Newgroup Suppliers

Teksavvy is starting to play games with the newsserver so it's time to find another supplier. Here's a list of some of them:

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All pretty much the same. Expensive.

There is one with an interesting option. NewsDemon offers a block account that never expires. When you use it up, you simply buy another block. They start at $2.00 for 10 gigabytes and go up to $87.00 for 1,000 GB:

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I don't download anything from the binaries, and just monitor a few newsgroups like sed. My archives go back to 2007 and hold about 100 megabytes of text. (I lost the rest in an unfortunate disk crash.)

I probably save less than 10% of the articles I download, so the total BW is perhaps 1GB. That's about 1000 / 7 = 143 MB/yr.

This means a 10GB block may last for 10e9 / 143e6 = 70 years. I don't think I'll use it up, but that's a pretty good for an investment of $2.00.

If you download movies and such, you can check the status of your account by logging on at

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If you are running low, just send them some more money. That way, you just pay for what you use and never have the problem of trying to figure out which of the regular services to get.

They take Paypal so you don't have to give them your credit card info.

When you first register, they block posting to the newsgroups. Just open a ticket and request they unblock posting, and you can be active in 1/2 hr or so.

I found the access and download speed is equal to Teksavvy. Both can be very fast or slow depending on the web.

Altogether I'm very pleased with this option. No more hassling with Teksavvy support about killing the newsgroups.

Reply to
John Silverman
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yeah, I came to the same conclusion, when I lost access to ABSE and went with a block plan form

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for that. and netfront for the text groups because the free netfront service is even cheaper. (they do add stuff below my sig though)

--
umop apisdn 


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---
Reply to
Jasen Betts

Jasen Betts scribbled thus:

FWIW In the UK some broadband suppliers are slugging the speed at which you can use usenet between certain hours. Why I don't know ! Orange is one of them. Also they gave me an Email address which doesn't work. I can neither send or recieve Email through their servers and their tech support can't fix the problem either. Even though I can use telnet to attempt to talk to the server, I get the message that my IP is not authorised for accsess. Several other people I know are in the same position. Fortunately we all have other means of using Email.

--
Best Regards: 
                     Baron.
Reply to
Baron

Check teranews.com

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Thanks. That also might be interesting for some users.

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The setup fee is $3.95, which is twice the $2.00 block fee at NewsDemon. It gives 50MB per day, which I would probably never use. Looks like there may be up to 24 hour delay before you see your own posting:

Why does it take so long to see my own postings?

Since we offer a free/public Usenet access many people attempt to abuse the service. We have anti-abuse system in place that has a nearly perfect record of preventing abuse. Our system works in two ways. There is an automated anti-abuse filter that either approves or rejects new posts. This filter can be very strict because anything that it rejects is queued for human moderation. This two part process will cause delays for new posters and/or articles that are high abuse risk (pictures, exe's, etc...). We try to process to moderation queue each day and in gernal you should see your posts within 24 hours of posting. If you don't see your posts after 24 hours send us your username and we will lookup the reason.

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One thing that is interesting is SSL:

What is SSL? Why and how do you use it?

SSL is an encrypting tunning protocol used by many services including secure web sites. Using it has several advantages including better privacy, less likely to be traffic shaped by your ISP, and due to the compression (gzip) it allows you to download text 5-10 times faster than your Internet connection would normally allow.

Some news clients have SSL built in and you don't have to do anything except check the 'use ssl' option when setting up the server. If your news client does not support SSL you can use a program called stunnel to allow your non-ssl client to access a ssl enabled news server.

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The speed increase of 5-10 times might be exaggerated on binary files, but it might be worth looking into for those who do not have a SSL- capable news client.

Reply to
John Silverman

I use the non-free server, and I never see such delays (as you can see!) I don't recall seeing delays when I was using the free server either. Anyway, $30/year for solid new service with basically infinite retention is a bargain.

stunnel is part of OpenSSL, to which I contributed code in the early days... before Heartbleed :)

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Interesting. Does stunnel take long to initialize?

I assume it only does it at the beginning of the session - is this true?

How much speed improvement is there on binaries like movies, etc?

I guess gzip wouldn't help much on postings since they are so short. What kind of files would see the most speed improvement?

Why is infinite retention important? It seems to take forever to search for a posting - if there are more, it would just take longer.

Reply to
John Silverman

Three TCP round-trips, I believe, and a little computation.

