madengr

143 ms·

961.
by madengr 8y ago
Antennas: ARRL Antenna Compendium for the layman. Antenna Theory and Design by Stutzman and Theile for a textbook. Books by Constantin Balanis or John Krauss are good too. Modern Antenna Design by Milligan for a practicing engineer referen
962.
by madengr 8y ago
I wonder what happened to cold cathode display technology. It’s similar in that electrons are coaxed off a sharp tip. This would have the benefit of a controlling gate.
963.
by madengr 8y ago
Wow! I’m drooling. Brings back memories, as at 9, I was the prime age for this stuff. I bought the Big Track re-issue a few years ago. It is quite nice, but they did not make the trailer option. Also bought the re-issue Mattel football.
964.
by madengr 8y ago
It’s been done with optical imagery for a while, but this is probably the first SIGINT.
965.
by madengr 8y ago
Health insurance costs and education savings. I'd like to hang out my shingle, but steady employment with health insurance is needed for my family of 4, along with savings for kids college and my retirement. It's all a risk miti
966.
by madengr 8y ago
I’d think using flash memory for the file system on an industrial controller is another big problem. I had nothing but crashes with an RPI due to filesytem issues. Flash memory was intended for bulk R/W, not random access.
967.
by madengr 8y ago
Don’t NAND take up less room too? It took a CMOS course several years ago, and laid out a 16x16 shift register. The NAND was simple, orthogonal strips of gate metal and channel. The NOR required a parallel structure with more area.
968.
by madengr 8y ago
I agree, I thought it was good too. It drifted from the book, but sometimes in a good way. I liked the scenes with the navigator in the tank. The Voice amplifiers were kind of corny.
969.
by madengr 8y ago
You nailed it. I live in a ‘burb castle’. I was grateful to get out of my apartment. The woman in the adjacent unit would burn a dozen candles and stumble in drunk every night. The guy below would scream and break stuff during football
970.
by madengr 8y ago
As an EE undergrad, I had to design a TTL based processor, program the microcode, etc. I have no idea how a compiler works, or anything above assembly.
971.
by madengr 8y ago
If you search for “The Tube Guys”, the front cover of that book shows a 94 GHz, 1 MW tube used for an airborne active denial system. Traveling Wave tubes are still widely used for SATCOM.
972.
by madengr 8y ago
I do a lot of antenna design. There are far too many variables for optimization, and also size/geometry constraints. That's not to say you wouldn't start with a base design and use an optimizer (which could be genetic). Th
973.
by madengr 8y ago
Sounds similar to me, slugging it out at the same, boring company in flyover country. That has allowed me to build up >$1M in retirement savings in mid 40’s. Classic tortoise vs. the hare.
974.
by madengr 8y ago
I’d say “follow your passion” means do a job you don’t mind doing.
975.
by madengr 8y ago
OK, dumb question. Why are ancient sites always excavated, under several feet of soil. Is the soil comprised of 1000's of years of decayed plant matter? That all has to come from carbon dioxide.
976.
by madengr 8y ago
FWIW, here is a GNU Radio based “parallel” scanner I wrote. You can listen to the entire 2m band at once. https://github.com/madengr/ham2mon
977.
by madengr 8y ago
I let my ARRL membership drop last year. QEX was worth it, but they refuse to provide access to back issues, so I said to hell with it.
978.
by madengr 8y ago
I can load about 12 rounds/min of 45 ACP on my 5 stage press, but that does not include time for tumbling the brass, etc. If ammo prices skyrocket again, which they will, then reloading makes more sense. I made a couple of video a long
979.
by madengr 8y ago
Bullets are cheap. Rounds cost more, which is why I reload. I can reload .45 ACP for 1/2 the cost of economy ammo, and get better consistency. Even if commercial ammo were cheaper than reloading, many precision rifle shooters load th
980.
by madengr 8y ago
Does Amazon copy or undercut successfull products? A few years ago I bought some high quality monitor arms; heavy duty cast aluminum, etc. for about $150 each. A couple years later I go to buy another, and now there is an Amazon branded clo
981.
by madengr 8y ago
2030 for full autonomous driving? That is much later than all the hype. So is Honda being pragmatic, and most everyone else is blowing smoke? Or has self driving had a big setback in the last year?
982.
by madengr 8y ago
Yeah, but I think the difference is DIY is not selling the radios. I had a DJ-580T 25 years ago that I modded for out of band transmission. That is legal for personal use, but I can’t sell those. Same with scanners that access the old AMP
983.
by madengr 8y ago
What do they run HPUX on? HP has been out of the PA RISC Unix workstation for years. Do they still make mainframes?
984.
by madengr 8y ago
You should be able to talk to anyone in the USA with 100W and a wire antenna. I think the bigger issue is noise in urban areas. The FCC does a shit job of regulating noisy equipment. I had to go through my house and dispose of certain Eth
985.
by madengr 8y ago
There aren’t many billionaires, and SS taxable income is capped; $128k this year. So a billionaire receiving SS is rightly entitled to receive what he contributed. You can strip SS from the 1% and it will make no difference. You can do th
986.
by madengr 8y ago
There are a couple of books on electrically small antennas, but those are not introductory. Stutzman and Theile is a good antenna textbook, and there are many others; John Krause for example. You could start with the ARRL Antenna Compendiu
987.
by madengr 8y ago
Antenna engineer here. The metal antennas mentioned in the article are resonant (standing wave) antennas. There is another class of antennas called traveling waves, but still need to be about 1/2 wavelength to operate efficiently. Th
988.
by madengr 8y ago
My wife had one of those “fun scans” when pregnant. That cost $150, lasted 45 minutes, and the machine (color 3D) was way more advanced than the diagnostic machine. The that was not a rip off. Call it a medical procedure, and run it throu
989.
by madengr 8y ago
The clock jitter may get you. You can oversample and decimate to obtain the equivalent ENOB, but then the sample clock stability becomes more difficult and costly.
990.
by madengr 8y ago
I have a high deductible plan where I’m liable for the first $5k. That didn’t reduce any costs, nor can I get a price to shop around.

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