Thursday, December 07, 2023
Meeting Time: 7:00 pm
Online event (via Zoom): Please register on meetup.com to obtain the Zoom link.
Lecture
Part 1 of this two part series on antennas, will focus on "Electrically or Mechanically Commutated Arrays".
We see antennas everywhere. Every car radio, every police radio, many televisions and every smartphones have antennas. These antennas all provide a specific service – to insert information into the environment and extract it some distance away. Antennas provide the pure realization of Action at a Distance.
However, some systems used for air traffic control and navigation, combat control, and even communication with satellites and the stars (radio astronomy) put incredible requirements on their antennas. Such antennas are mind-bogglingly complicated to the uneducated, but they can be conceptually broken down into bite-size-chunks to tell a fascinating story.
Here we will discuss several such systems such as keeping airliners safe, assisting civil and military aircraft to land all-weather, protecting military assets from kinetic attack, and the staggering requirements inherent in communicating with orbiting platforms and even travelling through the galaxy (two have left the solar system)
Speaker Bio:
Ed Gellender - Licensed and Registered Professional Engineer
Ed Gellender never grew up, and uses a lifetime accumulation of academic and experience credentials to continue playing with a succession of the biggest and best toys you have ever seen (Ever bounce off a runway? Ever play chicken with a freight train in a blizzard?).
Ed was working on the railroad all the day long, specifically on trackside thermal and acoustic detection of “hotboxes,” with their associated axle counting sensors, for which he holds a US patent. He also has experience with trackside consist monitoring, automatic train control (ATCS), positive train control (PTC) and onboard status monitoring.
Ed has also worked on a wide variety of aviation and shipboard electronic systems including Radios, Radars, aircraft landing systems, and even weather balloons. Recently, Ed was the cognizant engineer for the APX-122 IFF interrogator on the Navy’s new E-2D radar plane, notably flight testing anti-fratricide combat ID (“Mode 5”).
Ed has also worked on high power electrical distribution networks all around the New York City Metropolitan area with Con Edison, and also on power distribution on the George Washington, Verrazano, and Triboro Bridges, and Midtown Tunnel.
Ed has already delivered five presentations to LICN, describing the technology of military IFF, radios (from spark to digital), nuclear power generation, redundant power distribution, and on what happened with the Boeing 737MAX8 aircraft.
Right now Ed is thrilled to have un-retired to work on industrial pressure gauges. Yeah, kinda small, but the systems they monitor are HUGE.
Notes
There is no cost to attend this meeting, however, if you would like to receive Continuing Education Units (0.2 CEUs/2 PDHs) then payment of a $10 fee is required. You will also have to properly fill out an Evaluation Form to prove that you attended this lecture. Click here to open the PDF form. Download it to your local drive (look for the download button in upper right tool bar) and fill it out (the form can be filled in with most PDF readers). Save the form and email it to ambertec@ieee.org.
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While we prefer that your payment and evaluation form are received by the day of the lecture, they must be received by the first Monday after the lecture.
If paying by Zelle is a problem for you, then please contact John Dunn at ambertec@ieee.org for an alternate payment method.
