Before we get into "fun links", here is a short list of web sites that have good microwave engineering content on them.
Microwave-related links
Do you work in the satellite industry? If you are visiting our Microwaves101 site, perhaps you are involved in low noise blocks or upconverters, which you can source on EverythingRF.com.
https://www.everythingrf.com/
But what if you need a complete satellite, or a rocket motor? Take a look at the new sister site, Satnow.com.
Satellite Components | Space Components - SatNow
Technical Disclosure Commons | Technical Disclosure Commons Research (tdcommons.org) is a way to self-publish "defensive" papers without peer review. Some papers are better than others. Here's a paper on a method of improving Lange coupler power handling, by a Qorvo employee.
From their website, here is what TD Commons is all about:
The Technical Disclosure Commons is a collection of technical disclosures from various companies and individuals. Many of these technical disclosures are defensive publications, published for the specific purpose of preventing subsequent patenting of those ideas. Defensive publications can boost patent quality by creating prior art that prevents the issuance of overly broad or obvious patents.
Try Speed Crunch, a calculator that has 80 functions built in, and other powerful features. Thanks to Hadrien!
http://www.speedcrunch.org/download.html
You are probably aware that TJ Green LLC provides seminars and webinars on microwave assembly topics. Tom Green helped us out in the past by contributing content on hermeticity to Microwaves101. The TJ Green website store provides some great downloadable white papers on topics such as near-hermetic packaging, hermeticity testing, MIL-STD-883 inspection and much more. Fair warning: you will have to register an email address to get the information.
http://store.tjgreenllc.com/product-category/free-downloads/
Looking for some defense-related papers that are in public domain? Defense Technical Information Center's website is where you need to go! Be aware that some of the content is a little old. Go there and type L-band digital phase shifter into the search box and see what you get. That 1962 effort using triodes for switch elements is going to be a problem to duplicate...
https://discover.dtic.mil/
Progress In Electromagnetics Research (PIER) publishes peer-reviewed original and comprehensive articles on all aspects of electromagnetic theory and applications. You can find quite a few microwave topics there as well. Someone please tell us why there are separate JPIER-B and C and M sites that have to be separately searched?
http://www.jpier.org/PIER/
Looking for used and surplus scientific equipment sales (i.e cheap test equipment?)? Tell Rich at BMI Surplus Inc. that that M101 sent you to his site...
https://www.bmisurplus.com
Iulian Rosu hosts an interesting amateur web site with many original technical articles and tons of schematics. Thanks to Tom for pointing it out!
http://www.qsl.net/va3iul/
Here is yet another über-user of Microsoft Excel applying the spreadsheet to RF matching networks... Thanks, Manfred!
Hi microwaves101 engineers, I have developed an EXCEL-spreadsheet which supports matching network designs. You can find it on http://www.maka-fss.de.
May be it is of interest for the community. Comments are appreciated. (Contact info is on the linked page).
On this site you can download a free tool for plotting S-parameters, thanks to Orla, who resides in Denmark. If you use the tool, he requests your feedback so he can continue to improve it! Here is his description:
I have spent some time making a tool that plots S-parameters in selectable graphs. Nothing big, but much faster than MWO or ADS, and providing the possibility to associate your s2p files to the program, and displaying graphs by double click.
I don't expect to make money on the program, but would really appreciate some feedback. Actually it's made in Visual Express so selling it would be illegal.
Orla's program can be seen (and downloaded) at this web page:
http://www.orlaus.dk/SPARGRAPH/SPARGRAPHDEMO_files/frame.htm.
scikit-rf is an open-source microwave project, being developed by Alex. it used to be called mwavepy. Here's his description:
scikit-rf is a compilation of functions and class's for microwave/RF engineering written in python. It is useful for things such as: Touchstone file manipulation, calibration, data analysis, data acquisition, and plotting. mwavepy can either be used interactively, through the python interpreter, or used in scripts.
http://scikit-rf.org/
What can scikit-rf do ?
- Load touchstone (.s2p, s?p) files for data processing
- Provide basic algebraic operations on networks' scattering parameters
- Cascade 2-port networks
- De-embed 2-port networks
- Plot network's scattering parameter data (dB, Phase (unwrapped), Smith chart)
- Save plots in vector format for publication (a feature of
matplotlib)
- 1-port calibration, given any number of standards (least squares)
- 2-port calibration (svn version) with support for switch-terms.
- Can be used with pyvisa for instrument control of some VNA's ( partial support for HP8510, HP8720, and R&S ZVA40 )
- Provide basic TEM transmission line models, and some non-TEM transmission lines (rectangular waveguide)
- Create analytically based models for networks (good for making custom cal sets and modeling)
On the mightyohm.com web site you can see (among other hacks) a homemade chop saw used for dicing alumina circuits, an amazing accomplishment. Thanks to Drone!
http://mightyohm.com/blog/2009/07/tonys-diamond-chop-saw-part-1/
everythingRF is a cool website that is a partner of Microwaves101. It has the largest parametric search engine for RF & Microwave components, try it and you will like it. The website also contains news, links to design articles and information on new products. It also provides numerous links back to Microwaves101 articles, thanks guys!
www.everythingRF.com
Matweb is a great resource for material properties, check it out!
For those of you interested in frequencies higher than microwaves, check out Timbercon's glossary of fiber optic terms. Currently this site defines over 1,300 items. They have an education section and fiber optic tools as well if you poke around a bit.
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm will teach you some semiconductor physics, accompanied by glamour shots of Britney. It is an interesting combination, and it shouldn't get you in too much trouble with the Thought Police at work. After all, you're just learning about semiconductors, right? Thanks to Terry!
