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 Finish up your week by considering these
three "What's
Your EQ" circuit challenges that appeared in a 1964 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. They were submitted for consideration by readers, and sometimes by staff
writers. The first is yet another form of the Black Box mystery component. Kendall
Collins sort of gives away part of the answer in the problem statement. The second
is a fairly straight-forward switching circuit. You'll get it with no problem. The
third is most challenging. Don't be put off by the presence of a vacuum tube in
the schematic. Mentally replace it with a FET and go from there. Interestingly,
there is a lot of forum chatter about the Dynakit "Stereocator" feature regarding
stereo reception...
 "Japan-based Fujitsu Ltd has reported gallium
nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) on free-standing GaN substrates
operating at 2.45 GHz in the industrial, scientific & medical (ISM, 2.4–2.5 GHz)
reserved band with
85.2% power-added efficiency (PAE) and 89.0% drain efficiency (DE) [Toshihiro
Ohki et al, Appl. Phys. Express, p18, p034004, 2025]. The team reports: 'To the
best of our knowledge, our device sets a new record for the highest power-added
efficiency and drain efficiency among discrete GaN HEMTs, highlighting the superior
potential of GaN-on-GaN HEMTs for highly efficient RF power amplifiers..."
 In his 1967 Radio-Electronics
magazine column, editor Forest Belt envisioned the 1970s as a decade of radical
electronic transformation, where homes would become
"total-electronic" environments controlled by advanced technology - from
computer-assisted cooking and video communicators to 3D television, laser
communications, and even sleep-enhancing atmospheric systems. He urged
electronics professionals, experimenters, and service technicians to prepare for
this future, emphasizing that innovation and broad technical expertise would be
critical to meeting consumer demands for ever-newer gadgets and conveniences.
Belt warned that technicians who failed to adapt would be left behind, while
those mastering emerging fields like fuel cells and heatless...
 At Tuskegee,
Alabama, March 7, Colonel Frederick V. H. Kimble, U. S. A., pinned wings on the
blouses of five young Negro lieutenants, members of the first
graduating class of the Army's first Negro air school. Since last July they
had undergone all the primary and advanced training to which white Army cadets
at Randolph and Kelly fields are subject. Now they are charter members of the
Air Force's 99th (all Negro) Pursuit Squadron, established last summer at a
$2,000,000 airdrome near Alabama's famed Tuskegee Institute and now developing
into one of the Army's biggest training bases...
• 3% 2025 Chip
Capex Growth
• Drink
Coffee Every Day to Reduce Cancer Risk
• Deutsche Telekom
Quantum Internet Record
• Satellite-Hungry
Orange Taps Telesat
• UK Invests
£23M in Telecoms
R&D
 In August 1968, Radio-Electronics
magazine's "News Briefs" reported on RCA's groundbreaking development of liquid
crystal displays (LCDs), demonstrating how an electric field could turn transparent
liquid crystals opaque - a key step toward flat-panel TVs. The article explained
that these displays, just 0.001" thick and requiring minimal power, could be driven
by integrated circuits and were visible even in bright light, unlike traditional
CRTs. That "Radar
Colander" photo looks like an out-of-this-world being - the lady's hairdo that
is, not the metal hemisphere! Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled 7-0 that the
FCC had authority to regulate CATV systems, reversing a lower court decision and
impacting cable operations nationwide...
 This 1964 Radio-Electronics magazine
article details the
operation of common electrical meters - voltmeters, milliammeters, and ohmmeters
- all based on Ohm's law (I = E/R). The core component is the d'Arsonval
movement, a DC-sensitive mechanism that can measure AC when paired with rectifiers.
Voltmeters use multiplier resistors for different ranges, while ohmmeters employ
an internal battery, producing a nonlinear scale. AC measurements rely on rectifiers
to determine RMS voltage (0.707 of peak sine wave), though this method only works
for pure sine waves. The article also explains practical circuits, including protection
features like fuses, and discusses voltmeter sensitivity (ohms/volt), emphasizing
that higher input resistance minimizes measurement errors by reducing circuit loading.
