The IRF510: The Car Turn-Signal Blinkers Used As RF Amplifiers

 

I have many of these MOSFETS in my rigs.  Yesterday I came across Paul Harden NA5N's excellent Handiman's Guide series.  It had this really wonderful paragraph about the history of this part.  I-R is the International Rectifier company.  

https://hyse.org/pdf/www.aoc.nrao.edu/~pharden/hobby/_ClassDEF1.pdf

https://hyse.org/pdf/www.aoc.nrao.edu/~pharden/hobby/Hobby.shtml

NA5N, a Solar Flare, and the Very Large Array

I think I said before that Paul, NA5N, has one of those "dream jobs" for a radio amateur.  Confirmation of this came in a message he posted to QRP-L today: 

We're running a special experiment today using the VLA antennas to observe at 74 MHz (a protected radio astronomy band) and at 327 MHz.  We've hung dipoles just below the antenna subreflectors, acting as a virtual ground, and of course the 88ft dia. dishes to illuminate the dipoles.  Picks up a lot more power from the sky than I would have thought (about 30dB gain over the same dipoles in free space). 
Anyway, about 0830 MST, suddenly the system temperature climbed about 200 deg. K.  Our switched power calibration injected into the LNAs showed no shift, meaning the jump in power came from the sky, not from the electronics.  The power plot looked just like a solar flare.  Checked the NOAA site, and sure enough, we had an M4 solar flare from region 1618 ... about smack in the center of the sun.  About 1530UTC=0830MST=1030EST, Wed. Nov. 21. 
NOAA has since measured the shock wave from the CME at 1918 km/sec.  This is a fairly strong shock wave, and coming from the center of the sun means planet earth will be pretty close to the bulls eye. 
The first time in my life I witnessed a major solar flare in real time watching the "sky power" plots.  Pretty neat.  First time the astronomers involved in this experiment have witnessed a solar flare as well real time. 
Region 1618 has produced numerous C- and M-class flares past couple of days with high potentials of future activity.  This will ionize our E/F layer for elevated MUF and weak signal reflection.  Check the bands if you're not at work. 
This 1918 km/sec. shock wave headed for us will almost assuredly trigger a major geomagnetic storm in a couple of days.  If it hits Friday evening, it will trigger likely aurora over northern U.S.  It may hit Saturday.  I'll check the NOAA predictions later today and post as to the expected shock wave arrival. 
72, Paul NA5N
Socorro, NM
Currently inside of VLA antenna #5, west arm.
http://www.vla.nrao.edu/ 

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

NA5N on the NE602

I continue to mine the Gadgeteer News archives.
Here is a good one from NA5N.
Orignally posted on Gadgeteer news, 2 December 2006

NE602=NE612=SA602
(Originally posted by NA5N on QRP-L)

Gang,
The ever famous NE602's are manufactured in the Philips
Semiconductor plant in Albuquerque, about 85 miles north of me. I visited
there last summer and had a nice discussion with an applications engineer
about the history of the NE602's. Goes something like this:

This long story will prove that NE602 = SA602 = NE612 = SA612
(for those of you who don't want the gory details -hi)
The original NE602 was designed/manufactured by SIGNETICS for
the 45MHz FM wireless telephone market. A little later, the wafer was
redesigned a bit to allow the internal oscillator to operate to 200MHz and the
RF to 500MHz. This was redesignated the NE612, and was intended to
replace the NE602. However, customers kept ordering the NE602, getting
angry at Signetics because their distributors were out of stock, etc. So when
they made the chips, they made a jillion NE612's, and labeled some of them
NE612 and the rest NE602 to satisfy the users of both parts. This is why
contemporary data books show the exact same specifications for both NE602
and NE612. They came from the same wafer.

Then Signetics was bought out by Philips, who evidently
continued this practice for a short time, then decided it was rather
redundant. So they announced that the production of NE602's has been discontinued
and listed it as an obsolete part ... giving QRPers around the world
various fits of apoplexy to suicidal tendencies that doomsday had struck.
What wasn't well understood is Philips continued to support production of
the NE612, as they do today.

Then to make matters worse, disaster struck the Philips plant
in Albuquerque in the spring of 2000. A wild grass fire in
northwest New Mexico threatened three main electrical lines that run from
the "Four Corners" electrical generating plant to Albuquerque. Smoke
from the fire caused one of the high-voltage lines to arc, tripping the
circuit off line. Virtually the entire electrical load for Albuquerque
and southern New Mexico was now transfered to the two remaining feeders,
which could not handle the full load, causing brownouts, voltage spikes,
etc. until they too failed. Where I live in Socorro, New Mexico, I
remember the brownouts hit about 4:15pm, outages on and off until the
entire grid went down about 5pm, and stayed off until about 11pm. One of the
longest power failures in US history. We just figured it was Y2K about 3
months late. (PS - I worked 40M CW QRP that night by candlelight, and it
was the quietest conditions I ever heard on 40M!!! And every QSO I
heard seemed to be a QRPer). The extreme voltage fluctations as the
feeders were failing caused a transformer at the Philips plant in
Albuquerque to catch on fire. I remember seeing it on the TV news, in which they
said it caused mostly smoke damage from the burning transformer and
burned a couple of storage rooms. That was all-no biggie. Well, it
turned out one of the storage rooms that was burned was where they stored
the film masters for making the semiconductor dies, and the NE612 film
master was now molten emulsion. These film masters were the originals
from the old Signetics company. So Philips had to completely redo the
artwork for the majority of their IC's. Additionally, it turned out the
smoke damage was excessive and the IC fabrication facilities were
left unusable. Philips was basically unable to manufacture IC's at
the Albuquerque plant for months. It was about 8 months before
they got all their wafer machines back on line, which left a huge hole in
the semiconductor industry. I know it just about killed several
cell phone manufacturers because delivery contracts for parts were
suddenly postponed for six to eight months.

The world wide supply of NE602/NE612's virtually dried up
during 2000 as a result of this fire and the nearly year backlog of
manufacturing quotas. The first run of NE612's in 2 years finally occured in
September 2000.This huge shortage of NE612's, combined with the fact that
NE602's have been discontinued/obsolete, is what convinved QRPers that
these nifty little chips were no more. I was told 20,000 units were
manufactured in 2000, or what Philips believes is a 2 year supply. This is
also why the release of the K1 (with 5 NE612's!) was delayed from the
promised "after Dayton" to late in the year, as were other kits. It just
wasn't clear when Philips was going to schedule the NE612's for production.

So yes, the NE602 is dead, but the perfectly compatible NE612
is still available, and Philips has no plans at the present to
discontinue that part number.

For final clarification:
NE602 = plastic DIP, rated 0C to +70C ... OBSOLETE
SA602 = plastic DIP, rated -40C to +85C ... OBSOLETE
NE612 = plastic DIP, rated 0C to +70C ... AVAILABLE
SA612 = plastic DIP, rated -40C to +85C ... AVAILABLE

or, to answer the final question ...
NE602 = SA602 = NE612 = SA612

72, Paul NA5N