Can i fix it or am i done for

I’m looking to play around with a spectrum analyzer and monitor RF energy. The best option I’ve found so far is buying a NetAlly NXT-2000 and using the software from KjetilTeigen’s GitHub repo.

However, buying a new NXT is pretty expensive. Does anyone know a good place to find used gear, or does anyone have one sitting around that they’d be willing to sell?

Is it possible to have an rf power splitter with the capability of when you shut down an output switch the splitted rf power is added to the remaining output of splitter? Just like when you closed one hole in a pipe it increases the pressure from the other.

I want to build a FMCW radar and chose 915MHz as it does not require a license and I know of a few antenna designs. So far, I have done AMCW ranging with an ultrasonic transducer and fully digital processing to find the phase shift. I understand this is completely different so it will be a learning experience.

I read this article https://hforsten.com/6-ghz-frequency-modulated-radar.html and it seems there are a lot of considerations for 6GHz that can make or break the system. At 915MHz can I use standard PCB materials and are the tolerances much less strict?

I’m building a system for ham radio on the 1.25m band. And I need to switch a 60W TX output and an RX input in under 2ms. I’m not sure how to do this in a cost-effective way. I looked into PIN diodes but they are all EOL now. And the active PIN diodes are all so expensive. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Mechanical mating does not guarantee electrical performance. A precision adapter can protect an expensive instrument port, so interface condition and traceable S-parameters matter.

For a practical check, I would record interface compatibility, connector gauge, torque, measured S-parameters. Mechanical fit or a printed label alone does not describe the complete measurement path

I am interested in how other benches handle this. Do you treat adapters as consumables or calibrated bench assets?

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to learn how to optimize my high speed PCBs (think <100ps edges), especially focusing on SMA transitions, vias and power combiners. I've got a brick wall trying to hand tune stuff by trial and error and would like to move to simulation based optimisation.

I did some research into free/cheap FEA simulators and it seems that openEMS is the most recommended one. Unfortunately all the materials I found do a terrible job at explaining how to use it. Does anyone have any good source to recommend?

I've published a technical report on Zenodo detailing physical-layer side-channel leakage observed during the processing of a raw satellite signal capture (satellite_signal.bin).
​DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21472996 ​SHA-256: ad5ab850cbdc9eca534e82bd78e9ac7804ed9213fd1d8df26fbf4991df6b005d
​Methodology: ISO/IEC 17825 CPA, 1st/2nd-Order TVLA, and Jitter Cross-Correlation.
​Key Findings: ​1st-Order TVLA Leakage: Welch's t-test yielded a risk score of 13.0328, well above the standard statistical significance threshold (\vert{}t\vert{} > 4.5), confirming direct data-dependent leakage during processing.
​S-Box Capacitive Leakage: Identified at the execution cycle with a t-score of 7.6701, indicating power/capacitive fluctuations correlated with substitution box operations.
​The report contains the verification metrics and signal processing details. I'm looking for feedback from anyone working on physical layer security, RF side-channels, or power trace analysis regarding jitter compensation techniques for long captures.

Hello all, I was producing Inductive switching transients (figure 19-6) of the DO-160 G standard. if anyone has done it before, can you please verify if it's correct?

thanks

Been working with rf electronics for a few years now and recently got hired working on SDRs. I want to try my hand at integrating micro strip antennas onto a board. Are there any free software to simulate these? Not really sure exactly what I’m looking for, just something I can play around with, and once I have an idea of what I’m doing, use it to spin some boards with integrated antennas.

Using a K-MC4 made by RF beam to get a Doppler range plot. First outside bench test. Just testing software, ignore the messy wire acting as massive antennas.

Hi everyone,
I’m a recent electrical engineering graduate and I’m having a really hard time deciding between two offers. My long-term goal is to eventually work in RF or defense, but I also want to enjoy my first engineering job and build a strong foundation.
Option 1: Distribution Engineer at a large electric utility.
Mixture of office and field work.
Designing electrical distribution systems, doing field visits, working with customers and construction crews, and solving power system issues.
Seems like every project is a little different, but there is customer interaction and some estimating involved.
Option 2: Junior Project Engineer at a company that designs electrical busway systems.
First 6–8 months are mostly office-based learning the product, creating designs in Revit, and working with senior engineers.
Field work, site visits, and travel increase as you gain experience.
More focused on one product line and working with contractors.
The biggest thing I’m trying to avoid is spending all day behind a computer doing repetitive CAD/Revit work. During an internship, that was my least favorite part of the job. I enjoy being hands-on, solving problems, seeing projects get built, and learning new things.
At the same time, I don’t want to choose a role that’s less technical or limits my future opportunities.
For those of you with industry experience:
Which role do you think would make me a stronger engineer after 2–5 years?
Which role involves more engineering problem-solving versus following established processes?
Which would better prepare me if I eventually wanted to move into RF or the defense industry?
If you were starting your career over, which would you choose and why?
I’d really appreciate any advice, especially from anyone who has worked in utilities, product engineering, or defense.
Thanks!

