N2EY wrote:

In article , Mike Coslo
writes:


OTOH we don't have anything to go on other than "continuously loaded

monopole".

Just what is that anyhow?


A term that can mean all sorts of things.


a 50 ohm resistor on the end of a pole?


HAW!

No.

Here's one implementation:

Imagine a large vertical helix. The length of the helix is such that resonance
occurs at the operating frequency. The wire size, diameter, and spacing of the
helix is such that efficiency is maximized. Whole thing is operated as a
vertical against ground. Not a new idea at all, but perhaps some new tricks
were applied.

(I don't know if that's what the guy invented, just that it's one form of
continuously loaded monopole).

Maybe he's got a real advance, maybe it's all just hype. I'll reserve
judgement until there's some real info available.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I'll not only reserve
judgment, but am highly skeptical about it at the same time. This sort
of thing is almost like the audiophile stuff I posted the other day.


I don't see the need for "extraordinary proof" - just proof! I won't rush to
judgement either way.

And in real life, this development has no effect at all - yet. We cannot go out
and buy these antennas, nor obtain the needed info to build them ourselves. We
don't even know if and when such will be available. So they're unobtanium.

Indeed.


And what I have seen so far on this breakthrough is feelgood stuff. I
just wonder why an 80 to 100 percent efficient antenna melts when hit
with a "whopping" 100 watts of power?


Read the article again. The melting antenna was his *first attempt*, 30+ years
ago.

Yeah, but I mean was it filament wire or maybe number 40 or something?
100 watts is only so much energy, and an antenna that melts when faced
with 100 watts must be pretty fragile. I could have accepted maybe that
the antenna caught one of the local trees on fire, or something like
that, but we're talking about total destruction of the antenna, (as an
antenna anyhoo) with 100 watts of power!


If somebody told you, back about 1975, that in 25 years you'd have a
computer
on your desk that had a 500 MHz CPU, over 100 MB of memory and 10 GB of
disk
space, and cost about $200 complete (1975 dollars) what would you have
said?

First I would have said "kewl" or whatever I was saying in 1975.
(probably more like "Far out, Dude!")


"Bummer, man!"

I wouldn't have seen any mechanical limitations however. I would have
marveled at getting so much stuff on one integrated circuit, noting that
the size was limited by the limitations of light. I don't think I would
have thought of X-ray lithography at the time. But I would have believed
that such a thing could be done.


But at that price? Heck, single TTL ICs of any complexity were over a dollar
apiece back then.

The areas that I would be most surprised at would be that the computer
would have a single CPU that did all the processing. I would wonder why
on earth we weren't using massively parallel processing. In fact, I
still do. Love my G5 dual processor!


Lots of problems with parallel processing. For example, you still need a single
control processor or its equivalent to run the show.

Yup, and each processor can loaf right along. Year ago, the Commodore
Amiga had it right. All those dedicated chipsets in it were
co-processors, not specifically parallel processors, but the concept was
valid and very sound.


Second, parallel
processing only helps when the tasks can be split up efficiently between
processors. Thsi is true in some situations and not true at all in others.

I've been using dual processor computers since y2K, and it is truly
amazing just how superior they are. I do understand that the PC world
may be different archetecture-wise, in a way that makes multi processor
computers work less well for that platform. But that should not be
confused with parallel computing being not very efficient.

Intel-centric is the concept I think! ;^)

Third and most important, the cost climbs faster than the benefit. All else
equal, a 1 GHz computer doesn't cost ten times as much as one with ten 100 MHz
processors and the supporting circuitry.

The most mind boggling thing to me would have been the software and
applications for the computer of 2000 or 2004. Soundcard applications,
GUI's, graphics and all that other stuff was simply not on my radar
screen at that point.


Almost all of which was in existence back then, due to work at Xerox's Palo
Alto Research Center.



http://www.boka-software.com/Articles/Xerox/essay.html

An interesting little piece on the subject.

- Mike KB3EIA -