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 The 20th Century American electronics industry
produced some of the most influential companies in technological history, from the
laboratories that invented the transistor to the factories that put televisions
in every American home. Yet by the end of the century, many of these
iconic names had passed into foreign ownership through a series of acquisitions
driven by globalization, shifting competitive dynamics, and changing corporate strategies.
Finnish, South Korean, French, Dutch, German, Chinese, Japanese, and other international
buyers acquired what had once been pillars of American innovation. Bell Laboratories,
RCA, Zenith, Magnavox, Sylvania, IBM's PC division...
 Sangamo Electric Company was a "heap" big
name in capacitors in the realm in the middle of the last century. The company always
featured an American Indian in its electronics magazine advertisements, and usually
also included some form of "indian-ese" statements as part of the sales pitch. Of
course such marketing schemes would be vehemently raided and those responsible figuratively
"scalped," if you will pardon the gratuitous expressions. As with using names like
the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Cleveland
Indians to appropriate and celebrate the bravery and might of the named peoples,
Sangamo implied quality, durability, and reliability...
 Phased
vertical stacks of two or more antennas were fairly common in the television
realm - especially once color broadcasts became more dominant in the 1950s. Up
to 3 dB per additional antenna is possible, but due to various non-ideal
physical parameters (summed phase angle, imperfect antenna geometry, etc.),
realized gain is typically in the 2.5 to 2.8 dB range. Higher signal to noise
ratios were needed to guarantee good color separation with the National
Television System Committee (NTSC) and stereo channel audio separation with the
advent of Multichannel Television Sound (MTS). As you might expect, companies
appeared claiming to have invented physics-defying antennas...
 We take a lot for granted these days with
the seemingly unlimited availability of cheap stuff of all kinds - some of it complete
junk and other of it pretty darn good. That goes for electronics components and
complete products and test equipment, tools, automobiles, appliances, and utensils,
clothing, medical equipment - you name it. Something as simple as a
pistol-type soldering gun can be purchased at just about any hardware or home
store, and at a price that when adjusted back to equivalent money in the 1940s would
be amazingly cheap even then. For instance a Weller Soldering Gun kit from Lowes
sells for $39.48 today (less when on sale), which would have been $3.44 in 1947
 In its continuing
effort to provide RF engineers the tools needed to perform their jobs,
everything RF website has just added
an online
S-Parameters Viewer. Upload your Touchstone files (.s1p, .s2p, .s3p or .s4p)
- or a .zip containing many of them - to instantly visualize
S-parameters on an interactive Smith chart alongside magnitude, phase,
 VSWR and
return/insertion loss plots. Compare multiple parts, temperatures, or production
lots side by side, right in your browser. No software to install and no account
required. To the right is an example of a .s3p diplexer filter file set uploaded
as a .zip file.
 Spurious frequency intermodulation products,
often called mixer spurs, are unwanted output frequencies generated by the
nonlinear action of a frequency mixer. In a diode mixer, the same nonlinear
diode behavior that makes frequency conversion possible also generates many
additional frequencies besides the desired conversion product. Mixer spurs
matter because they can fall inside the desired IF, RF output, receiver
passband, adjacent channel, image band, ADC Nyquist zone, or regulatory
measurement bandwidth. The practical industry method
for estimating mixer spurs is to use a manufacturer-supplied m x n spur
suppression table which list the suppression, in dBc, of each mRF ± nLO...
 Syzygy is a great word for a Scrabble game.
If you use it on a Triple Word Score (TWS) space where the "Z" sits on a Double
Letter Score (DLS) space, it will net you 105 points. About the only way to do better
is to use all 7 letters on a TWS play, where you earn 50 bonus points added to your
word score (I've done it twice in the last year).
Syzygy is an astronomical term referring to an alignment of three or more celestial
bodies - not necessarily in exact alignment, but within a few degrees. Astrologers
(not to be confused with astronomers) have since their knuckles no longer dragged
on the ground exploited such scenarios to predict various events both good and bad.
That was even before they...