Full-wave rectification improves sensitivity compared to half-wave setups...
 "A team of researchers from Arizona State
University, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Lehigh University, and Louisiana
State University has developed a groundbreaking high-temperature copper alloy with
outstanding thermal stability and mechanical strength. Their study, published in
the journal Science, presents a novel bulk nanocrystalline alloy,
Cu-3Ta-0.5Li, that demonstrates exceptional resistance to grain coarsening and
creep deformation, even at temperatures approaching its melting point. 'Our alloy
design approach mimics the strengthening mechanisms..."
 Three more problems await your attention
here to challenge your
Electronics Quotient (EQ), compliments of the February 1963 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. First in line is figuring a way to determine which of five boxes of resistors
contains mismarked components. It's a variation on a fairly common way to test components.
The second is another Black Box; it's a bit simpler than usual. Hint: WWTD? (What
would Thévénin do?). The third is a typical method of wiring a series of switches
so that a device can be turned on or off from any number of locations. I recently
implemented such a wiring job to control basement lights from four doorways - no
big deal. Have fun...
 Dr. Allen Du Mont played a huge role
in making television practical because of the improvements he made to the cathode
ray tube (CRT). Prior to his work, the lifespan of a CRT was measured in tens of
hours, and they were expensive, so their use was limited to special military and
research applications. Du Mont's interest in "wireless" began at an early age,
and he earned his commercial radio operator's license at the age of 14 (in 1915).
He designed and produced oscillographs (i.e., oscilloscopes) that incorporated his
CRTs. His involvement in the television industry was a natural evolution and extension
of the work done in related industries. The DuMont Television Network was formed...
 The leading website for the PCB industry.
PCB Directory is the largest directory of
Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Manufacturers, Assembly houses, and Design Services on the Internet. We have listed
the leading printed circuit board manufacturers around the world and made them searchable
by their capabilities - Number of laminates used, Board thicknesses supported, Number
of layers supported, Types of substrates (FR-4, Rogers, flexible, rigid), Geographical
location (U.S., China), kinds of services (manufacturing, fabrication, assembly,
prototype), and more. Fast turn-around on quotations for PCB fabrication and assembly.
 These two
electronics-themed comics appeared in a 1966 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. The page 40 comic is especially funny, IMHO. The term that best fits this
scenario is "anachronism," which is an object or concept that is out of its proper
historical time period. You'll concur once you see the comic. In 1966, real-world
lasers - as opposed to those found in science fiction - had output powers in the
range of watts or tens of watts. Maybe a hundred watts from a CO2 laser in a laboratory
setting like in the page 93 comic. Still, the concept of a laser powerful enough
to be used as a weapon - capable of vaporizing an enemy - was reality in most people's
minds...
 "DNA
strand displacement circuits are inching closer to becoming cellular machines.
Scientists are finding ways to make these programmable nanodevices stable and functional
inside living cells. If successful, they could revolutionize how we interface with
and control biology at the molecular level. A recent review published in Intelligent
Computing, titled 'From the Test Tube to the Cell: A Homecoming for DNA Computing
Circuits?' outlines major advances in the effort to bring DNA computing circuits
into living cells. The authors describe how dynamic nanodevices powered by DNA strand
displacement reactions could soon perform..."
 everything RF is the Internet's largest
source for mmWave scanners, with helpful search function for your specific needs.
mm-Wave Security Scanners use high-frequency millimeter waves
to create detailed 3D images of objects and identify objects concealed under layers
of clothing. mmWaves can penetrate clothing but not the skin or other dense materials,
making them ideal for detecting hidden objects without revealing detailed body contours,
thus addressing privacy concerns. This makes them ideal as security scanners in
Airports and other venues like stadiums, train stations and other high-traffic venues.
mmWave security scanners from the leading manufacturers are listed here.
 A pair of items from this June 1963
Radio-Electronics magazine "News Briefs" column stands out: "Born 15 years
ago this month were the transistor, June 30, and the long-playing record, June 21."