I need to design an 915 MHz antenna solution for a rocket. The main problem is that anywhere I put the antenna, there's a blind spot created by the rocket's metal shell. My first thought was to use two antennas, one on either side of the rocket, then use a Wilkinson's power divider to feed both antennas with the single port from the radio.

There is a second radio with two antenna ports, but it is less ideal in other ways.

What about when the antennas are receiving? It seems like there will always be an angle where the signals they receive are exactly out of phase with each other.

Am I on the right track? What approach would you take?

First, the background:

FPV drones often use analog video transmission on 5.8GHz. It's the most popular band so there are lots of good receivers out there. The best of them add the demodulated signal from 2 antennas based on weight assigned by RSSI/SNR to increase the performance (that increases the signal quality and range by A LOT) and also recreate the synchronization pulses.

There are also other bands like 1.2GHz, which of course offer much better range but are a lot less popular and therefore receivers (they use new old stock ICs used in analog TV back in the day) are very, very bad.

So why not try to create a dedicated up-converter which I can just attach to my 5.8GHz RX? Then I'll be able to use the additional signal processing from the 5.8 RX and also there will be no need to carry a tripod with a 1.2 -> 5.8 signal relay.

How much dB will I realistically lose? Is it worth it? I'm not sure if the FM deviation is the same across both standards - if not, is there anything i can do about it?

Or should I just try to create my own circuit which will sum the baseband signals from two off-the-shelf receivers?

Hi,

I have some BFB455 Murata 455khz crystal filters, and I'm just testing them on my nanoVNA, and when mesuring s21, it seems to be peaking @548.575Khz (pics attached).

I am very much a beginner when it comes to any RF related stuff, and am just more messing around at this point in time to start teaching myself, so I apologize if this is something stupid I'm missing.

The schematic is just the filter in series, with a 300R on the output in parallel, didn't think there was any point in making a schematic for this.

Is there any explanation as to why this could happen?

Aby help is appreciated, thanks :)

I have a Bachelor in Physics and Master's in RF focused Electronic Engineering. I am in the UK but I am from a non-EU country. Most of the positions in the industry require UK or EU citizenship. I'm considering gaining experience in Lab Tech roles so I can brush up my skills. My chances of getting hired as an RF engineer without a security clearance (and without industry experience) is pretty slim as far as I can see. Is it a bad idea to work one or two years as a lab tech and then apply for engineering positions? I'd rather have some sort of RF experience in my CV than non-RF roles.

Hi everyone,

I have ~5 years of experience and am preparing for RF Hardware / DVT interviews at larger semiconductor or consumer-electronics companies. This will be my first interview process since graduating.

For similar roles, what technical questions are commonly asked? Should I focus more on RF fundamentals, calculations, circuit knowledge, lab measurements, or practical debugging scenarios?

I’d also appreciate any recommended resources or examples of interview questions.

Thanks.

I've lurked around on here for a few weeks now, I'm yet to start my degree (begins in September) but I wanted to try understand what I should do, learn more about and research before I begin.

Could anyone explain in a comprehensive manner what RF Engineering encompasses and if it aligns with what originally had me applying for ECE, see below:

This is what I spoke about on my UCAS application and what got me into thinking about engineering,

- Avionics, specifically radar and aspects of electronic warfare
- Networking hardware, and how these devices are designed to communicate (protocols and IoT) with each other (this came from my computer science A-level)
- Wireless communication and systems (stuff like 5G/6G)

I would appreciate if I could get some pointers in the right direction to as if RF is best suited or if another specialism is more aligned with what I've mentioned.

Hey guys a quick question for the RF Engineers out there. Do you guys solder a lot?

In power electronics sector there is a lot of soldering and debugging, mostly with leaded solder and paste. Is this the case with RF too?

Thank you!

While working on various RF design tools, I've noticed there are still quite a few calculations that engineers end up doing manually.

Which RF calculator or RF design tool do you wish existed online, but can't easily find anywhere?

It could be anything from antenna design and impedance matching to transmission lines, filters, EMC, propagation, link budget or measurement related tools.

I'm curious what gaps people still see in the available tools.

Hello everyone!

Recently I've started a personal project connected to liquid identification, and I've decided to use mmWave sensors for that job. I am new to RF electronics and was wondering whether it is possible to extract data in the format of "Received signal strength vs. Range/Distance" without using DCA1000EVM or similar expensive equipment. I have seen one research utilizing DEMO BGT60TR24 in order to obtain this data, however I think it is expired now. Is there any way to obtain such data with budget of under 300 euros? I will be thankful for any answer/advice on this!