promoted in Japan, which they probably
were not. In 1962, Japanese...
 Admittedly, I mostly posted this because
of the drawing. "While
direct-to-cell (D2C) satellite communications were a big topic at the recent
Brooklyn 6G Summit, the technology is already here, well before 6G's anticipated
2030 arrival. Apple and Google already offer D2C emergency messaging, and Starlink,
T-Mobile and others are anticipated to follow. D2C satellite communications will
be well established when 6G arrives. The 3GPP froze a 5G specification for Non-Terrestrial
Networks (NTN) in Release 17 in March 2022, which means that NTN-compatible chips
and components should be available now or soon. SpaceX has reduced the cost..."
 The subtitle of this article from a 1971
issue of Popular Electronics magazine, "From
Quackery to Speculation to Programmed People," could to some extent still be
applicable even though the author evidently meant to put an end to the "quackery"
and "speculation" part of it. Indeed, a lot of advancement has been made in the
fields of electrostimulation of weak or/or paralyzed muscles, healing of certain
types of soft and hard tissues, suppressing sporadic muscle twitching and epileptic
seizures, and other malady diagnosis and relief. Specifically tuned microwave frequencies
have proven useful in healing and symptom relief as well. As with most articles
on medical procedures, I cringe at some...
Anatech Intros 3
Filter Models for November
 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
C-band cavity bandpass filter models have been added to the product line, including
a 4994 MHz BPF with a 50 MHz bandwidth, a 4950 MHz BPF with a 10 MHz
bandwidth, and a 5785 MHz BPF with a 100 MHz bandwidth. Custom RF power
filter and directional couplers designs can be designed and produced with required
connector types when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements are such that
a custom...
• 5G
Is 42% of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in 2024
• Robert Dennard,
DRAM Pioneer, Dies at 91
• TSMC's Energy
Demand Drives Taiwan's Geopolitical Future
• Semiconductor
Packaging Market on 5.6% CAGR 'Till 2028
• Altering
Asteroid Trajectories with Nuclear X-Rays
 Albert Einstein, one of the most renowned
physicists in history, was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg,
part of the German Empire. His father, Hermann Einstein, was an engineer and salesman
who ran an electrochemical factory, and his mother, Pauline Koch, managed the household
and supported her son's education. Einstein had one sister, Maja, who was born in
1881 and with whom he had a lifelong close relationship. Einstein's extended family
included several relatives who would play various roles in his life, both personally
and professionally. His early family life was comfortable, though his parents moved
frequently as they sought economic stability. Hermann Einstein's business ventures
had varying success, and eventually, the family moved to Italy in 1894...
 Here is the second part of a series of articles
about
stepping switches appearing in 1967 issues of Radio-Electronics magazine.
A standard (at the time) dial rotary phone was used as a familiar example in the
part one. It delivers a single pulse for each number / letter set from 1, 2 (ABC),
3 (DEF), through 9 (WXY), 0 (Operator). On some phones, you can hear the clacking
of the switch contacts as the spring-loaded dial rotates from the selected number
back to home position. The stepping action as the result of dialing occurs at the
telephone system switching and call routing equipment at central locations. There,
stepping switches increment with each pulse received, and when the full number of
pulse sets have arrived, the circuit is complete and the call put through to ring
the phone...
 "Results are published, and the numbers
are in. They paint a picture of a very active
2024 ARRL
Field Day. Nearly 1.3 million contacts were reported during the 24-hour event.
That is up from 2023's 1.25 million contacts. That's likely indicative of the continued
rise of Solar Cycle 25 leading up to the event, but more people also participated
this year. Entries were received from all 85 ARRL and Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC)
sections, as well as from 27 different countries from outside the US and Canada.
'It is encouraging to see a rise in participation year to year,' said ARRL Contest
Program Manager Paul Bourque, N1SFE. 'ARRL Field Day is amateur radio's premier
event, and the hams turned out for it..."
