BRIGHT FUTURE FOR LED SHIRTS

Well, I’m a bit miffed. The “Winner and Loser” choices [January] were fun, but the “experts” were a little full of themselves. It’s just plain insulting to list the difficulty of spelling as one of the top three reasons Quaero is a loser. Also, for what it’s worth, the LED-driven shirts will sell well in America. I hate to admit that but it’s true. Americans buy such junk on a daily basis simply because most have too much money, have an irrational love for gadgets, and confuse “want” with “need.”

John Harty

IEEE Member

Cabot, Ark.

AT LEAST WE GOT THE COUNTRY RIGHT

In the February issue, in “Radios Get Smart,” “a transmission from England to one person in Nova Scotia” should have been “…to one person in Newfoundland.” According to the Parks Canada Web site, Signal Hill, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, was the reception point of the first transatlantic wireless signal by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901.

Lauri J. Hiivala

IEEE Senior Member

Markham, Ont., Canada

DREAMING OF REALITY

“There’s no rule that dooms engineers to dwell in a Dilbertian cubicle hell.” The opening sentence of “Dream Jobs 2007” [February] does a disservice to us engineers. In fact, I find it insulting. For most of us, the engineering profession is our dream job, regardless of the workplace environment. As ritzy or glamorous as the featured jobs may seem, most of us find it extremely rewarding to work in an area where our knowledge and skills make a difference to society—and to be among the best paid in the workforce. As far as I’m concerned, this is my dream job. I suggest that you also publish what normal, real engineers do in their everyday lives and common workplaces.

Herman A. Correa-Diaz

IEEE Member

Winchester, Mass.

I have my dream job—I work at the Naval Research Laboratory in the Pulsed Power Physics Branch of the Plasma Physics Division. Right now, I am bringing a 6-megajoule Electromagnetic Launcher Facility online. We plan to upgrade it to 11 MJ within a year. We are going to launch projectiles up to 7 mach (indoors!) and study the effects of the projectile on the barrel.

I am also involved in a Hybrid Radiation Source developed at NRL, made from a modified 1-megavolt Febetron. We are trying to reduce the X-ray spot size and increase the dose for projects at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

I also work with the laser switches on the Mercury Pulsed Power Generator. It is an Inductive Voltage Adder machine that charges to +/- 6 MV and provides 30 kiloamperes in a 50-nanosecond pulse for high-power radiography.

Brett M. Huhman

IEEE Member

Washington, D.C.

AMATEUR BANDS

Having read “Morse Code Is Dead. Long Live Morse Code.” [Spectral Lines, February], I’m afraid that eliminating Morse code from the amateur radio licensing requirement only further “dumbs down” the hobby. Look at the facts. Since incentive licensing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the requirements to get a license have become easier. All questions are now published verbatim, so it’s a matter of memorization rather than comprehension. Even the code test can now be passed with a multiple-choice test rather than “solid copy.”

I’m not surprised that the interest in ham radio has doubled. It is now going to be even easier to get a license and put a signal on the overcrowded high-frequency amateur bands. The ARRL [American Radio Relay League] membership will increase with this change in regulations, and that’s good for the ARRL—but not for amateur radio.

Roger Dzwonczyk

WB2EIG

IEEE Senior Member

Columbus, Ohio

Paul Rinaldo’s assessment of the Morse code regulatory change is accurate, in that the dropping of the Morse code testing requirement could have a positive effect on the amateur radio community. Even with the currently low sunspot counts and nonoptimal propagation, Morse code (“CW”) operation appears to be abundant in the amateur bands. As we enter the next sunspot cycle, this situation could further improve.

One item not mentioned in the editorial is the effect of the home computer on Morse code operation. Many amateur operators use various software programs to send and receive Morse. The keyboard is the input device, and text is demodulated directly onto the monitor. One can communicate with others using the same or different programs or no computer at all. Also, stand-alone Morse decoders are available; they just need to be placed near a receiver speaker and produce text on an LCD display.

To find Morse code software, go to http://www.ac6v.com/morseprograms.htm. My own offering is CWLab04, found at http://www.qsl.net/wn2a. Many of these are available at no cost. Several newsgroups and Yahoo Groups cover the subject as well.

Mike Masterson

IEEE Member

Budd Lake, N.J.

DOUBLE, DOUBLE

In “Radios Get Smart” [February], one of the numbers is suspect. The author states Cooper’s Law as a doubling of Marconi’s one radio transmission every 30 months for 105 years. One hundred five years is 1260 months; when divided by 30, that comes to 42 doublings. The 42nd power of 2 is 4.398 E12. Dividing that result by today’s world population of 6 573 965 580 gives an average of 669 radio transmissions per person at any instant, including children and sleeping adults. This seems to be high by at least 9 doublings, which amount to 270 months, or 22.5 years.

Palmer Agnew

IEEE Life Member

Oswego, N.Y.

Senior Associate Editor Steven Cherry replies: Carrying out the calculation for radio transmissions indeed leads to an interesting discussion. The underlying complication is that it’s hard to say exactly what a radio transmission is these days. Do the satellite services count as much as terrestrial broadcast transmission? If so, there are probably 600 channels times two different services, which comes to much more than 669 transmissions. Then add AM/FM and terrestrial broadcast TV itself, and we’re well over the 669 figure. Then there’s cable TV services; those wavelengths count as radio transmissions as well—plus satellite telephony, weather signals, and so on. Not everyone is within reach of the satellite services, and not everyone has 600 cable channels, but there’s also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and cellular signals. And a single broadband transmission, such as EVDO, can carry any one of hundreds of different “rebroadcasts” of AM and FM radio and much of the same content (movies on demand, for example) as television. Maybe Cooper’s Law is a bit irrelevant these days, but historically it was useful and, I believe, surprisingly accurate.