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 While doing a little research about a
Popular Electronics article, I ran across some examples of
electronic
component art / sculpture. A Google image search on the topic yields hundreds
of results, with most being duplicates. I always try to locate the original image
so as to give proper credit to the designer, but more often that not the pictures
are posted on websites without a reference. To avoid unfairly attracting attention
from the creator's work, I always use thumbnails and provide hyperlinks to the websites
where I found...
 This thankful commemoration of the 20th anniversary
of U.S. Air Mail service from Burgess Battery Company, which appeared in a 1941
issue of QST magazine, encompasses most of my major lifetime interests. First and
foremost, from my earliest memories, is a love of airplanes (and all things that
fly for that matter). A DC-3 (my favorite multi-engine propeller plane) is shown
in one of the photos as is a Ford Trimotor, which Melanie and I have flown on. Next
comes the electrical, electronics, and radio communications aspects, which encompasses
the aircraft wiring...
 A lot of nostalgia gets waxed here on RF Cafe,
to which frequent visitors can readily attest. Old timers (if you're not one now, you
some day will be) often like to see remembrances of days of yore, the halcyon days of
past hobbies, family, long naps, school (yuk), vacations, and other pleasurable times.
Hopefully, you already have or will soon have a few of your own. This 3-page
Lafayette Radio Electronics spread from a 1965 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine is typical of what what avid electronics hobbyists would have read and
drooled over with so many great items in the offering. If you were like me, the
cost of most of the things I wanted were well outside my budgetary reach. Prices
for electronics gizmos were quite high...
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (6/4 - 6/8) "Tech
Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of all the avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, each week I create a new technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words
from my custom-created 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...
 Meteor scatter (aka meteor burst) communications
is today largely the domain of amateur radio operators in their ongoing attempts to set
records for making long distance (DX) contacts with a minimum amount of transmit power.
When this article was written by U. California's Victor Latorre, transcontinental fiber
optic cables did not interconnect the world with high speed, phase stable media that
meets the exacting needs of precise time synchronization. Radio astronomy, quantum physics
experiments, and even stock market trading depends on microsecond or finer timing. Mr. Latorre
mentions here about using
meteor scatter communications' unique phase-stable characteristic to send
synchronization signals between scientific and navigation facilities. Of course
meteor scatter has the severe disadvantages...
 A decade after
tunnel diodes were first invented by Nobel Laureate Leo Esaki, grand plans for the
unique device never played out. Predictions included its use for computer solid state
memories to replace magnetic core arrays. Tunnel diodes benefitted from the aura surrounding
their exploitation of the quantum mechanical tunnelling phenomenon, which had a futuristic
ring to it. Conventional diodes, having a relatively wide depletion region, require the
current carriers (electrons and holes) to overcome a potential hill in traveling from
the valence band to the conduction band of energies. Since high doping levels are used
in the tunnel diode, a narrow depletion region is formed at the junction. This allows
electrons...
 Hidden away on page 134 of a 1959 issue of
Electronics World, at the end of a Mac's Service Shop-like electronics
shop docudrama (Another Day in the Shop) is this handy tip on how to fabricate
a make-shift
thermal wire stripper from a soldering gun or a soldering iron. The beauty of
thermal strippers over mechanical strippers is that they do not nick the underlying metal
wire. Heated elements melt the insulation and then a blunt edge is used to slide the
insulation off the end of the wire. Another advantage is that you can strip a wide range
of wire gauges and insulation types without needing to adjust the jaws or change to a
different hole location - although a proper temperature setting is required to avoid
a gloppy, stringy mess...
 Here's a gimmick that never really caught
on. In the 1960's, Antenna Specialists promoted their Model M-148 Co-Ax Omni Antenna
"with visual RF indicator." That indicator was a neon light bulb
at the tip which lit up when the transmitter was keyed on. Not only would this novel
feature let you know when your transmitter was broadcasting, but it would also "guide
mobiles visually to your 10-20." OK, maybe at night, but it certainly wouldn't have
been bright enough during the day to even see. Alas, the public evidently didn't
impress the buying public as much as it did the designers. Maybe it had something
to do with...