 After searching for the first mention of
Nikola Tesla in U.S. newspapers, I performed a similar search on
Albert
Einstein, again using editions available in the NewspaperArchive.com database.
I was utterly surprised to find it in a 1919 issue of the The New York Times.
His theory of Special Relativity was published in 1905 and his theory of General
Relativity was published in 1915, so it took The NY Times four years to
mention it. There is a reference to Dr. Einstein's' work on relativity in a 1915
edition of The Manitoban, from Winnipeg, Canada. The NY Times article
is an actual interview with Albert Einstein, wherein at one point it is stated that
there were perhaps only a dozen people in the world at that time who understood
general relativity. Interestingly, Einstein uses the term "difform motion" to describe...
 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 model
AMP2103P-LC, dual-mode (CW & pulse) amplifier covering 800 to 3200 MHz.
1000 watt peak pulse power, or 500 watts CW. Ideal for automotive pulse/radar
EMC-testing & commercial applications. Pulse widths to 560 μsec, duty cycle
to 10%, 60 dB gain, and outstanding pulse fidelity. Monitoring parameters for
forward/reflected power in watts and dBm, VSWR, voltage, current, and temperature,
with unprecedented reliability and ruggedness in a compact 7U chassis...
 Sally Mason was the soldering iron-wielding
heroette (heroine sounds too much like the narcotic) of Nate Silverman's "Sally,
the Service Maid" series that ran in Radio-Craft magazine during the
years of World War II. As I noted in the previous episode, many of the nation's
women were left behind to run their husband's, father's and/or son's electronics
sales and repair businesses when they went off to save the world from aggressive
Communists, Socialists, Maoists, Nazis, and other nasty types. Some of those ladies
had already become very adept at troubleshooting, component replacement, and aligning
radio and television sets, while some were left to learn at the School of Hard Knocks.
Sally's father, Gus Mason...
 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.
 The AN/MPN-13|14 mobile radar system I worked
on while enlisted in the U.S. Air Force was designed and fielded around the time
this
Electronic Navigation in Flight article appeared in a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. It had been upgraded a few times by 1979 when I was in Air Traffic Control
Radar Repairman technical school at Keesler AFB, Mississippi; however, the original
system did not featured a Doppler capability. The fully RF analog system could not
provide air traffic controllers with speed data, but it did use physical mercury
delay lines to provide a stationary target (ground, and to some degree, rain, clutter)
cancellation by inverting and summing a real-time radar...
 Decisions, decisions, decisions. As the
title states, color television manufacturers were, in 1965 when this Electronics
magazine article was published, finding themselves between a rock and a hard place,
as the saying goes, regarding a change
from vacuum tubes to transistors. The buying public (aka consumers) had mixed
emotions about the newfangled semiconductors based at least partly on bad information
about transistors. Transistors had been designed in various circuits for a decade
and a half and were gaining rapidly in performance and reliability. The price was
coming down, but as reported here, still cost $5 to $10 apiece compared to a $1
vacuum tube. Company management needed to decide whether to delay implementing the
new engineering and production methods required to deal with transistors...
 "At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty
banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in New York City to call
to order a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was no
ordinary gathering. The AIEE had decided to conduct a live national meeting connecting
more than 5,000 attendees in
eight cities across four time zones. More than a century before Zoom made virtual
meetings a pedestrian experience, telephone lines linked auditoriums from coast
to coast. AIEE members and guests in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York,
Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco had telephone receivers at their
seats so they could listen..."
|
 A few months ago I posted a write-up on the vintage
Alliance Model U-100 Tenna-Rotor that I installed in the garage attic with a
Channel Master CM5020 VHF / UHF / FM antenna atop it. There are not many television
antenna manufacturers around anymore; their numbers have been decreasing continually
due first to the advent of cable-delivered TV and now with Internet-delivered TV. The
"cord-cutter" movement is helping to give over-the-air television broadcasting a rebirth
due to the outrageous cost of subscription programming. Anyone contemplating installing
a television antenna today has the same concerns as those back in 1959 when this Channel
Master advertisement appeared in Electronics World magazine - gain, directivity,
bandwidth, ruggedness...
