|
 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..."
|
 Good luck trying to find a good
ham radio related comic in any magazine today. I am convinced
that publisher boards either discourage or outright prohibit comics these day for
fear of hurting some overly sensitive person's feelings and inviting lawsuits, or
worse yet social media flaming frenzies. Fortunately, I am not afraid and am glad
to make these vintage comics available. You and I, being reasonable people, cannot
possibly find anything insulting or denigrating in any of these five comics, but
somebody could. BTW, for the non-ham, a "pink ticket" from the FCC is a notice of
violation, which could be anything from neglecting to announce your call sign every
ten minutes to having a faulty transmitter that is spewing noise outside your band...
 OK, I am ashamed to admit that with just
a quick guess I thought Rx in question 6 would be 180 Ω rather than the
correct value of 20 Ω. I knew the ratio of 150 Ω to 50 Ω (3:1) would
be the same as for 60 Ω to Rx, but stupidly went the wrong way. In order for
the
bridge to be balanced, the voltage division between the left and
right arms of the bridge had to result in the voltages on both sides of the meter
to be 0 V. I did manage to get the equivalent resistances of Q8 ...
 A month before Bell Laboratories' announcement
of the transistor invention by Mssrs. Bardeen, Shockley and Brattain, Radio-Craft
magazine editor Hugo Gernsback published a piece extolling the virtues of a newly
developed
microtube, aka a "rice-grain" tube. As connected as Gernsback was in the electronics
industry, it is doubtful he knew of the impending game-changing invention. Commercialization
of the transistor took a few years to get to the point where the devices could be
manufactured cheaply and reliably enough to begin being integrated (pun intended)
into products, so vacuum tubes still reigned for another decade or more. While the
microtubes were designed into such products as portable radios, hearing aids, and
other things in desperate need of size reduction, standard tubes continued to be
used in the majority of things...
 It's not often that you will see a full-page
ad promoting a particular element in the periodic table, but in 1950 that wasn't
the case. This advertisement for
Anaconda Copper Mining Company which appeared in a 1950 issue of The Saturday
Evening Post magazine extolled the virtues of element number 29 - copper (Cu , from
the Latin "cuprum"). Aluminum and iron were other popular topics of advertising.
If you do a search on the history of Anaconda, which is today owned by the Atlantic
Richfield Company (ARCO), what dominates is the harm done to workers and to the
environment. The short video below is one of the less vicious reports on the company's
operations in Butte, Montana and in Chile. COPPER... Time's Friendly Enemy Time
and copper get along well together - because of one simple reason: Copper chooses
to ignore time completely. For nature has given copper the great quality of almost
eternal youth - the ability to resist the slow but steady ravages of the elements,
for centuries if need be...
 Randy Rogers*, AD7ZU, mentioned in the May
2020 issue of QST magazine the Smith Chart software called "SimSmith,"
by Ward Harriman, AE6TY. SimSmith first appeared around 2011. Being written in Java,
it will run on any operating system that supports Java (Win64, Win32, Apple Mac
OS X, Solaris, and Linux). If you are using Win64 as I am, you will want to download
the "windows64-with-JRE.exe" file. Windows security will try to block it, but it
is safe to run after your antivirus program scans it and gives a green light. AE6TY
recommends using the installation files rather than just downloading the "SimSmith.jar"
file even if you already have a version of Java installed. When launching the program,
the window might not be very large, so grab a corner and stretch it out so the components
are easier to see. After playing around with SimSmith for a while, you might want
to click on the "SimSmith->preferences" menu selection...
 This news bit from a 1951 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine reports on the FCC's declaration of illegality the practice by some FM
broadcasting stations of providing a means for
blanking out commercials and station identification to entities willing to pay
for the special receivers and pay for a subscription. Nobody I have ever known looks
forward to enduring commercials on television or radio (or Internet these days).
The only way most of us could listen to music without interruption was to by a record,
tape, or CD. VHS tapes and DVDs provide some relief from commercials, although even
though you pay for them there are typically promotions for other movies at the beginning.
