Microwaves101 | What's new on Microwaves101?

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 January-March 2026: This discussion of a 100-year-old development should be of interest to all who dabble in the test and measurement aspect of engineering. Every once in a while you encounter someone that dedicated their entire life to a solving a single problem (Alfred Michelson comes to mind), invents a solution and is ultimately inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame. Born in 16 May 1903, the son of a prominent business owner, Charles Brannock went to Syracuse University and tinkered with an apparatus that would speed up fitments in the family business, with his first prototype built using an Erector Set. By 1926 he held his first patent, and in 1927 his refined patent US17253340 is one for the ages. He proceeded to found a business focused solely on manufacturing the "Brannock Device®. In this video you can see Al Bundy holding forth while holding a Brannock Device. Brannock ran his company until his death in 1992. The Brannock Device Company thrives today, and still makes their product in the USA. If you don't carefully size up someone's feet you are advised not to bestow them the gift of footwear, lest the recipient end up with a clown-shoe look.

Meanwhile, what's new on the Microwaves101 site?

The future of Microwaves101 is up for discussion on our message board (keep reading down and we will throw you a link to this). These days there is not enough ad revenue to pay bills. We can thank the pandemic, then the ever-approaching "recession", and ultimately Artificial Intelligence for this predicament. Every time you stop and use the AI-generated summary when you Google a topic you kill off another little bit of the internet's personality. We are not perfect, but you should not trust AI to give you accurate information as it learns from a mixture of good material plus garbage. What AI tool is going to mail you a pocketknife when you share your knowledge? Think about your increasing electric bill every time you use AI to help you pass your own content through ChatGPT. This has been a public service announcement.
Thanks to a tip from Alex we checked out Henrik Forstén's blog site and tried out his on-line EM 2D solver. What would the kids say? It's legit! We added his site to our cool links page, and his EM solver now appears on our free EDA page. Then we created and linked together four new pages on EM analysis, with more on the way.
The first page introduces the free EM tool and describes its advantages and disadvantages. In short, the advantage to 2D EM is a speedy solution for TEM media. The principal disadvantage is that a 2D solver cannot predict the dispersion of a quasi-TEM media such as microstrip line. We posted a microstrip example and compared it to our microstrip calculator (which includes dispersion).
In the next page we analyzed a 10 dB microstrip coupler on GaAs, which we previously looked at using a linear model in Microwave Office. Which is more accurate? In this case we favor MWO, but if anyone has some time please analyze the coupler in a 2.5D or 3D tool and send the results so we can compare the accuracy of the two tools.
Next, we analyzed a fifty ohm line in PolyStrata rectangular coax. This is a situation where the 2D solver shines, because PolyStrata coax is a TEM media.
Then we analyzed a 10dB coupler in PolyStrata coax. The 2D model is also accurate in this case. We compared the PolyStrata coupler predicted performance to our microstrip coupler, so you can see the advantages that a pure-TEM media holds.
Thanks to Sebastian we offer a new page on testing conducted emissions, which links to a video he produced on the topic. There you will learn about the "LISN" (line impedance stabilization network) that allows you to monitor emissions from your device's power supply leads, among other information.
We updated our microstrip and dispersion pages, noting that our on-line microstrip calculator does indeed handle the dispersion calculation correctly.
It's time that we paid more attention to the Rodney Dangerfield of Electronics, electronics distributors!. We started by posting the Mouser Inc. story on our where-are-they-now page.
On our discussion board, we've always got some questions that need YOUR answers. Pop on over and register and sign in, then chime in on existing threads, or start your own topics. Here are the newest threads:

https://forum.microwaves101.com/discussion/242/the-future-of-microwaves101 a discussion on the existential question about where Microwaves101 is going (which has not yet been decided). Check it out and chime in!

https://forum.microwaves101.com/discussion/241/best-place-to-sell-microwave-testing-equipment new post on where to sell valuable microwave equipment.

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