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4 of the March 2019 homepage archives. Friday 15
 Whilst reading articles on semiconductor research
and development in the era of this 1964 Electronics magazine, it often
occurs to me that much of the terminology presented is new to most people in the
electronics field, having been just recently coined by those developing the technology.
To wit, here author Landress shows diagrams of planar and mesa
structures for transistors. We are so familiar by now with
those configurations that it hardly seems there was a time when engineers did
not speak so matter-of-factly of them. Hole and electron mobilities were terms
familiar to a niche group of atomic materials scientists a decade earlier, as
were diffusion depth and doping concentrations. As the 1919 electronics
practitioner would confabulate upon matters of thermionic emission and getter
flashing in vacuum tubes...
 PEI-Genesis is a global leader in the design
and assembly of custom engineered
connectors and cable solutions for harsh environments. PEI develops custom interconnect
solutions that support the harsh environments of the aviation, energy, military,
industrial, rail, and medical sectors worldwide. Proprietary automation in mirrored
factories around the world allows PEI to assemble, from one of the largest inventories
of electronic components, according to customers' specific requirements. PEI-Genesis
has been listed on the related Vendors listing pages. Free shipping for orders >$40...
 Withwave's
Automatic Calibration Module (W1202A) is ideal for users who want
fast and easy calibration for various Vector Network Analyzers (VNA). This module
is powered up via USB or F5.5 DC connector and communicate with VNA via USB or LAN
and designed for full one-port through two-port calibrations of VNAs by One-Push
START button. This module works as host systems, measures and calculates calibration
coefficients and sends it to VNA easily. Most of Electronic Calibration Kits work
for same manufacturer's VNAs only. But, this module provides cost-effective calibration
solution for users by supporting various VNA models: Keysight PNA & ENA series,
R&S ZVL, ZVA & ZVT series, Anritsu ShockLine Series...
 "A team of Cambridge researchers have found
a way to control the sea of nuclei in
semiconductor quantum dots so they can operate as a quantum memory
device. Quantum dots are crystals made up of thousands of atoms, and each of these
atoms interacts magnetically with the trapped electron. If left alone to its own
devices, this interaction of the electron with the nuclear spins, limits the usefulness
of the electron as a quantum bit - a qubit. Led by Professor Mete Atature, a
Fellow at St John's College, University of Cambridge, the research group,
located at the Cavendish Labor..."
 Empower RF Systems is a global leader in
power amplifier solutions. Empower RF Systems is an established and technologically
superior supplier of high power solid state RF & microwave amplifiers. Our offerings
include modules, intelligent rack-mount amplifiers, and multi-function RF Power
Amplifier solutions to 6 GHz in broadband and band specific designs. Output
power combinations range from tens of watts to multi-kilowatts. Unprecedented size,
weight and power reduction of our amplifiers is superior to anything in the market
at similar frequencies and power levels...
Thursday 14
 ConductRF offers an extensive line of
RF and mixed signal cable harnesses and assemblies with custom
configurations, lengths and markings. Thousands of combinations of coaxial,
power, and digital and analog signal connectors available. Flexible
phase-stable, low-loss, phase-matching, high power, and other options per your
requirements. Broad insert connector solution choices including BMA, SMPM, for
cable sizes #8, #12 & #16 Custom marking and ruggedization enhancements
capability. Contact ConductRF today and let us help your project...
 Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun,
chief designer of the
V-2 rocket that terrorized London in the 1940s and chief
architect of the
Saturn V rocket that launched the first men to the moon in
the 1960s, is quoted as saying, "The best computer is a man, and it's the only one
that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor." von Braun was one of many German
scientists conscripted to do the
National Socialist German Workers Party (aka Nazi) regime's bidding
during World War II - formally an Schutzstaffel (aka
SS) officer.
He and his research team
surrendered to the Americans in 1945 after escaping to Austria
when the end of the Third Reich was imminent. His willingness to be part of the
Nazi German war effort is fuzzy; therefore, I have a hard time fully appreciating
his significant contributions to the U.S. space program. Reportedly, von Braun
experienced a genuine
Christian religious conversion that changed his life.
 The
March 2019 issue of the Academy of Model Aeronautics' Model Aviation magazine
contains a letter from Dave Jones, of the
AUAV website.