Barry Brown's VNAhelp.com has some good notes on vector network analyzers bit it's been moved, you can find it on this new site, which has eliminated non-Agilent information (October 2, 2005).
Designersguide.org is run by a couple of ex-Cadence guys. It offers a forum for asking questions on modeling just about anything to do with integrated circuits.
We've often referred to the ELECTRONIC WARFARE AND RADAR SYSTEMS ENGINEERING HANDBOOK available for your use, courtesy of the US Navy. It has plenty o'stuff of interest to microwave engineers, and you don't have to be an Old Crow to appreciate it. Great stuff on radar. Thanks for the tip, Terry of Oklahoma City! The bad news is that the original link no longer works... but the good news is that we have a copy of the entire document on its own page now!
RFCafe.com is a more politically-correct effort than the priceless gem that is Microwaves101.com. RF Cafe's material is mostly linked from other sites on the worldwide web, with an extremely busy web page design that boasts millions of page views. Kirt Blattenberger is the proprietor of this web site, and we hereby offer to arm wrestle him any day for a pint of beer, that is, if he is a real person and not a corporate creation such as Betty Crocker. RFCafe has a fair number of calculators up there, but most don't run in Mozilla Firefox, which really sucks because many of us despise Microsoft Internet Explorer, the proven way to infect your computer with spyware.
Who The Microwave Man? 
Speaking of Mozilla Firefox (the official browser of Microwaves101), why not download it right now, for free? Stop supporting Bill Gates, and let someone else have a turn as the world's richest man!
Daycounter, Inc. has a calculator that analyzes transistor stability and maximum gain, and suggests a suitable conjugate L-matching network for a given load and source impedance of the circuit to which the transistor will be connected. But it analyzes just one frequency at a time, and you have to type in the data. They should have done this as an Excel download. Good luck!
ViPEC is a free linear analysis program with a GUI interface. Sourceforge.net claims that ViPEC analyzes lumped elements as well as physical elements including microstrip and stripline. We haven't had time to try this out yet. Thanks to Don for sharing this link!
If you are looking for free layout software, and cheap circuit boards, look at our Cad Layout page.
Other useful links
Hey, that was a short list! Here's some other links you might find useful, Mr. Big Microwave Guy:
Here are some pages that did the work of compiling a bunch of resources for you. Need some help with PCBs or EMC? Check out these directories:
https://www.gophotonics.com
https://www.pcbdirectory.com
https://www.3d.directory
https://www.everythingpe.com
https://www.emc-directory.com
NIST has a big book of math, yours for free. Recently updated!
http://dlmf.nist.gov/
A cool site for engineers on the history of various stuff. http://tingilinde.typepad.com/starstuff/history_of_technology/index.html
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is the U.S. agency devoted to measurements and standards. They have a comprehensive listing of physical constants, searchable at https://www.nist.gov/pml/fundamental-physical-constants.
Go to the United States Defense Logistics Agency http://cage.dla.mil/ to look up CAGE codes (commercial and government entity) for businesses, Uncle Sam's way of keeping track of everybody. Search on 3MLV7 to find out more about the company that owns Microwaves101.com... yes, they've got it right, this is all about REUPHOLSTERY AND FURNITURE REPAIR! At least they haven't compromised the Unknown Editor's secret identity.
Check out our page on military specifications, and then go look at the page put up by the U.S. D.A.P.S and D.S.P (the government people who control documents): they call it ASSIST for "acquisition streamlining and standardization information system".
Here's the American Institute of Physics very cool web site on the history of physics.
Be like Gilligan and give them each a Three Hour Tour!
Think you've got a new idea? Check to see if someone else had it first by looking on the U.S. Patent Office web site. It seems like every month we get a request to put a link to someone's patent download site. We have one word for all of you would-be entrepreneurial parasites: Google. No one is going to join your web site and get spammed now that they can download pdfs of patents including images on Google. Game over, Dudes!
Need an area code?
http://www.allareacodes.com/
Need a Zip code?
https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/
Those last two links were thanks to Linda.
Fun links (no possible microwave use whatsoever!!!)
Want to learn about music from the Furry Leader? Check out Matt the Cat's Friday Night Cat Fight! Vote for your favorite versions of familiar tunes. Thank for entertaining us all, Matt!
While we don't really recommend it, sometimes you do need to come up with phrases for a random "corporate-speak" memo. Luckily, Tommy over at Atrixnet has us covered with a B-S Generator. Click here and try it out!
Do you hate the "successories" posters that executives hang in the conference room, with banal claptrap such as "Success is formed when principles are hammered and forged on the anvil of excellence?" This stuff makes real engineers puke. Funny thing, the successories web site has a "clearance rack" for stuff they produced that was less than successful... It's good to know that parodies of these posters are available at Despair.com! For example, "if you want to get to the top, prepare to kiss a lot at the bottom".
If you work at a big company, your motto might be "towards man's capacity for maximum effort to achieve minimal gain". Check out Rube Goldberg's site!
Like the Unknown Editor, are you interested in obscure bits of history? How about a book about the Ninth Air Force? Many books describe the Eight Air Force strategic bombing runs, the Ninth was the tactical air command that supported our troops on the ground using Mustangs, Marauders, Lightnings and Black Widows! Check out well-known travel author Harry A. Franck's long-lost book describing his Winter Journey following the U. S. airmen as they pounded the crap out of Nazi Germany in 1945!
KNON 89.3 FM North Texas radio's web site has some awesome Texas R&B, Texas blues and Texas dancehall music that you can download for free, or you can connect to their internet radio station! Be a sport and pledge a few bucks to buy one of their CDs. Power to the people!