 Most of us
here in America recognize the
Packard Bell name from the line of personal computers they sold in the 1980s and
1990s. I owned three of them, beginning with an Intel 80286 model, then an 80486, and
finally a Pentium model. They were in the "pizza box" format that sat on the desk with
the CRT monitor on top; I always preferred that configuration over the tower type. Before
Packard Bell made personal computers, they made personal radios for the desktop beginning
back in the 1930s. That explains why Mr. J.T. Goode, an engineer with Packard Bell, would
write an article in 1947 regarding a method to tune antennas using light bulbs...
 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...
 Establishing a
good ground connection is more important than ever with all the
vulnerable electronics devices connected to house wiring for the Internet of Things
(IoT). The old saying of "Ground is ground the world around" is only true if you
actually have a good path to that ground potential. This article discusses methods
for determining whether or not you have a low resistance ground interface, and how
to establish one if needed. However, that is only the below-grade part of the equation
[ground rod(s) and possibly conduction-enhancing chemicals]. Installing a low resistance
and equally important low inductance path above grade to the below grade component(s)
is essential for maximum protection. Lightning is a transient phenomenon, so the
di/dt part of the v(t) = L * di/dt equation governing voltage across an inductor...
 At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (5/28 - 6/1)
"Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of all the avid
cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new technology-themed crossword puzzle
using only words from my custom-created 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...
 Once World War II and the Korean War
were through consuming a large percentage of the world's material and labor resources,
technology focus shifted largely toward inventing and manufacturing consumer goods.
It was a period similar to the Roaring Twenties, after World War I where innovation
and high employment fueled good times for a lot of the population. Creature comforts
like indoor plumbing, refrigerators, electric toasters and can openers, radio, affordable
automobiles, were appearing in the majority of homes. Unfortunately, not all countries
enjoyed the upturn during those eras, usually because of continued war and/or oppressive
Communist / Socialist / Marxist regimes.
Israel did not formally become a country again until 1948, having
been ruled...
 Satellite evolution occurred at a rapid pace once
Sputnik and Echo were successfully launched in the late 1950s. Sputnik was a simple beacon
transmitter whose signal was used to measure orbital and atmospheric properties and their
effects on radio signals. Oh, and also to announce to the world that the USSR had accomplished
the world's first satellite mission - I'd brag, too. Explorer 1, the first
U.S. satellite, launched the following year, measured and broadcast Van Allen Radiation
Belt data. This Electronics World article appeared about a decade into the satellite
aspect of the "Space Race." By then...
 Germanium was "the" semiconductor of
choice in 1959 even though advances were being made with silicon. Most of the newer semiconductor
devices were being fabricated with germanium as the central transducer element. Temperature
sensors, strain gauges, "sensistor" variable resistance units, Hall effect sensors and
gyrators and circulators, torsional (twist) transducers, displacement sensors, and even
neutron detectors were done in germanium. Even though silicon is referenced as being
applicable to all the devices, it was not until the 1960s that silicon began to dominate
semiconductor fabrication. This paper titled ,"From Germanium to Silicon, A History of
Change in the Technology of the Semiconductors...
 Yes, I needed to look up the definition of "callithump."
I have to admit to not really being sure why the title seemed apt to the
editors. This is two separate mini-stories. The first, "A Dubious Tale," is a
clever manipulation of a very familiar electronics / electrical mathematical law
applied to a fictional town located on the shores of Scandinavia. The second,
set in the mid-1960s, tells a futuristic tale - projected way forward into the
1980s - of a discussion between a father and his son regarding how things are
going at school. Unlike similar predictions in the 1960s of a flying car in
every garage and Dick Tracey watches on every wrist, this scenario has, although
not exactly as envisioned, come to fruition...
 This is the first of a three-part series
on
radio detector circuits by Mr. Robert Scott. He begins in this
article with describing diode action and progresses to uses in various types of
signal detectors in radio receivers. A discussion of modulation and distortion sources
is included as well. The strange-looking schematic symbols are vacuum tubes, which
used metallic elements separated by space as functional elements rather than fused
sand containing traces of impurities. Don't be intimidated, though; just think of
them as field effect transistors (FETs) where the plate is the drain, the grid is
the gate, and the cathode is the source. The next article in the series discusses
hi-fidelity triode detectors; the plate rectifier, infinite-impedance detectors,
grid rectification, and regenerative circuits...