 As with my hundreds of previous
engineering and science-themed crossword puzzles, this one for May 3, 2020,
contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science, physical,
astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc., which I have built up over nearly two
decades. Many new words and company names have been added that had not even been
created when I started in the year 2002. 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 star like
Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska, Russia...
 Hugo Gernsback is not necessarily a household
name in 2020, but in the early to middle 20th century, he was fairly well known
in both the hard science and science fiction realms. He was a prolific author of
books and magazines in both areas, applying his profound knowledge of technology
and his ability to foretell the futures of many aspects of communications, mechanics,
electronics, and marketing and societal behavior to the aforementioned. This particular work of prognostication appeared in a 1947 issue of
his Radio-Craft magazine. It presciently claimed that a post-war boom in
consumer buying would feed a significant adoption of
FM radio
over...
 Exodus Advanced
Communications presents the
AMP20130 high power solid state amplifier , covering the 80 to 1000 MHz
frequency band with 1300 W of power. Our AMP20130 is a rack-mountable High-Power
Solid-State amplifier delivering >1300 W with 61 dB gain across the
80-1000 MHz range with excellent P1dB power. It features Class A/AB linear
design, ultra-wide instantaneous bandwidth, built-in protection circuits,
extensive monitoring, large local LCD display, and remote interfaces. Ideal for
EMI/RFI, lab, CW/Pulse, and communication applications requiring high
efficiency...
 As long-time RF Cafe visitors are aware,
my series of RF Cascade Workbook™ spreadsheets, based in Microsoft Excel, has been
around since 2002. The latest and greatest version, packed with features for creating
and analyzing RF transmitter and receiver component chains, is called RF Cascade
Workbook™ (RFCW) ver L. RFCW™ 2008 brought, along with other new capabilities,
a major change where the components are arranged horizontally across the page, rather
than being stacked vertically. Occasionally, I receive a request to make the RFCW™ 2005
vertical layout an alternative to the horizontal layout. I decided instead to release
RFCW™ 2005 under a new name, "Wireless
System Workbook," and make it available at no cost - compliments of RF Cafe
advertisers and me. The only "price" you pay is having a small, persistent floating
window...
 $5,000 in 1956 currency is equivalent to
about $46,000 in 2020, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' "Inflation Calculator."
That is the value of the amateur radio equipment used by
Mrs. Mary Burke in her work handling "an average of 3000 messages
per month, principally for service personnel overseas." For her tireless wireless
efforts, she was the first woman to win the coveted Edison Award Cup (sponsored
by General Electric). Most of Mrs. Burke's communications was via Morse code, where
she restrained herself to "about 30 words a minute to maintain accuracy". Way to
go, Mary...
 Herein lies the tale of my
LP Gas Tank and Supply Line Installation adventure: In mid-June (2026), I detected
a rather strong odor of LP gas in the vicinity of an 300-gallon underground storage
tank in my daughter's yard. I had detected it a few times before, usually after
a strong rain. My guess is that the gas permeated the soil during a dry spell, then
was forced out as water saturated the ground. LP gas if heavier than air, so it
would tend to prefer residence in the ground if its source was there. The tank,
of late 1980s vintage, is buried about 30 feet from the house, which in and of itself
is OK per code, but the disturbing part is that my grandson's play yard is right
over top of it. Previous attempts to "scare" the adults into relocating...
 Around the time this article was written,
the first wave of the solar and wind (which essentially is also solar) power generation
craze was settling in. A few small windmill generators popped up around where I
lived in the Annapolis, Maryland area, but they were mostly owned by hippie Earth
worshipers who eschewed modern conveniences and didn't need hot water for bathing
anyway. Most of that generation (pun intended) of windmills put out direct current
(DC - typically 12 or 24 volts). We knew a very nice older man and his wife who
lived "off the grid" and grew most of their produce and even kept a goat for milk
(they were clean people). They had some
photovoltaic (PV) solar cells...
 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.
