|
 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..."
|
 Restoring and/or upgrading vintage radio receivers
is still a very popular pastime for hobbyists, and for that matter for some professional
servicemen who preform maintenance on established equipment installations. Three of the
most significant changes that can be made to older receivers to
improve sensitivity are to clean up the power supply DC output, replace
noisy components like vacuum tubes and leaky capacitors, and tune / modify /
replace RF and IF filters. This article discusses a method of replacing a stock
LC filter with a high selectivity mechanical filter. The nice thing about an
analog receiver is that narrowband, steep-skirt filters can be substituted
without concern for group delay at the band edges that can (and will) wreak
havoc on digital signals...
 In the beginning, man created monophonic
(mono) radios and phonographs that had sound with no
spatial separation (left and right) in the source(s) and
featured a single speaker. As such, except for being sure to not locate your
radio or phono behind the sofa, sound perception at any point the room was
fairly consistent - except maybe for volume level. Still, there was ample
opportunity for the time of arrival due to multipath effects to distort the
sound. Up until the 1950s or so, most homes had hardwood floors (with a few
rugs) and rock-hard plaster walls to reflect sound waves, and rooms were
relatively sparsely populated with furniture and wall hangings (look at photos
in vintage magazines for proof), all of which provided means for distorted sound
at a distance. And man said, "Let there be stereophonic (stereo) sound,"
which...
 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 average 225,000 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...
 If you are looking for information on the
Crosley SCR-284 Field Radio, you've come to the right place - at least for learning
about how manually intensive the manufacturing process for it was. If you want to
know about the history and operation, then you'll want to visit the N6CC (Navy 6
Combat Comms) website. It is a wealth of amazing details, including, "The SCR-284
was used extensively during WWII. The basic component is the BC-654-A receiver transmitter.
Designed as a portable field radio, the complete field set could be carried by 3
men (three 55 pound loads) or it could be mounted in vehicles. US Army procurement
records indicate that 63,972 sets were procured between 1940 and 1945. Apparently
all were built by Crosley Corp." That works out to more than 10,000 units per year,
each requiring the kind of assembly and testing shown here. Along with the highly
skilled and dedicated labor force required to turn out such quantities (while also
producing other equipment) are the design, test, and production engineers needed
to dream up, implement, and support such a massive effort...
 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...
 Perhaps one of the most frustrating situations
to find yourself in if you are a
hard core audiophile is being an unmarried enlisted man in the military, living in
the barracks. Unlike residing in a college dorm where comparatively there is no iron
hand of peaceful existence enforcement to quell a desire for music hall sound levels
with bass saturation that can rock you off your chair (other than dorm mates threatening
to beat you to a pulp), in a military establishment there is an immediate threat of arrest,
rank demotion, monetary fines, or a letter of reprimand (aka nonpunitive punishment)
for blasting a stereo (and your barrack mates might beat you to a pulp). One guy I shared
a USAF barracks room with had a couple thousand dollars worth of stereo equipment in
a 19" rack in the room. It had something like...
 Echo 1 launched in August of 1960, finally
allowing America to participate in the Space Race, which until then was roundly
being won by the USSR. Electronics magazines of the day were filled with prognostications
of the future of
space communications. Electronics World dedicated most of their November issue
to satellite Earth stations and advancements being made in ultra sensitive receivers
and powerful transmitters. Since the earliest satellites were literally metallic
balls for reflecting radio signals, it was necessary to optimize both ends of the
communications path since there were no circuits onboard the satellite to perform
signal processing and re-transmission. Bell Labs, of course, was at the forefront
of the technology. In fact a famously serendipitous discovery was made by a couple
scientists in 1964 using the very antenna featured in this advertisement...
 Radio Amateur News began life in
July 1919, then changed its name a year later in July 1920 to Radio News.
In August 1948 the title was again changed to Radio & Television News,
then shortened to Radio & TV News in May 1959. Publication continued
through April 1959. The next month's issue (May 1959) was entitled Electronics
World, with Radio & TV News as a subtitle, and ran through December
1971, when it merged with
Popular Electronics. Popular Electronics began publication as
a new magazine in October 1954 and printed its final issue in October 1982. The
next month it became Computer & Electronics, which continued until
April 1985. From May 1985 through January 1989 it was called Hands-on Electronics.
Believe it or not, in January 1990...
 When really good researchers set out to
write books on history, they do not simply cull information from the publications
of fellow contemporary authors; instead, they look for sources that were published
during or around the time of the subject being covered. Doing so helps minimize
the possibility that inaccuracies have crept into the knowledge pool and that information
other authors might have either deemed insignificant or have missed can be recovered.
With a bit of luck, sources are discovered that have never been used before. That
is part of my motivation for going to the trouble of buying these vintage magazines
and posting articles like this one which reports on early maser developments. It
delves fairly deeply into the solid state physics of rare earth minerals that some
of the first masers and lasers relied upon to function, including energy band diagrams
and cryogenics. If the
"sugar scoop" antenna looks familiar, it might be due to its rising to fame...