Commercials on radio and television (and now the Internet) have consumed a larger
part of each hour of programming with each passing year. The DVD collections we
have of 1960s and 1970s Prime Time TV shows average run times of about 54-55 minutes...
 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...
Anytime I see a photo or story about the
1964 New York World's Fair, I immediately think of the scene at
the end of the first "Men in Black" movie when Agents K and J face off with the
alien invader who has come to Earth in search of "The Galaxy." This story from an
April 1964 issue of Electronics magazine reports on preparations made for
the grand opening on April 22 of that year. Based on the typical three to six month
lead time for publishing magazines back in the day, this material would have been
gathered long ahead of time. Of course now that half a century has passed we hardly
consider any of the whiz-band technology presented there as being anything wonderful,
but then half a century from now our grandkids will laugh at what we consider amazing
at the present time. Here is an interesting statement from the article that really
gives you an idea of generational progress: "The World's Fair alone will contain
some 300 television..."
 The claim of a "non-conducting metal sheet"
as a substrate for drawing electronic circuit traces seemed suspicious, so I did
a search for non-conducting or at least low conductivity metal, and there is no
such thing. The advertisement says components can be soldered directly to the board
without effecting a connection. Even low conductivity metals to which solder will
adhere are good enough electrical conductors to prevent components from being attached
on a common surface without significant conduction (i.e., short circuits) between
them. A pen with conductive ink is used across the surface to create interconnecting
paths. My guess, although I could not locate any information on the company's substrate
fabrication, is that the board had an array of isolated copper pads that would be
bridged by the conductive pen.
Metal Circuit Systems Corporation was ...
 Wind down the week with these four
electronics-themed comics from a 1970 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. As mentioned before, radio and television technology was a big deal in
the era. People hadn't been born into a world of transistorized microcircuit media
devices that perform nearly every conceivable function - phone, TV, radio, computer,
heart rate monitor, voice recorder, remote control, camera, compass, game, social
media, etc., etc., etc. Unlike today's electronics products that typically don't
break with normal use and do not require periodic alignment, folks from my demographic
were used to turning on a TV or radio and having to readjust it or have it repaired...
 "Say again." That phrase is heard often in
telephony conversations both wired and wireless. It was coined near the end of World
War II by Air Corpsman 2nd Lt. Byron A. Susan, as reported in the January
1945 edition of Radio Craft magazine. Lt. Susan was responsible for setting
standards for "radio
phraseology" to eliminate ambiguity between aviators and ground forces. "Say
again" replaced "Repeat" because the latter is an artillery term used to order another
round of assault from a gun salvo. The history of the confirmation "Roger"
is murky, but many agree it comes from the older military phonetic pronunciation
of the letter "R" being "Roger," and in radio the letter "R" meaning "received."
Another common bit of radio phraseology is "Wilco," which is a contraction of the
words "will comply."
 University of Southampton, England, professor
James Holbrook suggests in this 1968 Radio-Electronics magazine article an "easy-to-follow
substitute for the left- and right-hand rules," but I'm not so sure that the good professor's
"Electron
Orbit Method" is any better or easier to remember. Admittedly, it is hard to remember
whether the use a left-hand rule or a right-hand rule for the various physical laws -
motor rotation direction, current induction, torque, vector cross products, etc. Those
involving current flow are made even more confounding because you need to know whether
the creator of the rule refers to conventional current flow (positive-to-negative) of
electron current flow (negative-to-positive). Note in Figure 110 from the Electricity
volume of Basic Navy Training Courses how the generator rule is described as a
left-hand rule with conventional current flow...