 The
1-dB compression point, usually written P1dB, is a practical large-signal linearity
limit for RF and microwave components such as low-noise amplifiers, power amplifiers,
mixers, active frequency multipliers, driver stages, variable-gain amplifiers, attenuators,
limiters, isolators, filters, switches, and receiver front-end modules. It is the
input or output power level at which the measured gain has fallen 1 dB below the
gain predicted by the small-signal linear gain line. In symbols, if the small-signal
gain is GSS in dB, then at the 1-dB compression point: Pout(measured,
dBm) = Pin(dBm) + GSS(dB) - 1 dB When the input power at that condition
is quoted, it is called input...
 Anytime I see an airplane in a photograph,
my interest is immediately piqued to learn the story behind it - sort of like with
the "MPATI - Its Problems & Solutions" feature in the May 1963 edition of
Electronics World magazine. This "Aerial 'Private Eye' Traces TV Signals" story also involves
airplanes and television broadcasting, albeit in a completely different way. A couple
enterprising broadcast engineers created a company called Tele-Beam Industries,
in Napa, California, that measured and mapped TV signal strength in the region surrounding
transmission towers to provide the stations with information useful in marketing
and radiation characteristic planning. Signal strength...
 Two major radio events were covered in this
1954 issue of Radio & TV News magazine's monthly "Spot Radio News"
column - the rapid advance of microwave technology for building out
high capacity voice and television transmission systems, and the
ever-increasing number of new TV station operation license grants since the ending
of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moratorium in 1952. In 1944, the
FCC stopped issuing broadcast permits due to serious unforeseen interference from
co-location interference issues as post-war households enthusiastically adopted
TV. Unlike today's microwave relay networks, in the 1950s most systems were
still analog in nature. Coaxial...
 The first video below is my favorite. It
is a one-minute clip from a 1960s episode of "The Twilight
Zone" television show. It is an outrageous slam on amateur radio operators by
a family whose radio and TV shows are being interrupted by interference. Dad looks
out the window and sees what are actually television antennas on the guy's roof
and when Mom asks if there is anything they can do about the neighbor, he walks
toward the telephone saying he can at least check to find out whether neighbor man
has a license to operate. Mom then says, "Do you think you should, Stu? Those men
seem kind of...threatening somehow." Those d**n evil Hams! As you might expect if
your are familiar with the series...
 Empower RF Systems announces the release
of its new
Model 1240, a compact, high-performance RF amplifier module delivering a guaranteed
minimum of 200 watts across the 900-1700 MHz frequency range. Designed to address
the evolving demands of modern electronic warfare (EW) and counter-unmanned aerial
systems (C-UAS), the Model 1240 expands Empower RF's portfolio of tactically deployable,
high-reliability solutions. The Model 1240 is a full gain "smart module" built on
advanced GaN transistor technology, integrating comprehensive control and monitoring
features to ensure consistent RF performance under all environmental conditions.
What sets the Model 1240 apart is its strategically targeted frequency coverage.
The 900-1700 MHz range aligns...
 Pulse compression (aka "chirp") radar was invented in the 1950s by Sperry and a couple
other defense contractors. It was new enough by the time the radar I worked on as
a technician in the USAF that it was not incorporated. Our MPN-13 and MPN-14 radar
systems used simple single-frequency pulses. Pulse compression employs a swept frequency
within a fairly narrow bandwidth to exploit the benefits outlined in this 1965
Electronics World magazine article. If you were to listen to the signal
used to sweep the RF pulse in frequency, it would sound a lot like a bird's chirp,
hence the name. Treatment by author Donald Lancaster is fairly heavy in that it
fearlessly presents the mathematical...
 Raise your hand if you have ever owned a
CB (Citizens Band) radio. Waaaaay back before everyone carried a cellphone (pre-late-1990s),
the most common form of
unlicensed communication was CB radio. Actually, up through the
mid 1970s you were supposed to purchase a license from the FCC, although no test
was required as it was for amateur radio. My first CB was a 23 channel job that
I installed in my 1969 Chevy Camaro SS, during my senior year in Southern Senior
High School. It was right in the middle of big CB radio craze with CW McCall's
"Convoy" song topping the U.S. Billboard charts. My self-appointed 'handle'
was "RC Flyer." Most people had no idea what it referred...