Mr. Jones informs us that, contrary to popular belief, he was the designer,
builder, and tester of the first frequency hopping spread spectrum
(FHSS) radio control
system (R/C) operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band. He developed his system
for the DoD back in the 1990s, many years before Spektrum R/C marketed its first
commercial spread spectrum system in the early 2000s (see my
Spektrum DX6 teardown). Prior to 2.4 GHz systems (now a combo
of FHSS and DSSS), FM and to a lesser extent AM digital proportional R/C systems
were primarily on the 72 (air, 50 channels) / 75 (surface, 30 channels) MHz
band (a few on 50/53 MHz for licensed Hams). RF interference and unintentional
"stepping on" frequencies in use often resulted in costly aircraft crashes. The
72 Hz systems were vulnerable to metal-to-metal noise (a problem in helicopters)
whereas the 2.4 GHz systems are immune. Dave Jones made a
Monkee
of that issue and sent it to the
bottom
of the sea, figuratively speaking. And now you know... the rest of the story.
 Kenneth Wyatt has an article on the EDN website
titled, "Design PCBs for EMI, Part 1: How Signals Move," that should be
useful to anyone looking for tips on the subject. Says Kenneth, "After helping
clients get their products compliant for EMI, I've seen one underlying issue:
Poor PC board design. In my experience, IoT product designers run into problems
caused by poor PC board design. Poor design can cause endless delays when
on-board energy sources disrupt sensitive receiver circuits, resulting in
cellular compliance failures. GPS and Wi-Fi receivers can also lose
sensitivity..."
 "NASA is set to demonstrate a new experimental
type of deep space communications technology on the ISS this spring. Currently,
NASA relies on radio waves to send information between the spacecraft and Earth.
Emerging laser communications technology offers higher data rates that let spacecraft
transmit more data at a time. This demonstration involves
X-ray communications, or XCOM, which has numerous advantages.
X-rays have much shorter wavelengths than both infrared and radio. This means
that, in principle, XCOM can send more data for the same amount of transmission
power. The X-rays can broadcast in tighter beams, thus using less energy when
communicating over vast distances. If successful, the experiment..."
 Anatech Electronics (AEI) manufactures and
supplies RF and microwave
filters for military and commercial communication systems, providing
standard LP, HP, BP, BS, notch, diplexer, and custom RF filters, and RF
products. Standard RF filter and cable assembly products are published in our
website database for ease of procurement. Custom RF filters designs are used
when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements dictate a custom approach.
Sam Benzacar's monthly newsletters address contemporary wireless subjects.
Please visit Anatech today to see how they can help your project succeed...
Wednesday 13
 I, along with probably most other people
my age, habitually associate the brand name of Delco (Delco Electronics, technically) with General Motors (GM) electrical
and electronic products such as radios, storage batteries, alternators, and spark
plugs. Dayton Engineering Laboratories
Co., of Dayton, Ohio, merged with GM's AC spark plug division in
1974 to become AC-Delco. I bought many sets of AC-Delco spark plugs for my cars
over the years. Nowadays, GM's electronic products go by the name of ACDelco (no hyphen now). Attempting to research
the full provenance of the modern-day AC-Delco is headache-inducing due to sell-offs
to Delphi, Aptiv, and other entities. The best I can determine is that the contemporary
ACDelco is a brand name for products that might be manufactured by many
different companies. This advertisement searching for electrical and mechanical
engineers...
 Axiom Test Equipment, an electronic test
equipment rentals and sales company, has published a blog post explaining how to
source the right electronic load for your next project. Engineers working with
power circuitry can use this post as a guide towards what specifications are
important to know when selecting a load. The post goes over AC loads, DC loads,
combination AC/DC loads, and whether the load will be used for manual or
automatic measurements, for testing one circuit or unit under test at a time or
multiple units under test. Reliable, high-performance DC and AC electronic loads
are available from several manufacturers and are typically characterized as low,
medium, and high-power loads. Mainframes with interchangeable modules to
customize...
 Rohde & Schwarz has produced a 15-minute
tutorial titled, "Understanding 3rd-Order Intercept Measurements." In Amplifier
design, Third Order Intercept (TOI) is the most common measurement of the
devices linearity. This tutorial explains the fundamentals of Third Order
Intercept. It will include how to measure it and where the pitfalls are so you
become aware during your testing. It's a short 15-minute tutorial so you get
what you need quickly and can continue on with your busy day. You will learn
about linearity, harmonics, higher order products and inter modulation products.
We will also cover measurement considerations, test configurations and what to
watch out for...
 This 1971 article from Popular Electronics
magazine was the twelfth in a long series of features reporting on electronics
related college degrees, technical schools, on-the-job training, military
training, areas of specialty, career planning and options, current hiring
practices and companies doing the hiring, salaries and hourly rates, worker's
compensation and insurance, etc. All the issues of importance today were being
covered even half a century ago, although the names have been changed for some
entities. For instance the state employment bureaus are now referred to as
departments of labor and industry; e.g., here in Pennsylvania, the DLI supplies
statistics on labor...