Hard to imagine being there to reading that back in the day. Also noted was the
world's first IEEE convention, held March 25-28 in New York City. Subjects presented
250 papers at 54 session. This online document discusses the IRE's award recipients
to be honored at that March 1963 meeting. This doc is typical of the extremes corporations
go to in order to specify and control their "brand," in this case the simple IEEE
"kite" logo and text - sheesh! More TV sets were then in use abroad than in the
U.S., reported Television Factbook. At the end of 1961, there were 54 million sets
in foreign countries. By October, 1962, the total was 65 million, as compared to
60 million in the U.S. That, of course, is the sum of all countries other than the
U.S.
 Ask and ye shall receive... at least sometimes.
I posted a request for an article by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, of
2001: A Space Odyssey fame, describing a
geostationary satellite system that was published in the October
1945 edition of Wireless World magazine. Thanks to RF Cafe visitor Terry
W., from the great state of Oklahoma, it is now available for everyone to enjoy.
Clarke was not just a sci-fi writer, but also an educated visionary and card-carrying
member of the British Interplanetary Society, who proposed many technological solutions
to issues of his day. In this instance, the challenge was developing an efficient
means to distribute TV signals across Europe and the world. Clarke's calculations
for the necessary number of repeater towers proved that concept impractical, so
he proposed using modified surplus German V2 rockets to launch Earth-orbiting "artificial
satellites," powered...
 Please take a few moments to visit the
everythingRF website to see how they can assist you with your
project. everythingRF is a product discovery platform for RF and microwave products
and services. They currently have 333,423 products from more than 2198 companies
across 460 categories in their database and enable engineers to search for them
using their customized parametric search tool. Amplifiers, test equipment, power
couplers and dividers, coaxial connectors, waveguide, antennas, filters, mixers,
power supplies, and everything else. Please visit everythingRF today to see how
they can help you.
 Here are two more circuit problems for you
from the August 1966 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. The first is
a fairly familiar tapered resistance network where you are asked to determine the
input resistance of the infinite network. Out of curiosity, I asked Arya, ChatGPT
4.1, Grok 3, and Gemini 2.5 Pro, to calculate the given formula to 75 decimal places.
I received four different answers. All agreed to 33 decimal places, and three
of them agreed to 51 places, then everything fell apart. Once again I warn: Do not
blindly trust the results of AI clients. Verify everything important!!! The other
problem is to determine the output waveform of a duo-diode vacuum tube circuit.
The semiconductor equivalent is a pair of PN junction diodes with the anodes at
the top.
 "It seems AI jobs are here to stay, based
on the latest data from the 2025 AI Index Report. To better understand the current
state of AI, the annual report from Stanford University's
Institute for Human-Centered
Artificial Intelligence (HAI) collects a wide range of information on model
performance, investment, public opinion, and more. Every year, Spectrum summarizes
our top takeaways from the entire report by plucking out a series of charts, but
here we zero in on the technology's effect on the workforce. Much of the report’s
findings about jobs..."
 In the mid 1960s, Radio-Craft magazine
ran a series of articles on "Inventors of Radio." This April 1966 issue featured
Boris Lvovitch Rosing (1869–1933), a Russia-born physicist and pioneer of television
technology. Rosing was born in St. Petersburg, where he studied under Heinrich
Friedrich Emil Lenz and later taught at the Technological Institute. Beginning in
1902, he experimented with cathode-ray tubes for image transmission, developing
the first electronic television device by 1907, which used rotating drums and a
modulated electron beam to produce images. His breakthrough came in 1911 when he
successfully displayed simple images, earning him recognition and awards. Despite
interruptions from World War I and the Russian Revolution, Rosing continued refining
his designs, achieving higher-resolution scans...
 What's the big deal about
multicolor radar, you might ask? Not much today, but in 1955 color
displays were in their infancy. The earliest color cathode ray tubes (CRTs), developed
by John Logie Baird in the early 1940s, used just two phosphor colors (magenta and
cyan), illuminated by two separate electron guns, to produce a limited color display.