 Part 1 of this "All About IC's" trilogy titled,
"What Makes Them Tick," author Bob Hibberd introduced the concept of semiconductor physics
and doped PN junctions. In Part 2, he discusses methods used to
fabricate monolithic, integrated circuits (IC's) on silicon chips.
Transistors, diodes, resistor, capacitors, and to some extent, inductors, can be
built using a combination of variously doped junction regions, metallization,
and oxidation (insulators). Technology has come a long way since 1969, including
mask techniques, 3-D structures, doping gradients, feature size, dielectric
breakdown strength, current leakage, circuit density, mixed analog, RF, and
digital circuitry, and other things. Part 3, covered in the August issue, goes
into more detail about how passive components are realized in silicon...
 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 Lamar or the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Enjoy!...
 The transition from vacuum tubes to semiconductors,
and from black and white to color televisions was in full swing by 1973. Accompanying
the change in components was a re-thinking of the most effective and profitable method
of manufacturing and servicing the new equipment.
Modularization was thought to be key to future success even though production costs
were slightly higher. Reliability improvements were already reducing the need for service
calls and highly trained technicians who could troubleshoot failures down to the component
level. Swapping out suspect modules with known-good modules, in Mac's words, results
in "a quickly trained module swapper who knows only 'how' and not... |
 Some day in the not too distant future, a generation
of electronics enthusiasts will read magazines like Nuts & Volts, QST,
Make, and other hobbyist publications and be amazed at how crude our present
day methods for building
homebrew projects were. They might even feel sorry for us. Having digital cameras,
sophisticated graphics software, high resolution inkjet and laser printers, and vinyl
cutting machines for adorning chassis and panels are a godsend here in twenty-teens compared
to the film-based analog cameras, chemical-based photo processing labs, and rub-on lettering
and shape stencils...
 Here is the very first episode of the "Carl &
Jerry" series that ran for many years in Popular Electronics magazine. In
the manner of The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, et al, Carl and Jerry are two teenage boys
who, in their pursuit of their electronics hobby, manage to get themselves involved in
crime scene investigations, in odd situations with friends and adults, and even while
horsing around in their basement laboratory. Every episode is an entertaining combination
of mystery, teamwork, drama, and technical discussion. Amateur radio was a key feature
of many of their adventures. John T. Frye authored every adventure as he developed his
sleuthing buddies over time to go from a frumpy Jerry Bishop with a "well-padded frame"
and a Farside-esque bespectacled Carl Anderson to a couple more stealthy,
professional looking investigators who sometimes employed MacGyver-like tactics
during their antics...
 If you have read as many vintage electronics magazines
as I have, one thing that is obvious is how many of the same issues that plagued the
field since the middle of the last century are still with us today - only in a much worse
way by now.
Government meddling, regulation and taxation are amongst the top offenders.
Both the electric power industry and the communications industry have been hit
hard, and huge costs to consumers is the result. Itemized bills from the utility
companies do not give the full picture of what a large percentage of your
monthly premiums go to feed the government beast. You might see some line items
for taxes, surcharges, contributions and user fees, but those being paid for you
by the providers (i.e., absorbed in the base charge) are hidden. One of the more
recent, highly publicized example...
 Popular Electronics magazine ran
a monthly series titled, "Opportunity Awareness" that addressed issues on continuing education,
networking, and job performance as a means of advancing one's career. Fundamentally,
nothing has changed in that aspect; however, the specialty areas for various levels
of education and experience has shifted from where they were in 1971 when this chart
was created. Host David Heiserman often fielded questions submitted by readers.
As one who spent many evenings sitting in evening college classes while working
on an Associate's degree, a Bachelor's degree, and a few credits toward a Master's
degree, I can relate to the guy who wrote about taking night courses in an effort
to get into the electronics field. I was already working...
 Electronics industry news has reported lately
that there is a
shortage of qualified technicians in the U.S., brought on because
of the increased levels of manufacturing activity. The military has historically
been a good source of techs that have four or more years of hands-on experience
and a healthy dose of theoretical training. For the past couple decades, the overall
troop size has been decreasing, contributing to the lack of technicians. Two-year
colleges and vocational centers are still turning out graduates, but not many who
also have field experience. This is not a new dilemma for employers, however. The
industry goes through cycles just like necktie styles and sunspots; to wit, this
article from a 1967 issue of Popular Electronics. I had to laugh...