 Last Fall I posted part 2 of this
Radio-Electronics article first because I did not yet have the May issue that
contained part 1. So, if you read "JFET's - Put Last Month's Theory to Work"
and have been waiting with bated breath for part 1, you may breathe easily
again; here it is. Author Thomas Haskett enthusiastically introduces readers to
the
junction field effect transistors (JFET) as a more natural replacement
than the bipolar junction transistor BJT) for vacuum tubes because of JFET (and
other varieties of the FET) operational parameters being much more those of tubes
than a BJT. Regarding his conversion, Haskett refers to himself as a "die-hard
'fire-bottle'" man - a term with which I am not familiar. My assumption is that
"fire-bottle" is a slang name for vacuum tubes because of how hot they get, and
they glow orange like a fire in a glass bottle...
 Listen to the
Podcast! World War II came to an end in Europe in May of 1945, and in
the South Pacific in September of the year. By the end of 1944, Americans were becoming
confident that their fathers, sons, and husbands would soon finally be home. Manufacturers
began advertising the eminent return and availability of
consumer products that had gone out of production due to material shortages
during the war years. Advertisements ran in trade and hobby magazines as early as
1944 promising lines of goods that in many cases had not even been designed yet
or production planned. Some products being promised, however, were merely models
that were already in production before the attack on Pearl Harbor. A few publishers
refused to accept such advertisements until there was more concrete evidence that
victory was assured. In fact, Hugo Gernsback, editor and publisher of Radio-Craft
magazine, wrote a scathing piece in early 1945 admonishing manufacturers for their
overenthusiastic promise and promotion of consumer electronics prematurely...
 Wirewound inductors
(as most are) can be mysterious entities even when you
are familiar with their many interdependent physical and electrical properties. Because
of interwinding capacitance and a sometimes (when a large number
of turns are involved) rather significant series resistance, the equivalent circuit
model gets quite complex - literally in a mathematical sense. If you have the luxury
of staying far away from the self-resonant frequency (SRF)
of the coil, your component will behave very much like an ideal inductor, that is, XL
= 2πfL. This
article delves into what causes inductors to...
 According to the Wikipedia entry, Cannon
Electric Company introduced the now-familiar D-Sub (D-subminiature)
connector format in 1952. This advertisement in a 1954 issue of Radio & Television
News magazine is the first one I recall seeing. D-Sub connectors were a really big
deal back in the 1980s when personal computers (PCs) first appeared. CRT monitors
used them, printers used them, scanners used them, network interfaces used them,
mice and keyboards used them (those that didn't use PS/2 connectors, which were
an invention of IBM for their Personal System 2 computers). Nowadays the USB (Universal
Serial Bus) and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface ) connectors have replaced
most D-Subs in the computer cable realm. Of course with everything going wireless,
connectors and cables of all sorts are rapidly disappearing except those used for
charging...
 November 1st's custom
Engineering Technology themed crossword puzzle contains only only words from
my custom-created lexicon related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry,
physics, astronomy, etc. (1,000s of them). 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, find someone or something in the otherwise excluded
list directly related to this puzzle's technology theme, such as Hedy Lamarr or
the Bikini Atoll, respectively. The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst
us will appreciate the effort.
 Nuclear energy was a big topic in the 1960s and
1970s as it was believed to be the future of electrical power generation for the world
(at least up until the 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents occurred). Ships and submarines
were being powered by reactors that allowed them to run for months at a time without
refueling, atmospheric emissions were practically zero, and the fuel source was abundant
(albeit not simple to obtain). Medical and space applications were increasingly dependent
on a greater knowledge of radiation and its effects on humans, plants, animals, and electronics.
Many people by that...
 After many years of reading
Mac's Service Shop sagas, a persistent theme seems to be Barney's refusing
to refer to equipment schematics while troubleshooting, thereby often wasting
valuable time. According to business owner and electronics sage Mac McGregor,
assuming that what is typical for most sets will apply to all sets can and does
create a fertile environment for frustration - and profit loss. Mac's advice to
check "simple things first," has always been my troubleshooting philosophy -
maybe because identifying the "hard things" has nearly been my undoing many
times when the trouble is not simple. One of first things I do is check
switches, connectors, and user-accessible potentiometers for proper operation
(when potentially responsible for the problem, of course). I've written many
times about how often a dirty connector is the culprit...
 Technology builds on its own successes in
order to evolve. This article from a 1948 issue of Radio News magazine
reporting on the relatively newly perfected
electron microscope. As electronics moved from the macro scale in the form of
vacuum tubes and large, high voltage- and power-handling leaded components (resistors,
inductors, capacitors) to semiconductors and smaller, lower voltage and power components,
using a standard optical type microscope was not good due to small features on the
IC die. As more powerful microscopes were developed, engineers and scientists were
able to develop semiconductor circuits with smaller features. That enabled more
compact, higher performance electronic microscopes to be built ... and the cycle
continued to where we are today. It is sort of another way of looking at Moore's
law...