The key negotiation is at the start, but every byte gets encrypted.

None. It doesn't do compression, only encryption.

On the contrary, gzip would help quite a lot with postings. Try saving some and run them through gzip - I think you'll see fairly big ratios, like 2:1, whereas files like RAR parts which are already encrypted then ascii-encoded are likely to show the smallest gains, like

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Clifford, thank you very much for your thoughtful answers. You have cleared up all the misconceptions I got from reading the teranews info. Your reply has been very helpful.

I wonder if you are still interested in the wideband amplifier you asked Phil to analyze? I have been fiddling with it and found a few things that made it impossible to function. I also did some work trying different transistors to see the effect they have.

I would in no way, shape or form expect a real circuit to behave like the model. At 500 MHz, it is too sensitive to stray capacitance and inductance, as well as the impedance of the ground plane. But it is instructive to see how small changes can have a large effect at these frequencies.

There are a number of files showing different configurations. I started a new web site for these things and would be happy to upload them for you if you have any interest.

Reply to
John Silverman

Not noticed this. Are you sure you don't have some local policy throttling it back? I do see that US Usenet servers are slower when the left pondians are all awake but that isn't really Oranges fault.

I am curious. Though I have heard tell of this problem before.

I don't use their SMTP or POP service much because it is insecure but the settings smtp.orangehome.co.uk:25 pop.orangehome.co.uk:110 your email address and given password ought to work. What client are you using? I use TB 24.5.0. I gather MS Outlook doesn't like them much.

I'm on Orange/EE/Wanadoo and have no bother at all with either their server or accessing my other ISPs server with their connection. The latter requires full encrypted authentication and connection but I still keep their Orange server configured as a backup routing.

What settings are you using? It might be significant that I am actually a very legacy customer of theirs from the early days of Wanadoo. They now call themselves EE= Everything Everywhere after the latest merger but many consider it to be more like NN = Nothing Nowhere.

Despite their terrible reputation for customer service I have always been able to get them to sort technical stuff out pretty quickly once I tunnelled through the first layer of scripted droids.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

No problems, happy to help.

Always happy to learn, but I have it in my hand here and it seems to work pretty well so far. Unshielded it's a bit prone to oscillation when I whack a loose wire on the front, but that's not surprising. It seems happy to oscillate anywhere from 100KHz to well over 120Mhz, and that's without the second emitter resistor being bypassed for UHF gain. The FET stage is physically out the front with a 10K input impedance (or whatever resistor you fit), and that bit really needs to be shielded properly. It's designed to feed 50 ohms so you can put a bit of coax in between the buffer and the amp proper.

I have to take it round to a friend's place to properly run it through its paces though, as I don't have proper sig-gens, etc here. But for comparisons of some HF antennae it should work fine. Bearing in mind that even 2cm (20nH) of probe drops the simulated 3dB point from 800MHz to 500Mhz...

I played with various bootstrap arrangements following Phil's suggestions, but I couldn't seem to reduce the effect of the JFET's Cdg. If you have thoughts on that I'm still interested in making this a truly high impedance probe. What I tried was another BFR93A emitter follower from the base of the cascode, coupled through a capacitor to the bottom of a 50R drain resistor. I couldn't see much effect in the simulation.

Happy if you want to upload them somewhere. I run several websites and I'm always slack about pushing up my new material, but I'm open to receiving any insights you can offer. You spurred me into publishing:

All the LTSpice and EAGLE design files are there, along with images, PDFs and photos.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

Clifford Heath wrote:

Usually an oscillation is sensitive to hand capacity effects but generally settles around some stable frequency. This is due to the inductance in the base resonating with the base-emitter capacitance and stray capacitance to ground forming an LC circuit.

Random oscillations from 100KHz to 120MHz may be squegging. Is the waveform sinusoidal or some other shape?

I'd try decoupling the 9V VCC between the output stage and cascode, and between the cascode and the input cathode follower. Driving 50 ohms will draw a fair amount of current so there will be RF on the VCC line.

The grounding in the layout could be a bit better. Recall skin effect forces RF current to the outside of a conductor. The same thing happens on a ground sheet. Most of the RF will flow along the edges. This creates a higher impedance than you would expect, and can develop voltages that influence the frequency response and feedback.

No doubt, trying to get above 100MHz in a wideband amplifier is going to be tough.

