| Date |
Fact of the Day Topic |
| May 1 |
Cable Minimum Bend Radii Most cables produced
by reputable manufacturers have two minimum bend radius specifications.
One is the ... |
| May 2 |
Silicon versus Gallium-Arsenide Varactors Varactors
are solid-state voltage-variable capacitors that can be made of silicon
or gallium-arsenide ... |
| May 3 |
Reducing Radio Equipment Lightning Damage Electrical
pulses induced in antenna systems by lightning have very fast rise and
fall times ... |
| May 4 |
Gas-Tube Coax Lightning Protectors Some
gas-tube coaxial cable lightning protectors fire at a relatively low
voltage if ... |
| May 5 |
Dynamic Resistors Resistors are the
most commonly used component in electronic circuits. In most applications
best performance is ... |
| May 6 |
Operational Amplifiers Solid-state
operational amplifiers (op-amps) are widely used in a large variety of
electronic circuit applications, but ... |
| May 7 |
Tallest Radio Tower The 2,120 foot
(646 meter) Warsaw Radio tower in Konstantynw, Poland was not only the
tallest radio tower ever built, it was ... |
| May 8 |
Sunspot Number Determination Some textbooks,
magazine articles, and websites falsely state that the Sunspot Number
is a count of ... |
| May 9 |
10.7 cm Solar Flux Karl Kansky, a Bell
Telephone Company engineer, discovered previously unknown radiation coming
from the sky in 1933 ... |
| May 10 |
Lens Antennas Radio-frequency lenses
can be used to focus radio waves as optical lenses are used to focus
light waves. In fact, Yagi antenna ... |
| May 11 |
Ground Rods in Rocky Areas It is practically
impossible to drive a ground rod in some mountainous areas of the western
United States and in ... |
| May 12 |
Storing Lithium-Ion Batteries Many
people falsely assume that lithium-ion batteries should be stored fully-charged.
Even without that assumption ... |
| May 13 |
Recalibrating Battery Charge Indicators Laptop
computers, cell phones, handheld radios, and many other types of battery-powered
electronic ... |
| May 14 |
Ferrite Core Coil-Winding Considerations The
mechanical properties of various types of ferrite vary. However, ferrite
is a ceramic that generally breaks ... |
| May 15 |
Reducing Ferrite Coil Capacitance It
generally is best to keep coil capacitance as low as reasonably possible
in most ferrite core applications ... |
| May 16 |
Ferrite Magnetism Sintered ferrite
contains crystals that generally range from 10 to 20 mm in size. Those
crystals contain tiny, saturated, molecular magnets ... |
| May 17 |
Multiple Antenna Interactions Because
it is somewhere between difficult and impossible to design single antennas
that have optimum ... |
| May 18 |
Personal Computer Batteries All AC-powered
personal computers have an internal battery that keeps the real-time
clock running and that ... |
| May 19 |
Toroid Filter Effectiveness Toroid
AC power-line filters reduce line-noise many decibels in some cases and
provide little benefit in others ... |
| May 20 |
Folded Dipole Applications Folded
dipoles usually are presented in textbooks and handbooks as providing
a way to match 300-ohm twin lead. However ... |
| May 21 |
Software, Firmware and Hardware The
characteristics of early electronic equipment were determined by hardware.
Hardware is ... |
| May 22 |
RF vs. Lightning-Protection Grounds Some
ground systems are installed primarily to make an antenna function correctly,
such as where a ... |
| May 23 |
Enhanced Single Sideband (ESSB) Most
existing single-sideband transmitters and receivers filter nearly all
audio-frequency components above ... |
| May 24 |
Ultra-Flexible Antenna Wire The 41-strand,
14 AWG, ultra-flexible antenna wire that is sold in short-lengths at
high prices under various private-label ... |
| May 25 |
Voltage Induced in a Half-Wave Dipole A
half-wave dipole collects RF energy from a broadside wavefront area of
0.1305 square wavelength. The RF ... |
| May 26 |
Being 'On the Air' Amateur Radio operators
often talk about being 'On the Air' or having been 'On the Air.' Broadcast
radio announcers often say ... |
| May 27 |
The Importance of Experimentation Experimenters
are thought by many members of the general public to be amateurs, because
... |
| May 28 |
Mathematics is not a Science Mathematics
is an extremely important tool in all branches of science. Anyone interested
in pursuing a science-career ... |
| May 29 |
Approximate is Completely Wrong Philosophically Many
understandings in electronics, and more generally in all of science,
evolved from ... |
| May 30 |
The Enormously Strong Electric Force Electrical
forces within atoms are enormously strong compared to gravitational forces,
but ... |
| May 31 |
An Important Fact about Energy Physics
courses and text books are loaded with information about energy. Many
different forms of energy, such as ... |