 A momentous development that changed the
field of radio communications warranted merely a half-page announcement in 1935
when
frequency modulation inventor Edwin Armstrong had his article published in Radio-Craft
magazine. It indisputably changed the world while causing poor Mr. Armstrong
much grief while defending his right to the invention. Spread spectrum modulation
/ demodulation would be the next big communications advance that began with the
frequency hopping (FHSS) scheme dreamed up by Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr and
pianist Antheil George during World War II. Direct sequence spread spectrum
(DSSS) followed in the digital age, and since then I do not know of any fundamentally
new communications technology in that time...
 It would be more than a decade after the
publishing of this article before the first
direct-to-home satellite television broadcasts would be a reality, so it shows
how long plans were being made for such systems. Rural landscapes are still peppered
with the large vestigial C-band (~4 GHz) satellite dishes, many with faded
eyeballs and other clever (and ugly) artwork on them. Before coaxial cable was strung
beyond suburbs, country dwellers who either could not pull in over-the-air broadcasts
from downtown locations or just wanted more viewing options paid dearly for satellite
service. Equipment and installation costs on early systems could run into the $30k
realm. Today's satellite TV systems use much smaller antennas operating in the Ku
band (~12 GHz), with equipment and installation being free with a 2-year commitment.
C-band DBS (direct broadcast satellite) systems are still available, BTW...
 In the days before satellite communications
(Telstar I, c1962), long-range television broadcasts relied on an extensive
(and expensive) series of line-of-sight microwave towers. Each site had land ownership
and maintenance expenses, so there was an incentive to streamline operations. Development
of an
over-the-horizon relay system enabled a reduction in sites and streamlining
of operations - at least in theory. History shows that these installations must
not have provided the improvement needed to implement them on a larger scale than
that reported here. Nowadays, the proliferation of cellphone towers for ubiquitous
coverage of wireless telecommunications has proven that huge numbers of individual
sites can be profitable given a large enough customer base. You can scarcely go
anywhere anymore without being able to spy a cell tower sticking out over the landscape...
 Joe Cahak, owner of Sunshine Design Engineering
Services in Ramona, California, has written a white paper entitled, "Measuring
Semiconductor Device Input Parameters with Vector Analysis." This article covers
a recent test experience that utilized some thinking about the test fixture, the
bias requirements and the device mounting and special calibration offsets needed
to de-embed the test fixture response from the device response within the test fixture.
The device also had to have bias on several ports simultaneously. We had to establish
a "reference plane" within the fixture, from which we can use the Vector Network
Analyzer's Port Extension or Phase Offset to dial out the distance from our 1 port
calibration reference plane to the point of short reference within the fixture.
With this phase offset compensation we can then measure...
 Here is an advertisement by
Emerson Radio and Television from the November 6, 1948, edition of the The Saturday
Evening Post. By 1948, America and the free world was well into the
conversion of wartime production back into commercial and consumer products.
After many long years of allocating factory space, personnel, and resources to
beating back the forces of Communism, Marxism, Socialism, and other evil forms
of 'isms," the good times were returning. FM radio broadcasting stations were
increasing rapidly in number, providing static-free listening even in areas of
weak reception. Television was still a relatively new phenomenon for most
households. The tabletop Model 571 "Image Perfection" television carried a price
of $299.50 in 1948, which is the equivalent of a whopping $3,186* in 2018...
 Did you know that you are likely a TLV? That's
right, a
Television Looker. The modern equivalent is CP - Couch Potato. In the early
years of television, TLVs were as fascinated with the device itself and the technology
as they were with the information being displayed. As this story tells, Hams were
involved in TV transmission (ATV) early on. I did not know that amateur television
was banned during World War II. During WWII, all amateur radio operations were suspended
with the exception of those authorized to continue under the Radio Amateur Civil
Emergency Service (RACES)...
 Success won in the realm of
space-based communications has been fraught with many failures.
As with most endeavors, it is thanks to the relative few who have sacrificed and
endured against overwhelming odds to bring significant technological advances in
communications to the many. Space presents a particularly difficult venue because
of the harsh deployment and operational environment, and inaccessibility after deployment.
Personal sacrifice has taken the form of depression, financial ruin, lost opportunity
for other endeavors, broken families, sickness, substance abuse, and other maladies
brought on by an obsession with success. Such sacrifice has built the modern world...
 TGIF once again. I keep looking back through issues
of Popular Electronics magazine for Robert Balin quizzes that I might have missed,
and fortunately this one was found. Unlike quizzes back in school, nobody but you will
ever know how you score on it - that's what makes it fun. Your challenge is to determine
the total resistance value between points A and B both before and after inserting the
plug into the jack. Mercifully, Mr. Balin specifies that all the resistors are
the same value. The Before part is a piece of cake even for someone in a first semester
electronics course - just be sure to pay attention to whether or not the contacts short
out any of the paths. The phono plug is on the left and the corresponding jack is on
the right. Interpret the dual resistors plug circuits in figures 5 through 8 as having
one resistor connected... |