Ernest Lawrence came along later in the decade with his tri-color Chromatron CRT,
which had separate red, blue and green phosphor dots deposited in a triangular pattern
across the inner face of the tube. That is the scheme employed in this first multicolor
radar system. It was a major improvement for air traffic controllers since it facilitated...
 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. Take a good look at the people in these
photos, and remember they are the ones who laid the foundations for the modern world
we take for granted. Such sacrifice has built the modern world...
 "For decades,
Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) operators were in the communications catbird's
seat 22,000 miles above the Earth, but the arrival of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) networks,
like Elon Musk's Starlink, is bringing the Old Guard in satellite com down to terra
firma. 'The proprietary and specialized GEO infrastructure of the past is now weighing
down space industry incumbents that find themselves needing to rapidly innovate
against mounting competition,' ABI Research Senior Analyst Andrew Cavalier wrote
in a recent research report. An indicator that innovation..."
 If it seems like I've been posting a lot
of these "What's
Your EQ?" features, there's a good reason... I have been posting a lot of them
lately. I had created the pages long ago, and somehow I forgot to go back and complete
them with the drawings. Expect to see a dozen or so more in fairly short order.
The circuit challenges are usually submitted by Radio-Electronics magazine's
readers, but occasionally one of the columnists will contribute. "How Wide?" seems
like you would need the value of L to calculate, but given that the problem is presented
without it, there must be a way, right? With the Series-Parallel circuit, I got
as far...
 RF Cafe's spreadsheet-based engineering
and science calculator -
Espresso
Engineering Workbook™ (click to download) - is a collection of surface area
and volume calculators for many geometric solids. RF Cafe
Espresso Engineering Workbook™ is provided at no cost, compliments of my generous
sponsors. The newest additions are calculators
for Opamps, FM Sidebands, and FM Modulation. That makes 41 worksheets containing
hundreds of calculation. There are many online calculators for these and other functions,
but sometimes having a convenient desktop version makes life easier. While developing
Espresso Engineering Workbook, I conduct extensive research and testing to help
assure the correct equations are used and accurate results are displayed. Download
your copy today, and pass the word onto a friend...
 I have noted in the past how humor in the
days of yore was somewhat, shall we say, different, than what it is today. My vintage
aviation, mechanics, and electronics magazine from the early to middle part of the
last century contained comics
and humor pieces that in a lot of cases were not very funny because of a lack
of cleverness, and in some cases were downright stupid. A search of both RFCafe.com
and AirplanesAndRockets.com will bear out my assertion. Look at the stuff from before
1950. This 1933 QST magazine, flagship publication of the American Radio
Relay League (ARRL), is a good example. It was the April edition, which means it
was chock full of puns, comics, gags, and faux articles and news bits. Some of them
are pretty good, but you might need to adopt an alternate frame of mind to "get"
them...
 LadyBug Technologies was founded in 2004
by two microwave engineers with a passion for quality microwave test instrumentation.
Our employees offer many years experience in the design and manufacture of the worlds
best vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, power meters and associated components.
The management team has additional experience in optical power testing, military
radar and a variety of programming environments including LabVIEW, VEE and other
languages often used in programmatic systems. Extensive experience in a broad spectrum
of demanding measurement applications. You can be assured that our Power Sensors
are designed, built, tested and calibrated without compromise.
 It's Friday afternoon as I prepare this
trio of
vintage electronics-themed comics for posting. They all appeared in the October
1964 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. All three reflect the home entertainment
craze of the era, in particular TV. Color TV was making inroads into homes, despite
the relatively high cost, and in 1964, many programs were still being broadcast
in black and white (B&W). Stereo systems were huge as well, and you will find
many comics depicting stereo themes in the large list at the bottom of the page.