 Here are a few more
electronics conundrums with which to exercise the old noodle. These are puzzlers
from a 1959 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, but at least one of
them (#4) will likely prove to be a real stickler unless you have seen a similar
resistor mesh problem before (see my solution for the resistor cube equivalent resistance).
There are no tube circuits to use as an excuse for not attempting them - just resistors,
batteries, switches, meters, a motor, and a couple light bulbs. All four would be
fair game to present to an interviewee to see where he/she stands on basic circuit
analysis...
 This Popular Electronics article
by at-the-time editor Oliver Ferrell offers recommendations on how to spot a good
deal in
grab-bag assortments of electronics components when shopping for good deals,
whether it be at a retail outlet, flea market, or Hamfest. The advice is a useful
today as it was then. Little did anyone know that half a century later there would
be another source for cheap parts that would dwarf what had previously been available
- the Internet, and in particular, eBay. Mr. Ferrell mentions the term "radio
row," which was a downtown area in many cities where surplus equipment dealers peddled
their wares. In the 1950's and 60's, a lot of it was left over from wars, and included
not just electronics parts but also mechanical gear. Two of the more famous "radio
row" areas were in New York City and Tokyo, which were covered in two other articles
entitled "Radio a la Cortlandt Street!," and "Akihabara Tokyo's 'Radio Row'," respectively...
 Here for your enjoyment during another workweek
are three more vintage
electronics-themed comics - this time from a 1966 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine. The "quarter-inch Mylar" referenced in the title is recorder tape used
in the very popular machines of the day. Not only were serious" music aficionados
huge proponents of the medium, but so were the many recreational users. There was
a sort of mystique involved with being able to record and instantly play back even
normal conversations - sort of like with videos these days, except there is no mystique
anymore because most users couldn't care less about the technology which enables
their proclivities. The magazines of the era were full of stories on tape recorders
and advertisements for buying them ...
 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 ...
 Sylvania was yet another bedrock American
technology innovation company that in the last few decades has been bought by foreign
concerns*, while retaining at least some semblance of its original identity - mostly
for brand loyalty purposes. Along with pioneering lighting products, Sylvania produced
vacuum tubes and semiconductors for use in its line of radios and televisions. Sylvania
engineers published a lot of articles in electronics magazines introducing transistors
and early integrated circuits to laymen, hobbyists, and professionals, some of whom
were fledglings to the field and others who were transitioning tubes types. This
particular article suggests methods for verifying operation of PNP and NPN
bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) and for troubleshooting basic circuits ...
 This story reads like an infomercial for
IBM, which it probably is. Of course infomercials had not been invented by 1957,
so IBM was ahead of its time. The answer to the article's title, "How
Far Can You Go in Electronics Without a Degree?" was the same 55 years ago
as it is today: As far as your intellect and ambition will take you. Back then,
as with today, few people could rise to the level of design engineer without a
college degree. However, there are many aspects of electronics that requires no
formal education at all if you possess the requisite skills. I never have bought
into the feel-good lie about anyone being able to be whatever he or she wants to
be. Some people simply cannot achieve the mastery necessary to do a particular
job...
 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 about 225,000k per
year (in eight locations on each page, with >17k pages)...
 For the last few years I have been scanning
and posting Radio Service Data Sheets like this one featuring the
Belmont 4-Tube Model 408 (Series A) Battery "Farm" Superhet radio in graphical
format, rather than run OCR on them to separate the textual content. It appeared
in the October 1938 issue of Radio-Craft magazine. There are still many people who
restore and service these vintage radios, and often it can be difficult or impossible
to find schematics and/or tuning information. No example of this radio could be
found on the WWW. I keep a running list of all data sheets at the bottom of the
page to facilitate a search...