 Pardon my gallows humor, but when I first saw this
photo from a 1965 issue of Electronics magazine of this manufacturing plant
being built in Hong Kong, my thought was that maybe those scaffolds in front of the windows
were actually there to prevent despondent, hopeless employees from
jumping onto the sidewalks below. These days, more stylish and socially
acceptable nets are used. The take-away from this story is that while it might
seem the shifting of manufacturing to and/or sourcing of foreign-made products
by U.S. firms from China is not a recent phenomenon. This was half a century ago
before the fall of the Berlin Wall, before the breakup of the U.S.S.R., the
mowing down of student protestors in Tiananmen Square, and other high profile...
 Quadrature modulation and demodulation is as commonplace
and unremarkable today as were Space Shuttle launches before NASA cancelled the program
in 2011 (eliminating America's ability to send astronauts into space). However, before
integrated circuit implementation was available, it was a relatively rarely employed
scheme. Yes, there were many applications using analog quadrature systems, but use with
digital communications requires closely matched (amplitude and phase) pairs of mixers
and power splitters / combiners, along with close tracking over time and temperature.
The "magic" of quadrature systems is...
 Although the article's title specifies "electronic
hobbyist," the advice applies equally well to students and professional technicians and
engineers. A few of the
tools are no longer available from the original manufacturers, but modern equivalents
- often of better design and quality - are available. If you are nostalgic for the originals,
though, you can always look for them on eBay; there's not much you cannot find there
if you wait long enough. To show how much times have changed, get a load of (pun intended)
that pistol-shaped soldering gun. Can you imagine the mayhem that would ensue if it...
 I suppose a more appropriate title for this chart
would be "Foreign
Valve Substitution Data," considering that most (if not all) of Europeans refer(red)
to vacuum tubes as "valves." As with having posted scores of Radio Service Data Sheet
pages for the benefit of hobbyists who restore and service vintage radio equipment, I
also post other hard-to-find reference resources when I find them. Sure, the number of
people looking for this information is extremely small, but they are extremely grateful
for this when in the throes of finding replacement tubes (valves). Posting a hyperlink
to this page on the RF Cafe homepage will assure that...
 "YL" in amateur-ese stands for "young lady." It refers to any ham operator of the female gender
regardless of age. I don't know how many women were Hams in 1966 when this article
appeared in QST, but according to Communities of the Air: Introducing Radio
to the World, author Susan M. Squier, by 2003 women made up 40% of new license
applicants. Judging by amateur radio club rosters and field day events, YLs don't
make up anywhere near 40% of the Ham population, but maybe they just tend to shun
the public light. A 2008 presentation on the YL Radio Website estimated 15% in 2000.
I searched around the Young Ladies Radio League (YLRL), American Radio Relay League
(ARRL) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) websites for current statistics
but could not find anything specifically about the percentage split between males
and women. On a side note, the first licensed YL in the U.S. was Emma Chandler...
 A series of three articles appeared in 1973 issues
of Popular Electronics that conducted a high-level review - or introduction if you've
never seen it before - of DC circuit analysis. In this first installment, Professor Arthur
Seidman, of the Pratt Institute, covers a variety of subjects starting with
direct current (DC) circuit theory. Ideal current and voltage sources, units and
notations, Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's law, resistors, capacitor and inductor charge and discharge
curves, series and parallel circuits, power calculations, conductance, and other good
stuff is covered. There is even (gasp) a bit of calculus presented...
 My first exposure to
hot-carrier diodes was in the detector sections of the s-band airport surveillance
and x-band precision approach radar systems I work on in the USAF. I had no idea what
a hot-carrier diode - or for that matter what a Schottky diode, its alternate name -
was at the time. Come to think of it, I do not recall them ever being referred to specifically
as hot-carrier or Schottky diodes - just "diodes." This Electronics World
article from Hewlett Packard engineer Stephen Adam provides some background into
hot-carrier diodes, including how their low barrier potential, small junction
capacitance, low noise, and short...
 Looking forward is essential for the advancement
of technology, but looking backward to see from whence we came is beneficial as well.