Triad RF Systems designs and manufactures RF power amplifiers and systems. Triad RF Systems comprises three
partners (hence 'Triad') with over 40 years of accumulated
knowledge of what is required to design, manufacture, market, sell and service RF/Microwave
amplifiers and amplifier systems. PA, LNA, bi-directional, and frequency translating
amplifiers are available, in formats including tower mount, benchtop, rack mount,
and chassis mount. "We view Triad more as a technology partner than a vendor for
our line-of-sight communications product line." Please check to see how we can help
your project ... Please check to
see how they can help your project...
 Maybe once quantum computers and übercomplex
physical models of dense urban environments are available for simulation, there
won't be a need for
in-situ empirical testing of wireless coverage, but at this
time the success or failure of impending 5G communications will be dependent on
field tests. Of course part of that testing will be receiving service complaints
from customers due to systems being activated before they are fully qualified -
aka known as the Microsoft product release strategy ;-( This article
titled, "The Critical Role OTA Testing Will Play in 5G," by Lawrence Wilson, in
Microwave & RF magazine touches on the subject...
 Res-Net
Microwave has a complete line of precision
RF &
microwave components including attenuators, terminations, resistors, and
diode detectors for commercial, military, and space applications. Products range
from the small flange type to large 2,000 watt connectorized power attenuators
and/or terminations at frequencies up to 26.5 GHz. In-house photo etch and laser
trim capability. Please check out Res-Net Microwave's website to see how they
can help with your current project...
Tuesday 12
 Saelig Company, Inc., has introduced the OC51T
series of surface mount miniature
oven-controlled crystal oscillators (OCXO) from frequency control
specialists Euroquartz. These square-wave frequency sources are housed in a tiny
surface-mount package and offer optimal frequency stability from a quartz IT-cut
crystal. The OC51T series is available in frequencies from 10 MHz to 40 MHz and
comes in a 9.7 x 7.5 x 4.1 mm miniature 4-pad package with 3.3 and 5.0 V supply
voltage options. With voltage control as standard, OC51T OCXOs deliver a
frequency stability...
 If you look through the hundreds of
technology-themed comics that appeared various electronics
magazines, many deal with the trials and tribulations of television repair and
service. That is because in the introductory era of TVs, people were,
understandably, infatuated with being able to not just hear but see what was
happening in the broadcast. Radios and phonographs got a lot of coverage as
well. Storylines involving a guy on the roof installing or repairing an antenna
were considered particularly funny, especially if it depicted someone hanging
precariously from a lead-in cable or a ladder rung. This comic addresses the
all-too-common situation where sometimes a better picture was obtained using a
makeshift antenna than with a bona fide, professionally designed antenna...
 ANSYS
is offering this free whitepaper titled, "EMI Scanner."
This capability provides automatic and customizable EMI design rule check of PCBs.
EMI Scanner can quickly identify areas of potential interference on your PCB design
prior to simulation. EMI issues traditionally have been difficult to simulate and
require hours of computational time. This new feature included within ANSYS SIwave
and ANSYS HFSS quickly identifies potential trouble spots that require further
investigation. It eliminates errors and speeds time to market...
 Astro Pak on-site and in-plant
chemical cleaning services. On-site
and in-shop services in precision cleaning, passivation, electropolishing, pickling &
passivation, oxygen cleaning, derouging, sanitization & biofilm removal, hydrostatic &
pneumatic testing, media blasting, cleanroom services. Same Day emergency service
available. Astro Pak has been added to the RF Cafe
Metal Preparation & Finishing Products & Services webpage.
 Thanks to Chuck U. for providing new
Watkins-Johnson (WJ) Tech Notes v10-3 and v15-2, and an
improved copy of v5-2. A lot (but not all) of the TNs that I had or other people
sent to me are made from B&W copies from old scanners, so the quality is not
super good. Chuck's versions appear to be scanned from the originals in color,
so they're very good...
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 (e.g.,
material, flexible, rigid), Geographical location, and more...
 "In recent years, electronic data processing
has been evolving in one direction only: The industry has downsized its components
to the nanometer range. But this process is now reaching its physical limits. Researchers
at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) are therefore exploring
spin waves or so-called magnons - a promising alternative for
transporting information in more compact microchips. Cooperating with
international partners, they have successfully generated and controlled
extremely short-wavelength spin waves. The physicists achieved this feat by
harnessing a natural magnetic phenomenon, as they explain in the journal Nature
Nanotechnology..."
