Success

Today was a good day. I have been working on trying to get my source-pull noise figure system working since Monday. For two years, I have not had predictable performance or great measurements from the system. This week was no exception. I was so depressed that it still was not working that I thought about quitting grad. school yesterday. "If I can't get this working, I spend most my time debugging systems instead of thinking and getting results, I don't belong here" is what I thought.

I switched the tuners and removed the tuner at the output, then PRESTO! Good measurements! Also, I thought of some ideas to try to explain why field-plated devices give better noise performance. Huh, critical thinking. I'm not getting the results I want but at least I feel better about myself.

Last week I was on vacation. It was excellent. I will add an entry about is soon. Then I will do a year-in-review entry to catch up for lost time (it won't be pages, just the highlights).

The Blog Part 3

Back online

It has been the better part of a year since my last entry in a blog. Several factors have contributed to this including technical difficulties, trips, work, sickness, my wedding, being busy, being lazy, and so forth. I hope to continue again here. My thanks to the goodness of Google. I will follow up with a more informative post soon.

C