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Tech-Op-ed April, 2012


SOUNDING OFF


By Walter Salm Editor


Remembering the OSS F


lashback to 1977: Citizens’ Band Radio was sweeping the country. It seemed as though the whole world had gone Personal Communications crazy. There were new hit songs about it, and even some “B” movies,


mostly bombs, and here I was sitting in a rental car in Las Vegas chatting with Al Gross, acknowledged to be the father of CB Radio. Al had built his first handheld transceiver, which he called a “Walkie


Talkie”, in 1938 and with some serious string pulling, got the FCC to license the needed frequencies. But it was all experimental and World War II got in the way. Al went to war, designing new electronic marvels. He adapted the


Walkie Talkie, making it into a ground-based short-range communicator for American and British agents (spies) to use to talk to a contact aircraft circling overhead. If you have ever seen a WW II spy movie, you probably saw an American OSS agent on the ground talking to a circling airplane and hoping the Germans didn’t catch him in the middle of his mission. Being a spy behind enemy lines was definitely detrimental to one’s health. The tiny radio used a miniature, low-voltage vacuum tube as its RF pow-


er amplifier, and the whole thing was mounted on a new-fangled thing called a printed circuit. There was a separate, rather heavy battery pack residing in the agent’s trenchcoat pocket. To be sure, the PCB was crude; there were a few fat strips of tinned copper, precariously adhering to a ceramic substrate. And there were certainly no such things as multi-layer boards. But it worked, the radio’s range was purposely kept short, to avoid being detected by German listening stations. Patrols were always on the prowl, with directional anten- nas atop a truck cab, seeking out illicit transmitters. These were people you definitely did not want to catch you if you were a spy. After the war, CB radio got off to a slow, almost meandering start. Gross


was right in the thick of it, setting up a manufacturing company that soon garnered government contracts for communications equipment. At the time, nobody in the general population seemed to be interested in mobile communi- cations. In those days, long-wave mobile telephones were cumbersome and pa- tience-trying, since there were only 16 channels allocated for each major met- ropolitan center. In September 1958, Gross Electronics received FCC type ap- proval for mobile and handheld transceivers for the new Class D (27MHz) Cit- izens Band. A Gross-manufactured unmanned weather station was parachut- ed by the U.S. Navy into Antarctica in 1959. Gross was busily inventing circuits and concepts and acquiring patents,


many of which made possible today’s plethora of cell phones. Most of his key patents expired before the cell phone mania swept the world, so he never did become a millionaire. In the early 1970s, long-haul truck drivers discovered CB radio, adopting the technology wholeheartedly. By 1977, when I had my first face-to-face meetings with Al, the CB craze was sweeping the nation. He gave me lots of material for two different books that I wrote on CB radio. The market for this information was insatiable. At the time, there were more than 200 companies making CB radios, in the U.S. and Japan. The last time I saw Al was in 1984, when he invited me to attend an IEEE


presentation banquet in New York City where he was awarded the IEEE Cen- tennial Medal for his work in VHF and UHF mobile radio. Today, truckers still use Channel 19 on their CB radios. Yes, it’s old technology, but it still works and has its place. Just don’t expect it to be like your cell phone. r


PUBLISHER’S NOTE


By Jacob Fattal Publisher


APEX: Good Show, Banner Recovery Year


ous ones in Las Vegas, occupying two separate exhibit halls — unfortunately separated from each other by a long escalator ride. The enlarged San Diego Convention Center is huge, and there was at


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least one other trade show going on at the same time. Floor traffic was excel- lent, and naturally there was a very large exhibitor presence of companies physically located in the San Diego and Los Angeles areas. Since there is such a large concentration of electronics in this part of California, the location was especially advantageous. Add to that the fact that San Diego is especially wel- coming to convention-goers — without the distraction of casinos and costly en- tertainment — and we have to agree that this was an especially wise and ben- eficial move for the IPC. The restaurants were wonderful, and we managed to “discover” several that will earn repeat visits. Two statistics are very compelling: there were 407 exhibitors and 8,963


total visitors. It was described by IPC as the best attended APEX EXPO in more than four years. My own feeling is that it was the best one ever. There was APEX’s first hand-soldering contest — an event that has already made a previous appearance at IPC Midwest. Next on the near horizon is NEPCON China in Shanghai, then SMT/HY-


BRID/PKG in Nuremburg, Germany, and AATE in Chicago. Semicon West in San Francisco kicks off July, followed by IMAPS, Autotestcon, and then the new IPC Midwest in August. And a lot of important smaller, regional shows sprinkled in between. If you happen to be a trade show aficionado, there’s plenty to keep you busy (see our Hi-Tech Events page for more details). The high point of APEX for many attendees was a keynote address by 81-


year-old William Shatner (Star Trek’s Captain Kirk). After the opening, he had a book signing, but no, we did not buy an autographed copy of his new book. The waiting line was the longest we’ve ever seen at a trade show. Good harbinger of a good year ahead. r


f the recent IPC APEX Expo in San Diego is any barometer of where the electronics manufacturing business is going, then we can all expect a real- ly banner recovery year. The show was fabulous, much larger than previ-


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