 Admittedly, with all the reading I have
done of vintage electronics magazines, news of this
Crystron (crystal-electron) vacuum tube device invented by Mr. Mohammed
Ulysses Fips, as reported in the April 1947 issue of Radio Craft magazine,
evaded my attention. The article came only a couple months after publication of
the 40th anniversary edition that celebrated Dr. Lee de Forest's invention
of the Audion tube. According to Mr. Fips, his Crystron one-upped the Audion
by virtue of its containing a small amount of radio isotope which obviated the need
for the traditional "B-battery" concept also developed by de Forest to supply
a high voltage for driving the output stage circuit...
 On July 14, 2026, the U.S. Congress voted
to
make Daylight Saving Time (DST) permanent, thereby eliminating the biannual
clock change routine. Daylight Saving Time (DST) is the practice of advancing civil
clocks by one hour during part of the year so that more daylight falls in the evening.
In the U.S., DST has been used intermittently since WWI, standardized nationally
in 1966, and briefly tried as a near-permanent winter policy during the 1974 Oil
Embargo / Energy Crisis (which was such a disaster it was repealed in less than
a year). The Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973 put
most of the country on year-round DST beginning January 6, 1974. The idea sounded
attractive: an extra hour of daylight after work and school, but the public quickly
discovered...
 Sam Benzacar, of Anatech Electronics, an
RF and microwave filter company, has published his June 2026 Newsletter that, along
with timely news items, features his short op-ed titled "Overlooked, Not Obsolete:
CB Radio at 27 MHz." Being "old" myself, the bit of nostalgic nearly brought
a tear to my eye. Having "come of age" myself in the 1970s, I was quick to jump
onto the CB radio craze, installing my first 23-channel rig under the dash of my
1969 Camaro SS hot rod. Every guy I hung out with knew all the words to C.W.
McCall's "Convoy" hit song. ...but I digress. Sam points out that while CB radio
is not the hot item is was decades ago, niche groups still occupy the band in number
large enough for the FCC to not reallocate the frequencies to paying clients...
|
 Usually, when I read about yet another launching
of rockets from Gaza into Israel, what comes to mind is the barrage of
V1 Buzz Bombs and ultimately the V2 rockets that Germany terrorized London with
during World War II. Although overall not very effective individually, they
did cause brief spells of horror for the localized group of people that were affected
through maiming, killing, or property destruction. The difference between the Nazi's
weapons and Hamas' weapons is that the Germans didn't depend on other terrorist
entities to supply them with their weapons of destruction; they were brilliant people
who had evil intentions of world domination. Hugo Gernsback writes...
 Who says engineers and scientists have no
sense of humor? This is not an April Fools joke or an attempt to punk you into reading
the story. An Internet browser with strict parental control settings enabled might
even prevent this page from even being displayed. In actuality, the term "G-String
Transmission Line" was so dubbed by its inventor, Dr. George Goubau, as
a tribute to his own name - both first and last. Out of an abundance of caution,
I reference the Library of Congress' "G-String" entry for the good doctor and the
device's legitimacy. A drawing similar to Fig. 1 in this 1951 issue of
Radio-Electronics magazine can be seen on the chalkboard behind Dr. Goubau
in the LoC...
 Voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), often
shortened to SWR in radio work, is a measure of how well a load impedance is matched
to a transmission line. It is defined as the ratio of the maximum RF voltage to
the minimum RF voltage along a transmission line when forward and reflected waves
interfere: VSWR = Vmax / Vmin = (1 + |Γ|) / (1 - |Γ|),
where Γ, the reflection coefficient, is the complex ratio of reflected
voltage wave to incident voltage wave. A perfect match has Γ = 0 and VSWR = 1:1.
An open circuit or short circuit has |Γ| = 1 and VSWR is infinite. In practical
RF systems, VSWR is a convenient scalar indication of mismatch, but it does not
by itself show...