That is why I post so many articles from vintage tech magazines. Not only does familiarizing
yourself [hopefully] help prevent making the same mistakes over again, but it give you
an appreciation for the sacrifices and innovations that paved the way to the current
state of the art. The same argument can be made for social sciences and politics. Unlike
social scientists and politicians, technologists do actually learn from the past. What
caught my attention in this "Zero-Beating
the News" feature in a 1966 issue of Popular Electronics was the
photo of IBM engineers integrating and testing the electronics equipment...
 Moral standards seem to rigidly obey the second
law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy (disorder) increases in a closed system.
Most people would say society is more rude and corrupt today than in days gone by - count
me among them. However, believing so does not obviate or excuse acts of deviance in the
past. Indeed, even esteemed organizations like the
ARRL seems to have been guilty of promoting dishonest acts. To wit, consider this
offer appearing in the "Strayed" column of the April 1933 issue of QST magazine,
"For Sale: QSL Cards of any country. Win your WAC..."
 With today being the 77th anniversary of
America's entry into World War II with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor,
I thought this advertisement from a 1942 issue of the ARRL's QST magazine
would be of interest. Most of us have heard about the neighborhood collections for
tires, glass, newspaper, cans, and cloth in order to help support the war effort.
Probably not many have also heard about the
Signal Corps' call for milliammeters! That's right, the huge,
rapid build-up of electrical and electronic equipment for radios, vehicles, and
factory equipment. Many meters were needed for monitoring status and making
process adjustments. America had an ample supply of meters in the hands of
Amateur radio operators; all that was required was to separate the Hams from
their meters. Fortunately, an appeal to patriotism was sufficient motivation
back then...
 1965 was the beginning of America's involvement
in Vietnam. A mere decade had passed since the end of the Korean War (or "conflict" if
you prefer), and the Department of Defense had not done much to modernize the military
since then. Unlike with World War II when U.S. factories were turning out military
aircraft, ships, and ground vehicles ahead of formal involvement, Congress was not interested
in making headlines with news of war machines. The "Washington
Newsletter" feature of this October 1965 issue of Electronics magazine reported
on, among other military-related items, the U.S. Air Force's plans to phase out the venerated
B-52 Stratofortress bomber by sometime in the 1970s. Here it is half a century
later and the B-52...
 Barry Rimer (WA2WAO), proprietor of Corner Press,
has been printing
QSL cards since 1961. QSL cards are cards Amateur Radio Operators (HAMS) send to
each other to confirm a QSO (talking to each other on the air). QSL's were our first
product; it's how we started in 1961. In 1971 we changed the company name to Corner Press
to reflect a more diverse product line, not just HAM radio specific. There are more than
70 standard designs to choose from, or submit your own custom design. We produce QSL's
in many styles: Flat printed in one or two spot colors, Raised printed in one or two
spot colors, Full bleed full color. Please contact Barry for your QSO printing needs...
 Robert Radford's (not to be confused with Robert
Redford) "Electromaze
Puzzle" is a unique - and weird - sort of word puzzle that first appeared in this
February 1966 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. Some people have been confused
about the strategy, believing that all the white spaces needed to be filled in. They
do not. Just because a letter might have an empty square adjacent to it does not imply
that another letter must fill it. Also, read the instruction carefully, especially the
part about the last letter of one word being the first letter of another word. You will
probably want to print out the maze grid and find an old guy who should still have a
pencil stowed away somewhere you can borrow to use for filling in the boxes...
 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 Lamar or the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Enjoy!...
 Electronics magazine editor Lewis H.
Young dedicated a series of issues in 1965 to reporting on the state of
electronics research and production in Japan. The December 13
edition had many articles on the subject. The world was still in the early phase
of a major transition from vacuum tubes and discrete components to transistors and
integrated circuits. Japan was at the leading edge of that effort - and it was very
successful. Ample evidence of the not-quite-there-yet status of the transition is
all the advertisements in this edition of the magazine. Products showcased by manufacturers
were discrete, not integrated - that applies to both electronic and mechanical subjects.
When you look at those components and assemblies, you get feel for what made them
work because the individual parts are in view. Many modern products are integrated
into packaged and tested subassemblies that are ready to be integrated... |
