NEC-LIST: Smith Charts.

Good evening All,

I said to my wife before I went down to check the e-mail this eveing,"I threw
a mudball into a hornets' nest." I got the reaction I expected, except you're
a polite bunch of hornets. I learned to use the Smith Chart and the slide
rule in the days before cheap digital power, but I didn't marry them. I still
own a circular slide rule, but haven't seen it for at least 15 years. I used
to own a spiral telescoping slide rule too, but I'm pretty sure it's
disappeared. Yes, I think it's pretty neat the way impedances map into the
reflection-coefficient plane, but I don't think the "intuitive" feel is at all
intuitive, or that it contributes to the design process. I can run an
L-section prgram in MATLAB in a fraction of the time it would take me to do it
on a Smith Chart program. Then I can immediately find power vs frequency
using another MATLAB function. Before MATLAB, I did this kind of thing in
APL. For me, writing the programs in a general-purpose numerical environment
is more satisfying because I know what goes into the calculations. This is
the first-cut design side. A massive analysis program that takes into account
parasitics and nonlinearities is the next place to go, if necessary.

Doug Miron

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