 Citizens Band Radio (CB) in the United States
grew out of the post-World War II idea that ordinary citizens, small businesses,
farmers, contractors, hunters, motorists, and families should have access to short-range
two-way radio without the technical qualifications required for amateur radio. The
Federal Communications Commission created the Citizens Radio Service in the 1940s,
initially in the UHF region, but CB became culturally important only after the FCC
opened the 27 MHz "11-meter" band to Class D Citizens Radio in 1958. That band,
26.965 MHz to 27.405 MHz today, is what most Americans mean by "CB radio.” CB was
originally licensed. Users paid for an FCC license...
 Here is an advertisement for Electro-Voice
Manufacturing Company
microphones that I scanned from page 101 of my copy of the February 1943
QST magazine. As with many companies during the World War II era, this
one's theme is the service their products are providing to America's servicemen.
Per the ad: If you were receiving radio messages from men in the midst of earsplitting
battle noises, you'd hear crisp speech undistorted by background sound effects.
Electro-Voice Microphones, in military service, are helping to make it possible.
Similar microphones, designed to achieve such results, will be available for specific
commercial applications ... after our wartime job is done...
 At least in the U.S., laws regarding the
recording of telephone conversations seem to be constantly changing and vary
from state to state. Violation penalties - including imprisonment - can be
severe in both cases. Some states require that all parties in the conversation
be apprised of the recording, while others only require that at least one party
(obviously the one doing the recording) be aware of it. As mentioned in this
1954 "Macs Radio Service Shop" story, some areas require that an audible "beep"
be sounded at regular intervals while recording is occurring. With the
ubiquitous use of smartphones featuring built-in recording capabilities,
opportunities for recording and being recorded are constant...
 Robert Taylor claims - without contention
from what I can find - to have invented the concept of "super-modulation," whereby the normal "splatter" created by
greater than 100% amplitude modulation (AM) can be mitigated through use of
specialized circuits. As with many paradigm-changing discoveries, much was made
of super-modulation in the late 1940s through early 1950s, and then it pretty
much dropped off the charts. The cause might have been that the sophistication
of circuitry needed to keep everything tuned and tracking properly to prevent
harmonic and sideband was deemed not worth the trouble once frequency modulation
(FM) came on the scene. FM quickly gained...
 It would be more than a decade after the
publishing of this article before the first
direct-to-home satellite television broadcasts would be a reality, so it shows
how long plans were being made for such systems. Rural landscapes are still peppered
with the large vestigial C-band (~4 GHz) satellite dishes, many with faded
eyeballs and other clever (and ugly) artwork on them. Before coaxial cable was strung
beyond suburbs, country dwellers who either could not pull in over-the-air broadcasts
from downtown locations or just wanted more viewing options paid dearly for satellite
service. Equipment and installation costs on early systems could run into the $30k
realm. Today's satellite TV systems use...
 Robert Taylor, along with inventing the concept
of "super-modulation," also coined the new communications term "Intelligence
Transmission Efficiency." It refers in part to the ratio of power in the intended
sideband relative to power in the at least partially suppressed other sideband and
carrier. Admittedly, I have not read this material enough to fully comprehend the
concept of super-modulation, but at least based on the Fig. 1 waveform, there
seems to be an element that adds a DC bias to the detected signal due to a nonsymmetrical
(about 0 Vdc) transmitter modulation by pumping more power into the positive peaks.
I'm happy to be corrected by any knowledgeable reader. For that matter...
 The most effective method for
iisolating DC power traces, low-frequency analog signal traces, high-frequency
analog signal traces, and digital signal traces on a multi-layer printed circuit
board is not simply to "separate everything with gaps." The best-practice
method is functional partitioning combined with continuous, carefully assigned
reference planes, controlled return-current paths, localized power distribution,
and layer stackup planning. In practical PCB design, signals do not travel only
in copper traces. Every signal current has a corresponding return current, and
at higher frequencies that return current follows the path of lowest
impedance, usually directly under...
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