The love-hate relationship the public had with electronics equipment repairmen (it
worked both ways) is evident here. Millennials will never be able to relate to the
slings and arrows suffered by those of us who lived during the CRT TV times, but
then we Boomers...
|
 This quiz is based on the information presented
in Introduction to Antenna Analysis Using
EM Simulation, by Hiroaki Kogure, Yoshie Kogure, and James C. Rautio, published
by Artech House. It is written for novice engineers and engineering students. This
easy-to-comprehend resource offers readers thorough introductory-level treatment
of antenna analysis using electromagnetic (EM) simulators. This richly-illustrated
book shows how to use EM software to analyze and tune wireless antennas to meet
specific requirements. Readers learn important wireless antenna design terminology
and gain a detailed understanding of how antennas work. Moreover, the book offers
guidance in troubleshooting problems with wireless antenna designs...
 Yesterday was the 71st anniversary of the
announcement of the transistor's invention by Drs. Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain
at Bell Labs, but it was a Sunday so not as many RF Cafe visitors saw the commemorative
title graphic I used. Their transistor was a current-controlled signal amplifying
device as opposed to the
field-effect transistor (FET) which is a voltage-controlled
signal amplifying device - as is the vacuum tube. I never thought about it
before, but maybe that had something to do with the electronics world's
hesitancy to adopt the transistor as a replacement for the tube. Early in the
transistor's history, practical applications were limited due to low
reliability, low power handling, low frequency, lack of ruggedness in harsh
operating conditions, and other shortcomings compared to established and much
refined vacuum tubes was reason enough to shun the newfangled technology, but
that current-controlled thing...
 Hugo Gernsback, in a 1938 issue of his
Radio-Craft magazine, lampooned his contemporaries who boldly declared
that by then (1938) there was
nothing left to be invented regarding radio equipment for shortwave communications.
Wisely citing the well-known instance of a patent examiner who quit his post in
1870 because, as the man put it, all useful things had been invented and there was
nothing meaningful left to patent, Mr. Gernsback challenged his readers to keep
this article for 25 years and then go back and read it while being aware of all
the new and wonderful short wave devices that had been invented since 1938. It has
now been more than 80 hence since the challenge was issued, and not only has the
state of the art of short waves advanced beyond any of their wildest dreams, but
entire new realms of radio and optical communications have been born and evolved
that only futurist like Hugo Gernsback, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allen
Poe (Poe was considered a great sci-fi writer) could ever have even imagined.
 Each week, for the sake of all avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created
lexicon related 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 Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Enjoy...
 Mac and Barney discuss with some degree of trepidation
the alarmingly increasing rate at which new
electronics technology is being developed and marketed. As service shop owner and
technician, respectively, they needed to constantly educate themselves on new components
and circuits in order to stay current and be efficient enough to turn a profit. Mac recounts
his lengthy background beginning with the days of mainly battery-powered AM radios, and
progressing through AC-DC, FM and all-band (shortwave) radio, B&W television and
the color TV, CB radios, and a new breed of appliances with electronic controls...
 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...
 Once radios in the family car became a standard
accessory, a push ensued to make them cheaper, more reliable, and service-free.
A major Achilles' Heel was the high voltage power supply required to energize vacuum
tubes. Known as vibrator power supplies due to using an oscillator to convert the
battery's 12 DC supply (some autos still used 6 V systems) into AC that could
be transformed up to the 300 volts used by most tubes of the day, most early failures
were attributed to the circuits. They also caused annoying noise in the audio output
if careful filtering and installation was not performed. Having been invented only
a couple years earlier, transistors were being designed into the power supplies,
but
low-voltage tubes were still needed for the electronics. In response to the
demand, low-voltage tubes...
 Farmers must be a lot smarter than we tend to
give them credit for being. These
math and
logic puzzles that appeared in the 1961 Old Farmer's Almanac are not a duffer's task
to complete. Be careful to consider units of measure based on the venues. Puzzle I is
a relatively simple trigonometry problem, although the wording of the problem statement
is very confusing; it took some head scratching to figure out what was meant. Puzzle
III required me to opt for a graphical solution since I could not come up with enough
independent equations for the number of unknowns. If you look at the OFA page scan...