 It has been a long time since I've had a
citizens band (CB) radio in my car. Back in the 1970s when the
CB craze was at its peak, with songs like C.W. McCall's "Convoy"* topping Casey
Kasem's American Top 40 (AT40) charts, my high school compadres were all installing
23-channel CBs (standard at the time) in their cars and pickups. I joined in with
a Radio Shack unit (don't recall the model number). In those days the FCC required
operators to register and mail a check for a few bucks - same with radio control
(R/C) systems for model airplanes also operating in the same 26-27 MHz radio
band - in return for a "Citizens Radio Station License" document to carry in your
wallet. Most CB channels were spaced at 10 kHz, but the R/C frequencies were
in-between some CB channels spaced at 20 kHz. For instance, my 3-channel OS
Digitron R/C system was at 27.195 MHz, which resided between CB channels 19
(27.185 MHz) and 20 (27.205 MHz). Some electronically savvy CBers would
illegally modify their radios to include operation on those in-between frequencies
(e.g. Ch 19A at 27.195 MHz), thereby creating a scenario where merely keying
up the transmitter could "shoot down" a model airplane if close enough...
 Here are a few examples of what was considered
cutting-edge technology humor back in 1949. These three
tech-themed comics appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine. The first
one won't mean much to anyone who has never watched a television with a cathode
ray tube (CRT), but only on an LED or LCD screen. The next comic is a bit corny
and plays off the confusion some people had with the name assigned (actually the
spelling thereof) to the lower audio frequencies. The last is a pun on the extreme
measures sometimes needed to pull in a TV broadcast station before the days of cable
and satellite service.
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...
 Hello. My name is Kirt, and I'm a
vintage magazine and newspaper addict. This affliction has had a hold on me for two
decades now. Call it my middle age crisis. At sixty years old, there is no sign of abatement
in enthusiasm. Nearly every day I still find myself reading and commenting on articles
and advertisements from mid-last-century magazines, newspapers, and catalogs. Maybe I'm
hopeless and will never be able to kick the habit. I'm not alone, though, based on some
of the feedback received from RF Cafe visitors. For that reason and others, maybe, in
truth, I've grown comfortable with my addiction. While perusing a few vintage newspaper
editions from the World War II era looking for relevant stories, I ran across this
November 1, 1940 (exactly 78 years ago) special section in the Harrisburg Telegraph
titled, "Radio Industry Marks 20th Anniversary...
 For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering,
mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical words. This November 29th
Radio &
Radar Crossword Puzzle, as always, contains no names of politicians, mountain
ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort unless it/he/she
is related to this puzzle's technology theme (e.g., Hedy Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll).
The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate the effort.
Enjoy!
 This is part 8 of a series authored by Milton Kiver
entitled, "Theory
and Applications of UHF," that appeared in Radio News magazine in the
mid 1940s. As you might expect it is a very extensive delve into the relatively
new realm of UHF generation, transmission, propagation, and reception. You might
not know that up through the 1930s, UHF circuit and practice had been relegated
to the amateur radio operators because those frequencies from 300 MHz to 3 GHz
were considered too unexploitable for professional use. It was not until Hams
did the hard work of figuring out practical methods of building circuits and
antennas and characterizing geographical and atmospheric conditions that
affected propagation that suddenly industry and government decided UHF might be
useful after all...
 Communications links are so ubiquitous these
days that we pretty much take for granted the ability to connect to the Internet
and to other people. How many times have you been in public and heard someone have
a fit because she couldn't get a good enough signal to make a call? It requires
the person to get up and walk a few feet or maybe turn her chair in another direction
to get an extra bar on the iPhone. How inconvenient. Even when placing a call to
Hawaii or Alaska the expectation is that things just work. In 1963 when this
tropospheric scattering network was installed for linking Alaska to the lower
48 states, satellite communications was still in its infancy and coverage was nowhere
close to global. Even radio relay towers were relatively scarce across the landscape...
 The big graphic with Figures 1 through 17
reminds me of the kinds of study sheets I used to make when cramming for exams in
my college circuits courses. Did I ever tell you about the wise guy instructor I
had for my first Circuits class at the University of Vermont? Anyway, this article
provides an introductory level treatment of using
negative feedback in amplifier circuits. Lots of illustration and formulas are
included. Frequencies are at baseband, so you won't learn any secrets for high frequency
amplifier stabilization, but then even RF and microwave circuits eventually need
to convert down to baseband at some point for sampling or for use as audio or video...
