Thanks to invite from Randy at Custom-Cal I’ve attended a local mini-show and learned a thing or two about RF engineering today. Full day was busy with talks and presentations, but since RF is very far from xDevs main focus I had no much time to stay and listen for those amazing presentations.

I’ve spend instead some time on the floor with exhibitors to check their stuff. Some real grey beards were present and it was cool to see new shiny MTE. This conference was organized by IEEE North Jersey Section. Sorry about sub-par quality photographs, I was in a rush and forgot to change camera mode to store RAW files instead of evil JPEGs :(. Click on any image for higher resolution.

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Few of the names I already recognized :)

Crowd was gathering and chatting about their projects whole day.

There was a nice lunch even, free of charge. That was quite a nice surprise.

Some closer looks:

Keysight Technologies brought some demos with 2-port ENA-X, 6 GHz MXR, new refreshed MXG and EXA and 26.5 GHz N9918A Field-Fox. There were always crowds of people around them :)

Tektronix was also present with their lineup, such as small and cute 2 series oscilloscope:

Big boys go for large 6 series equipped with 8 channels. Or AWG70000B series source with some portable spectrum analyzer.

More budget oriented enterprises could look at 4 series MSO or 3 series.

Rohde & Schwarz brought us some ZNL6 VNA.

Cute small SMBV100B 6 GHz vector signal generator and RTO 6 series oscilloscope:

Pretty cool FSPN phase noise analyzer rated from 1 MHz up to 26.5 GHz RF input bandwidth:

And probably most expensive instrument on the floor – full-featured 67 GHz 4-port ZNA network analyzer doing some magical RF live demo.

All ports were 1.85mm and I couldn’t be brave enough to ask a price of such instrument. Probably at least 20 × 3458A’s ? :)

Pendulum presented their latest 4-channel CNT-104S frequency analyzer with input frequency on C channel up to 24 GHz.

There were also some information about interesting less known brands such as Saluki 3674 series VNAs that go all the way up to 110 GHz (!):

Or cute portable tablet-sized spectrum analyzer that goes up to respectable 43 GHz 5G Pro from Inno Instrument

Deviser AE8600 optical SA:

SUITA SPAW7000 power analysis wavecorder with a piece of metrology from Fluke – Model 515A :)

For much lower cost instruments UNI-T was presenting bunch of instruments, such as MSO3054HD 500MHz 4-ch 12-bit scope:

Thermal camera with fixed focus, similar to entry level FLIR or Fluke models at fraction of the price.

For RF fans they got 6 GHz multi-personality signal analyzer, Model UTS3060A:

As well as cheaper UTS1032T:

Mauri microwave was showing some of their popular RF cables:

Some other vendors also show theirs:

There were some crazy looking 3D-printed metal antennas for RF applications:

Various passive RF components:

No RF assembly could reach the desired performance parameters without adequate shielding. Orbel had lot of cool looking shields and examples on their table, many of which available on Digikey:

I liked the idea of cuttable and user-customizable shield mats, with perforation to allow bending in custom shapes for prototyping and testing ideas:

More advanced stuff involved custom alumina and BeO metallized substrates:

Custom RF loads:

Custom packaging was also presented by sales and presenters:

I have even spotted our beloved (and long-awaited budget shattering) foil resistors from VPG and Alpha Electronics:

DEWETRON presented some datalogger computer with bunch of GUI demo stuff for industrial applications:

Berkeley Nucleonics Corp (BNC) showing their instrumentation and modules for MIL applications:

So it was all fun…

MathWorks was there too for their software stuff such as MATLab, Simscape and various demos:

And even EMPower RF systems Inc for big RF amplifiers for EW. These would be very handy right now in Ukraine, please send some in.

All the technology is fun and cool, but nobody at the conference could beat this guy’s car plates:

That’s about it!