Re: don't buy

On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:52:30 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:53:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
Mini-Circuits mmics. They don't make them themselves and keep changing
sources, so you can't count on them to behave.
Do you mean "behave" in the sense of satisfying their specs? Or having
the same unspecified behaviour? (I build lots of one-offs, so to me the
difference is significant.)

Mostly the latter. We do stuff like off-centering the bias because we
want more swing for pulses. The new ERA5's are very different as far
as DC bias point goes, and gain seems to be down anyhow. They used to
buy from Stanford/Sirenza, then switched to someone else, and just
switched again. ThetaJA keeps changing, so I guess chip sizes or
something does too. Their support people are either cagy or ignorant,
likely both. I once asked them if their MMICS inverted or not, and
they didn't know!

Pity. I characterized the ERA-5 for all sorts of things that aren't on
the data ***, and now it looks to be all useless.

I hate that. On the other hand, they're pretty cheap...could you just
buy 5 reels at once and use them forever?

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

We found a distributor that had some old ones in stock, so nabbed a
reel. That will keep us out of trouble for a good while. For new
designs, we'll go to a prime source, Sirenza or Hittite or W-J maybe.

John

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