 This installment of the After Class series
in the December 1957 edition of Popular Electronics deals with inductors.
It is a beginner-level introduction to how
reactive components behave in circuits. For some reason the concept
of magnetism's influence on electrical current (present with inductors but not capacitors)
seems to be more difficult to comprehend than that of electrons, even though James
Clerk Maxwell shows in the mid 1800s that the two phenomena are interrelated. I
am tempted to say that back in the 1950s when this article appeared, people were
less familiar with the relatively new concept of electronics, but in thinking about
it, your typical 2019 reader is probably even less likely to know anything at all
about electronics or the way basic components work. I would bet that maybe 1% could
even tell you the difference between AC and DC current...
 If you are not in the habit of listening
closely to the words of songs, you could easily miss the the fact that many make
passing mention of topics on
science and mathematics,
while others integrate it as the primary theme. There are a lot of songs written
and produced by people whose primary vocation is in the sciences; their songs are
a secondary "hobby" type of endeavor - often with a touch of humor. Don't miss Tom
Lehrer's incredible "Elements Song."
Other songs are created by mainstream popular groups and happen to integrate themes
of science, mathematics, engineering, etc. One of the earliest examples I can recall
noticing was produced by the Moody Blues - "The Word." At the time, I did not fully
appreciate the profoundness of the lyrics in terms of how they described the electromagnetic
spectrum in its entirety, but an examination of the lyrics (below) reveals the profundity
of the words...
 It takes a while - and money - to accumulate
issues of the vintage electronics magazines for posting articles here on RF Cafe.
Often I can find groups for sale that comprise a full calendar year, but often they
are groups of random months and years. That makes getting a complete series of articles
like this one on "How
an Electronic Brain Works" difficult. A lot of times installments appear every
other month, so when a series has more than ten articles, it can run well over a
year. For instance Part I of "How an Electronic Brain Works" appeared in the
September 1950 issue of Radio-Electronics. The final chapter, Part XIII,
appeared in October 1951. Throughout the series, authors Edmund C. Berkeley and
Robert A. Jensen describe the workings of "Simon," their compact electronic computer
- some even call it the first "desktop computer." Here is an article (with photos)
about "Simon" in the November 1950 Scientific American magazine...
 Before there were electric generators onboard
airplanes to power communications equipment, aviators relied on storage batteries
to operate their radios. Before that, there were no radios at all aboard airplanes.
Although Wilbur and Orville Wright first piloted their Wright Flyer in 1903, by
the end of the decade airplanes were becoming a common sight across the country
and across the civilized world. By the middle of the second decade experiments were
being done with airborne radio. They were heavy vacuum tube units with heavy
lead-acid batteries. Antennas sometimes hundreds of feet long needed to be reeled
out and in once at altitude. The earliest transmitter (for 2-way communications)
were spark gap types, meaning of course Morse code was the medium. That's right,
the pilot - often alone without an assistant - sent messages by tapping out dits
and dahs using a straight key strapped to his thigh. Moving into the 1920s, radio
telephony had become standard equipment aboard transport and military aircraft.
Much of it early-on was battery powered...
 This chapter is a milestone in your study
of electronics. Previous modules have been concerned more with individual components
of circuits than with the complete circuits as the subject. This chapter and the
other chapters of this module are concerned with the circuitry of amplifiers. While
components are discussed, the discussion of the components is not an explanation
of the working of the component itself but an explanation of the component as it
relates to the circuit. The circuits this chapter is concerned with are
Amplifiers. Amplifiers are devices that provide Amplification. That doesn't
explain much, but it does describe an amplifier if you know what amplification is
and what it is used for. What Is Amplification? Just as an amplifier is a device
that provides amplification, amplification is the process of providing an increase
in Amplitude... |