 Heathkit's claim to fame was that it was
able to offer user-assembled kits of high quality electronic products at a price
lower than what equivalent factory assembled equivalents would cost. While that
is probably generally the case, it is difficult to gauge what the relative quality
really is. Some of the kits were easy to assemble for even people with little experience,
but a good portion of them required familiarity with soldering and how electronics
were put together. The instructions provided were very thorough, complete with photos
and drawings of how each step should look. In fact, according to a 1972 installment
of Mac's Service Shop entitled "Philosophy of a Kit Manufacturer," every Heathkit
kit instruction booklet goes through a rigorous cycle of writing, testing, and rewriting
before being released for production...
 Way back in the 1980s while working at Westinghouse
Oceanic Davison in Annapolis, Maryland, an engineer who knew I had recently obtained
a 1941 Crosley Model 03CB console style radio generously gave me his
B&K Dyna-Quik Model 650 Vacuum Tube Tester. It is a very comprehensive portable
tester used by many professional radio and television servicemen. My tester also
had the Model 510 Accessory Socket Panel that added an ability to test 50% more
tube types. One indication that it is one of the later model tube testers is the
inclusion of a transistor testing socket. Unlike testing vacuum tubes, all of which
plugged into sockets to make them easily replaceable, testing a transistor or solid
state diode required unsoldering or clipping the device out of the circuit and then
soldering back in either the verified still good device or a replacement. It was
one of the reasons electronics servicing people eschewed the adoption of semiconductors...
 When preparing this webpage from the 1982
Heathkit Christmas catalog, I decided it was a good excuse to clean and re-calibrate
my personal
IM-17 Utility Solid-State Voltmeter. It is still in good-as-new condition. The
accuracy and precision is very good, with consistent meter readings when changing
scales. The manual suggests using a 1.5 V dry cell battery for the DC calibration
and the 120 V wall socket for the AC calibration, if no better sources exist.
A kit-built 10 MHz bandwidth oscilloscope I assembled many moons ago specified
the same two types of calibration sources. Fortunately, I had sources a little better
than a battery and a wall socket, and unlike the earlier exercises, I now have a
good quality digital multimeter to verify the voltage levels (and better sources).
The IM-17 is a strange beast in that the AC and resistance measurements...
 Since 2000, I have been creating custom
engineering- and 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 ...
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (2/19 - 2/23)
"Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives page
for help). For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create
a new technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created related
to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. Enjoy...
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (7/9 - 7/13)
"Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of all the avid
cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new technology-themed crossword puzzle
using only words from my custom-created related list to engineering, science, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. You will never find among the words names of politicians,
mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might,
however, see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly related
to this puzzle's theme, such as Hedy Lamar or the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Enjoy!...
 News headlines are filled with stories about
how certain segments of the society are routinely excluded from participation in
activities which have been historically 'dominated' by adult white males. Not only
have 'outsiders' been prevented from engagement, but, you would likely conclude
based on the invective words that drip from the pens and/or mouths of those reporting,
tireless campaigns have been mounted to see to it that exclusiveness continues.
I will agree that there have been instances of preferential treatment by some groups
and people, but I also know many attempts have been made over the decades to attract
other than white males into all kinds of activities normally associated with white
males. In fact, it is not a stretch to say many specialty groups go out of their
way to make a big deal out of non-typical persons interested in joining. Here is
one of many examples that appeared in a 1935 (yes, 1935) edition of Short Wave Craft
where the editor, Hugo Gernsback,
encouraged women and girls to get involved in amateur radio...
 Here are a couple more
electronics-themed comics from a 1940-era issue of Radio News magazine.
The scenarios depicted in these old comics are often based on the real-life experiences
of radio and electronics servicemen. No doubt many guys got clobbered by high voltage
or deafening audio when a customer decided to power up a television or radio while
being worked on in the home. When this comic with the police car radio appeared
in 1940, it had only been a decade since the first 2-way radios were being installed
in patrol cars (see "A New Arm of the Law"). A huge list of technology-themed comics
is listed at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!