 If you read the physics and geographic news
of the day, most likely you have seen articles on the rapidly increasing
migration rate of the geomagnetic "north pole" over the past few decades. Magnetic
north has never exactly lined up with geometric north (as borne out in geological
samples of rocks), and neither has it ever been uniformly distributed across the
globe. Ancient explorers on terra firma and at sea knew that a magnetic compass
needle did not align with the same stars, moon, or sun position for every location,
after accounting for difference in longitude. That is because the earth's magnetic
field is very nonuniform in strength and does not follow straight lines from pole
to pole as they more generally do from outer space. A correction factor must be
applied to any magnetic north indication based ...
 Echo 1 was put into orbit on August
12, 1960. This article was written 2½ years earlier in 1958 by Radio-Electronics
editor Hugo Gernsback. A technology visionary and prolific inventor and writer,
Mr. Gernsback astutely outlined the vast number of advantages that had already been
and would in the future be afforded the science community by virtue of a satellite's
perspective from space. Two of the Soviet Union's
Sputnik satellites had revealed the surprisingly irregular shape and gravitational
influence of the Earth, information about the upper atmosphere, and aspects of space
environment effects on radio communications. America was scrambling to catch up.
Gernsback and others postulated the configuration of active relay transceivers powered
by solar cells and storage batteries, satellite-based television and radio...
 Home entertainment is as big of a deal (or bigger)
today as it was in the 1960's and 1970's when high fidelity personal sound gear was coming
into the mainstream. Capability and features were going up while the price was coming
down on really nice equipment. In order to achieve theater quality sound from your stereo
and/or large screen television, thought and planning is essential or you will end up
with a confusing mess of directed and reflected sounds. This article contains very valuable
information on room configuration and sound absorbing materials and strategies. A fairly
extensive table of common floor, wall, and ceiling sound absorption coefficients is provided,
as are charts of reverberation times of various venues and volumes...
 A news story with a title about a boat and reverse
current is more likely to be referring to water flow in a river or stream than about
electrical current in a conductor. Having grown up in a neighborhood next to a tributary
of the Chesapeake Bay, I spent quite a bit of time around boats, both large and small.
Salt water is particularly destructive to metal hulls due to
cathodic corrosion, exacerbated by the salt water's conductivity. While working as
an electrician in the 1970s, I installed electrical supplies for a few dockside cathodic
protection system that probably functioned like the one described in this 1965 issue
of Popular Electronics magazine. The principle is fairly simple whereby
anodes are placed in the water around the hull and a counter-current is
induced...
 Although the subtitle of Part V of
the 1949 Radio-Electronics magazine "Microwaves"
introductory series in refers to Special Sections of Waveguide Are Employed as Transformers,
author Palmer is discussing not impedance transformers but physical configuration
transformations. That includes in-between rectangular, circular, and oval cross-sections,
in-between waveguide and coaxial cable, and rotary joints. Signal injection and
extraction via stubs are also covered. He provides a high level introductory description
of how microwave frequency waveguide works without delving into the scary mathematics
required to design the components...
 Selenium rectifiers were the first widely
used as other-than-vacuum-tube circuit elements for various power supply designs.
They were not very practical as detectors in receiver circuits unless signal levels
were high. Properly manufactured selenium rectifiers were much more rugged and reliable
than the tube equivalents, but generally were more expensive. Since the power supply
is such a critical part of any electronic assembly, the tradeoff could be justified
if only for the boost in a product's reputation for having fewer breakdown issues.
While it is true that there are not many applications anymore for selenium rectifiers,
vintage materials and methods sometime experience a reincarnation in some other
form using modern formulations and manufacturing techniques. Having knowledge of
previous work can help spawn ideas for research and development toward solving new
problems...
 Even if you are not, never were, and don't
plan to be a color television serviceman, this installment of
Mac's Service Shop that appeared in a 1973 issue of Popular
Electronics provides an interesting insight into the manner in which the
electronics industry was rapidly changing in the 1970s. By 1973 most
manufacturers had fully committed to all solid state circuitry (except for the
CRT, of course), and the competition was focusing on customer satisfaction.
