As is always the case, we've been busy adding plenty of new stuff to Microwaves101. We ain't been slack, Cap'n Walker!
New for February 2024...On Valentines day, 1942, Harvard professor Julius Fieser invented napalm. The word is a portmanteau of naphthalene and palmitate, which were mixed with gasoline to form a sticky substance that burns slowly at high temperature to firebomb enemies. US patent 2644916 showed the Napalm recipe in 1952. The United States has been the biggest user of firebomb technology, starting in WWII by using napalm against Germans and Japanese. One plan was to deliver it with bats to cause fires in Tokyo, gluing a miniature but deadly backpack to a million bats and packaging a thousand of them at a time into parachute canisters with the idea that they would roost in wooden structures before a timer ignited their furry little bodies. This plan was eventually abandoned, in favor of something flashier.. During the sixties, Dow Chemical had the contract to produce napalm for the Pentagon, and soon everyone associated the company with the product. By the time nine-year-old Kim Phúc was photographed after suffering serious burns (Google that if you are not familiar with the iconic photo), Dow Chemical had given up the napalm contract. However, they continued to manufacture Agent Orange, which ended up costing $197M in payments to veterans (but nothing to Vietnamese farmers). In 2003, MK-77 firebombs were dropped on Iraq. Technically not napalm, MK77 used a mixture of kerosene, polystyrene and phosphorus. You can Google MK-77 all day and probably never find out what company produced it. Technically, firebombing is still legal under the Geneva Convention, so long as it is not used against civilian targets. Happy Valentines Day, by the way!
Meanwhile, what's new on the Microwaves101 site?
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Last month we uploaded additional historic Varian ads thanks to loyal reader Joachim.The text was in German. Thanks to Frederic, we have translations for these German posters. Frederic is going to receive a Microwaves101 coffee mug for his help!
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We are considering holding a special session on Microwaves101 at the upcoming IMS 2024 conference in Washington DC! Keep reading and you will learn more about this...
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Continuing a thread on phase shifter design using Microwave Office, this month's lesson shows how to design a MMIC-compatible 90-degree phase bit at X-band. The 90-degree bit is always the hardest design with the worst results, don't ask us why.
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Be sure to download each phase shifter lesson MWO project, they are in our download area. After a few more lessons you will be eligible for a valuable Microwaves101 certificate of participation, which you can pad your resume with! We guarantee if you ever get tasked with designing a digital phase shifter, your feeble Googling efforts are going to lead you back to Microwaves101!
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Our info on "Who owns the Smith chart?" is now a page by itself. Spoiler alert: it's not us.
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How do you recover a coaxial cal kit suffering from putrid foam disease? This page started as a question from Alan, who provided a "before" photo. Feel free to weigh in with your own sage advice!
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Alan's photo also appears in the Microwave Mortuary, for which he will receive the coveted Microwaves101 pocketknife!
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We added a link to TD Commons on our Cool Links page. TD Commons is typically used to establish prior art to prevent unwanted patents from competitors.
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We have a pile of updates for our where-are-they-now page.: ANSYS has just annouced that they will be bought by Synopsis for a crazy amount of $34B (yes, billion with a B), Anokiwave was sold to Qorvo for an undisclosed sum. Past transactions we added include Laird sold to Dupont (2021), Linmic sold to CST (2007) and an update on LNX in 2013 thanks to Mike. And we have a half-dozen updates on the Miteq-Narda saga, thanks to Bob.
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We added amptenna and napalm to our database of portmanteaux in engineering.
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You may have seen a number of contributions on the site from our friend Dr S Raghavan, retired professor at the National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli in India. We're pleased to say that Dr. Raghavan has just been given the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society MADARAS section. Congratulations, Dr. Raghavan!
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The Unknown Editor schools us on plagiarism, and spins a yarn on a family legend involving well-known English playwright W. Somerset Maugham.
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Also on our discussion board, we've always got some questions that need YOUR answers. Here are the newest threads - Step it up and go!
https://forum.microwaves101.com/discussion/220/micrrowaves101mtt-s-ims-special-session Discussion of a possible M101/MTTS special session at IMS!
https://forum.microwaves101.com/discussion/219/anyone-recognize-the-marking-here - Still waiting for the image to come through, sorry...
https://forum.microwaves101.com/discussion/218/phase-shifters-and-tdus Philosophy question on the future of AESA design...
Pop on over to the discussion board to register and sign in, then chime in on existing threads, or start your own topics. Our user approval process is quick and anonymous, blocks most bots, and eliminates spam by more than 99%. At least that's what the sales rep told us.
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We're always fixing typos and making corrections of one kind or another, mostly whenever one of you eagle-eyed viewers write to tell us when we've made a mistake. For this month, we have been told there is a mistake on an equation on our monopulse comparator network page. But the comment did not include what the mistake was! Pro tip, if you want us to fix something, be sure to identify the problem and what page it is on. Even better, tell us how to fix it. Thanks to all of our assistant editors out there!
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