Reply to post: dubious

Hell hath no fury like a radar engineer scorned

horsham_sparky
Boffin

dubious

"Now a couple of mW may not sound much, but the peak power he (and his flash cubes) were subjected to was closer to 200mW… easily capable of firing a flash cube by irradiation."

Hmmm, I suspect they would needed to have taken off the dummy load to cause that effect, or the dummy load was much less than 70dB.. 200mW is a little bit less than what your smart phone puts out. CB radio's of the day put out around 5W.. and you don't hear any stories of anyone setting off flashbulbs in those days with CB radios.

Also remember that the CB radios might have been used in close proximity to the bulbs, probably less than a meter away, whereas the radar would likely to have been 10m or more (power reduces with distance to the inverse square law, which is why you need 2.5MW for long range search.. 10m would have been at least another 30dB to 40dB of attentuation depending on the efficiency of the transmit antenna and the receive "antenna")

Alright, I know the wavelength is longer on the radios and will couple less power into small circuits like the flashbulbs, but the difference is around 20dB, so the figures still don't stack up

Either the figures are misleading, or they didn't have the dummy load fitted, or its another sea story.

Disclosure, I frequently consult providing clients advice on Electromagnetic Compliance (EMC), so should in theory know what I'm talking about :-p

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