Point-to-point wiring of chassis with leaded resistors, capacitors, inductors,
and interconnecting wires and coaxial cable gave way to multiple printed circuit
boards (PCBs) with a maze of interconnecting wire harnesses. In theory the
scheme was much more reliable and serviceable, and for the most part it was. The
problem was that a lot of service guys were still struggling to come up to speed
on the newfangled technology. Trying to use a 500 watt soldering iron...
 It had been only a little over a decade since
the transistor was invented when this article appeared in the August 1959 edition
of Popular Electronics. Transistors were still a mystery to most people,
including engineers, technicians, and hobbyists. Author James Butterfield takes
a unique approach in presenting the material by writing it as a dialog between an
instructor and a student. If you are also
new to transistors, this will be worth your while to read. The
basics will never change. As an aside (and mentioned in the article), while still
a technician I had a manager one time who actually told an engineer working for
him that a transistor could be made by soldering two diodes together and using the
center node as the base connection...
 Knowing that I am an avid consumer of literature
pertaining to time and astronomy, Melanie picked up a book at the library for me
titled,
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem
of His Time, by Dava Sobel. When Christopher Columbus discovered
America, his intended target was, if you recall, the Indies. His original
charter was to find a direct westerly pathway from the Atlantic coast of Europe
to the immensely profitable trade production region of the Indies as an
alternative to to sailing around the treacherous Cape of Good Hope at the
southern tip of Africa. How could such an experienced navigator have missed his
mark by so far, you might reasonably ask? Didn't Columbus know how to use a
sextant, or at least have a navigator who could? The answer to the second
question is, "no." The answer to the first question is complicated...
 I found one more electronics quiz in a copy of
my vintage Popular Electronics magazine collection. Robert P. Balin published
scores of these quizzes over the span of a couple decades. Unless you have created a
few quizzes yourself, it might seem like there is nothing to it, but even relatively
simple ones like this requires the creator to think up the problems and then guarantee
that the answers given are correct. No, it's not rocket science, but try creating a dozen
quizzes with 8 to 10 questions; it could take a while. Anywho[sic], this
Electronic Switching Quiz requires you to consider the switch positions and
then determine which lamps will turn on...
 A mere five years elapsed from the time Echo,
a gas-filled metallized plastic sphere that passively reflected radio signals back
to Earth, was launched and the time that 35 television cameras had been launched
into space. The
Space Race was at a fever pitch. Although the Ruskies beat us in being the first
to launch both an active satellite (Sputnik) and a man (Yuri Gagarin) into space,
America's deep pool of intellectual resources, consisting of both native scientists
and many of the world's top scientists who chose to flourish in freedom here rather
than oppression behind the Iron Curtain, fostered the advantage that in short order
established the U.S. as the leading super power both in space and on terra firma.
TIROS satellites began providing real-time visual data on the Earth's weather in
1960. Not only were cameras transmitting images of the Earth, but a month before
this issue of Electronics World went to press the Mariner spacecraft sent
close-up images of the planet Mercury's surface...
 Today we have
missing persons notices printed on milk cartons and computer-aged pictures of
missing kids on bulletin boards at Walmart, and of course the Internet with all
its various forms of publicity. In 1935, evidently, an electronics magazine was
a proper venue for placing a missing person ad. At the time there was no convenient
and accessible way for family members to reach out to a nationwide audience other
than to place ads in magazines and/or newspapers in remote locations. I thought
it odd to see such a placement in this edition of Short Wave Craft magazine, but
considering the aforementioned, doing so is entirely reasonable for a worried family. I wonder how much it cost to place the notice? It's heartbreaking, really...
 Homepage
Archives for December 2022. Items on the RF Cafe homepage come and go at a pretty
fast rate. In order to facilitate fast page loading, I keep the size reasonable - under a megabyte (ebay, Amazon, NY Times, etc., are multiple
megabytes). New items are added at the top of the content area, and within a few
days they shift off the bottom. If you recall seeing something on the homepage
but now it is gone, fret not because many years I have maintained
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