 Here is the second of a two-part article on
operational amplifiers (opamps). Part 1 appeared in the August 1971 issue of
Popular Electronics, which I have and will post soon (it still needs to be OCR'ed). Fortunately,
you don't need it to find Part 2 useful. Barely half a decade had passed since Bob
Widlar introduced his μA709 integrated circuit operational amplifier. Clunky
attempts at vacuum tube operational amplifiers were introduced in the 1950's,
but they were not overly popular. Early bipolar junction transistor opamps
offered a significant reduction in size, weight, and power consumption over
tubes, but did not have as high of an input impedance, had a lower
gain-bandwidth product, and handled much lower power levels, which relegated
their use to IF and baseband circuits...
 QST did a regular series of articles
titled "Hams in
Combat" during World War II. This story is unique in nature in that it tells
of a newspaperman-turned-soldier who, in the story writer's mind, would have been
the most suited for the job of author. It tells a far different story of the South
Pacific than we were treated to in weekly episodes of McHale's Navy! "Had this story
been written by the man who should have written it - Capt. William H. Graham, W9BNC
- it would have been one of the greatest "Hams in Combat" yarns ever told in these
pages. But Bill Graham never got around to writing his story. He was too intensely
occupied with the living of it - too keenly aware of the new paragraph... Note the
letter I received from Capt. Graham's great grandson.
 The
stacked halo antenna is a compact configuration for obtaining a nearly omnidirectional
radiation pattern with nearly 8 dB of gain. An ideal half-wave dipole antenna provides
2.15 dB, so adding 5 to 6 more decibels by merely stacking two halo antennas (which
are essentially curved half-waves) might seem like getting more than the sum of the parts.
That extra gain is obtained by concentrating the vertical radiation pattern lower to
the horizon as compared to a straight half-wave, even though the horizontal pattern loses
a bit of gain contribution from the translation to a nearly omnidirectional nature. There
is nowadays a plethora of information available on the Internet regarding stacked halo
antennas, but in 1965, this Popular Electronics article...
 This is another of the articles written
about
Lee de Forest that appeared in the January 1947 issue of Radio-Craft
magazine, in celebration of the 40-year anniversary since the industry-changing
Audio vacuum tube was invented. Author George H. Clark, a member of the first "radio-man"
to be graduated from the Massachusetts of Technology (MIT), was, in addition to
working for Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, RCA, and the Telegraph and Telephone
Company, the U.S. Navy's "Sub-inspector of Wireless Telegraph Stations." He dealt
extensively with de Forest regarding installation and operation of radio systems
both on ships and on shore. Interestingly, he mentions that the first Audions were
used as detectors more so than as signal amplifiers, which in fact was de Forest's
original goal (a more sensitive detector) in his experimentation...
 Banner Ads are rotated in all locations
on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each
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 Remember the Sunday comics feature for kids
where there was a picture drawn with things wrong in it, and you had to find them
all? This 1950 advertisement for the Sangamo Electric Company's line of capacitors,
which appeared in Radio & Television News magazine, could server as a modern-day
version for the Cancel Culture "woke" crowd that believes it has a duty to criticize
and impugn everything it happens to fear, not like, or not understand. My list is
at the bottom of the page if you want to compare it to yours. On other Sangamo ad
post pages I have provided a bit of research on the background of "Samgamo" to try
to determine whether the use of Native Americans (aka "indians" at the time) was
based on a local tribe. No link has ever been found. Below the ad are a few of the
items discovered...
 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...
 According
to a 2001 paper published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST, formerly National Bureau of Standards, NBS), "The end of the era of quartz
frequency standards began in 1949 with the development at NBS of the world's first
atomic frequency standard based on an ammonia absorption line at 23.87 GHz."
Further, "The Bureau supported work on both technologies for the next decade, but
the rapid advances in the accuracy of atomic frequency standards could not be matched
by
quartz devices, and the work on quartz frequency standards was
stopped in 1959." This article from a 1957 edition of Popular Electronics
claims that the "master of all master-clocks" resided at the U.S. Naval Observatory
at the time - not quite accurate from what my research indicates ... |