Monday 11
 ConductRF is continually innovating and developing
new and improved solutions for RF Interconnect needs. See the latest
TESTeCON RF
Test Cables for labs. ConductRF makes production and test coax cable assemblies
for amplitude and phased matched VNA applications as well as standard & precision
RF connectors. Over 1,000 solutions for low PIM in-building to choose from in the
iBwave component library. They also provide custom coax solutions for applications
where some standard just won't do. A partnership with Newark assures fast, reliable
access. Please visit ConductRF today to see how they can help your project!
 ANSYS is offering this free whitepaper titled,
"5G and the Connected
Vehicle." Combining fully autonomous (AV) technology with 5G-delivered,
high-speed and low-latency wireless data promises a safer, more user-friendly
driving experience. This impending merger is a result of the developing 5G
infrastructure that will provide reliable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V),
vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity for
a variety of new, real-time communication services. The simulation of these
connected systems is key to assessing their performance and limits before
deployment to ensure maximum performance and reliability...
 Half a decade after Texas Instruments (Jack
Kilby, 1958) and Fairchild Semiconductor (Robert Noyce, 1960) produced the first
semiconductor integrated circuits, General Electric must not have been too confident
that the newfangled technology was going to take hold. This 2-page spread from a
1964 issue of Electronics magazine, promotes their "Compactron" integrated circuit vacuum tubes. The Compactron is
a building block concept where standardized stages of diodes, triodes, pentodes,
etc., are encapsulated in a single vacuum tube package with necessary input and
output pins for connecting external components. The incentive was smaller
volume, lower parts count, lower power supply current, simpler chassis wiring or
circuit board layout, and greater ruggedness. One source I found showed the
availability in 1962 of 24 distinct Compactron models...
 Call me obsessive, but the switch to and
from DST has bugged me not so much for its existence, but for butthead politicians
that won't keep their hands off of it. A few years ago I wrote a piece titled, "A Graphical
Look at Daylight Saving(s) Time," to deal with it, and then again last year
with, "Daylight Saving(s) Time vs. Standard Time." Research the history
of DST and you will see how often Congress has changed the days - always for good
reasons, don't you know. In 1958, the year of my birth, DST began on April 27th
 (vs. March 10th this year), and ended on September
28th (November 3rd this year) - See 1958 Old Farmer's Almanac pages. What else can
I say on the matter?
 Whitepapers, pamphlets, books, magazines,
and chapter examples listed here are a small sample of a lot of new items that are
offered for FREE through
TradePub.
The publishers make them available to qualifying people as a promotional campaign
for their full line of offerings. Whitepaper topics include careers, manufacturing,
and engineering, while magazine titles include
Microwave Engineering Europe,
Electronic Design, and
Microwave Product Digest. Note: I earn a few pennies
(literally) when you download one of these or the many other pubs available, so
please help yourself...
 "All the amazing carbon-nanotube logic circuits we've heard about over the years have
a dirty secret: Some of those nanotubes are metallic rather than the semiconducting
type that's wanted. This tiny fraction of bad tubes is no big deal for logic circuits.
They add a bit of noise, but nothing the digital nature of logic can't deal with.
The problem has been analog circuits. For analog, that stray metallic nanotube may
as well be basilisk venom. 'A single metallic [carbon nanotube] causes a complete
circuit failure in a simple amplifier,' Aya G. Amer explained to engineers at
the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference last week in San
Francisco..."
 Axiom Test Equipment
allows you to rent or
buy test
equipment, repair
test equipment, or sell
or trade test equipment. They are committed to providing superior customer
service and high quality electronic test equipment. Axiom offers customers
several practical, efficient, and cost effective solutions for their projects'
TE needs and is committed to providing superior customer service and high
quality electronic test equipment. Please check out Axiom Test Equipment
today!...
Sunday 10
 Since 2000, I have been creating custom
science-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising
benefit and pleasure of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. The
jury is out on whether or not this type of mental challenge helps keep your gray
matter from atrophying in old age, but it certainly helps maintain your
vocabulary and cognitive skills at all ages. A database of thousands of words
has been built up over the years and contains only clues and terms associated
with engineering, science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc. You
will never find a word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the
name of some obscure village in the Andes mountains. You might, however,
encounter the name of a movie start like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location
like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons which, if you don't already know, might
surprise you...
These archive pages are provided in order to make it easier for you to find items
that you remember seeing on the RF Cafe homepage. Of course probably the easiest
way to find anything on the website is to use the "Search
RF Cafe" box at the top of every page.
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