Sorensen Sez… – Digital Transmission

By Jim Sorensen

Digital transmission is much misunderstood and I am proud to be the one who will completely de-bunk it for you. The daily SAC columns are rife with comments on digital transmission and processing and all kinds of other digitalis stuff so this is really way overdue.

This is Heliax. As you can see, it’s “corrugated” which is Celtic or Etruscan or something for “lumpy.” You can also see its first name is Andrew, its middle name is Ava, and its birthday is in July.

This is a square wave. As you can see it’s…uh…square…mostly. The little feet on the bottom aren’t really part of it; I just put them there to make sure you could see that the thing is part of a whole bunch of waves running along together. Kind of like sign, sing, sine, syne…oh, you know, regular aka “normal” waves.

I think it’s pretty easy to see that there is no good way to get a square wave through a round wire, like the coax above. Heliax is tubular, which is of course “surfer” for “really cool.”

There is nothing worse than having a square-wave-activated-electron trying to fit into round wires without getting caught. Some of the square waves fall down and become “impeders” and form “impedance” and those left standing become…(of course)..standing waves!

This is a very rare photograph of a standing WAVE. Unfortunately you can’t see the whole WAVE but it’s really there somewhere which is part of the problem.

When you have standing waves you often don’t get full value from them and they usually just get in the way of the other waves, sitting waves I guess, trying to get some work done. Nope. Digital is just not ready for prime time.

(This must be right because I Googled everything.) js