Yes, that shows the FET input capacitance is a low impedance at high frequencies.

Ratz. The LTspice file is different from the web page, and you already fixed the problems in the original.

Anyway, I couldn't get much improvement fiddling with the FET input, so I went to a bipolar. The input impedance is going to be low at hundreds of MHz anyway, and a FET is not going to help.

If you are looking at antenna performance, maybe you need to be in a 50 ohm input environment anyway, since a probe arrangement will have current flowing on the outside of the coax to the scope. This will give hand capacity and coax placement effects and definitely affect the measured results.

The BFR93 is a 6GHz transistor according to NXP, and only 3GHz according to Motorola. I switched to BFG198 which is 8GHz according to NXP.

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This made a very significant difference in the performance, so maybe the LTspice model for the BFR93 is the old Motorola version. But none of the models are really valid in this application. They need to be CKT files that include the package strays, particularly stray inductance. So the analysis doesn't mean much, but I'll include what I got anyway. Here are the LTspice files:

Version 4 SHEET 1 4836 1176 WIRE 416 -80 192 -80 WIRE 528 -80 416 -80 WIRE 640 -80 528 -80 WIRE 880 -80 640 -80 WIRE 1120 -80 880 -80 WIRE 1216 -80 1120 -80 WIRE 1216 -64 1216 -80 WIRE 640 -48 640 -80 WIRE 880 -48 880 -80 WIRE 192 16 192 -80 WIRE 1120 16 1120 -80 WIRE 1216 32 1216 16 WIRE 880 64 880 32 WIRE 912 64 880 64 WIRE 1040 64 992 64 WIRE 1056 64 1040 64 WIRE 880 96 880 64 WIRE 416 144 416 -80 WIRE 640 144 640 32 WIRE 640 144 576 144 WIRE 688 144 640 144 WIRE 800 144 768 144 WIRE 816 144 800 144 WIRE 1120 144 1120 112 WIRE 1184 144 1120 144 WIRE 1232 144 1184 144 WIRE 1344 144 1296 144 WIRE 1376 144 1344 144 WIRE 1408 144 1376 144 WIRE 576 160 576 144 WIRE 1120 160 1120 144 WIRE 1344 160 1344 144 WIRE 640 176 640 144 WIRE 96 192 32 192 WIRE 192 192 192 96 WIRE 192 192 160 192 WIRE 240 192 192 192 WIRE 352 192 320 192 WIRE 32 208 32 192 WIRE 192 224 192 192 WIRE 576 240 576 224 WIRE 880 240 880 192 WIRE 1120 256 1120 240 WIRE 1344 256 1344 240 WIRE 416 288 416 240 WIRE 432 288 416 288 WIRE 480 288 432 288 WIRE 640 288 640 256 WIRE 640 288 544 288 WIRE 688 288 640 288 WIRE 800 288 768 288 WIRE 816 288 800 288 WIRE 32 304 32 288 WIRE 416 304 416 288 WIRE 192 320 192 304 WIRE 640 320 640 288 WIRE 880 352 880 336 WIRE 960 352 880 352 WIRE 992 352 960 352 WIRE 880 368 880 352 WIRE 992 384 992 352 WIRE 416 400 416 384 WIRE 640 416 640 400 WIRE 880 464 880 448 WIRE 992 464 992 448 WIRE 992 464 880 464 WIRE 880 480 880 464 WIRE 992 480 992 464 WIRE 880 576 880 560 WIRE 992 576 992 544 FLAG 1376 144 Vout FLAG 32 192 Vin FLAG 432 288 Vs FLAG 528 -80 Vcc FLAG 800 144 Q2B FLAG 800 288 Q1B FLAG 1040 64 Q3B FLAG 32 304 0 FLAG 192 320 0 FLAG 416 400 0 FLAG 576 240 0 FLAG 640 416 0 FLAG 880 576 0 FLAG 992 576 0 FLAG 1120 256 0 FLAG 1344 256 0 FLAG 1216 32 0 FLAG 1184 144 Q3E FLAG 960 352 Q1E SYMBOL voltage 32 192 R0 WINDOW 123 24 118 Left 2 WINDOW 3 -45 147 Left 2 SYMATTR Value2 AC 1 SYMATTR Value SINE(0 150m 5Meg) SYMATTR InstName V1 SYMATTR SpiceLine Rser=0 SYMBOL res 400 288 R0 SYMATTR InstName R1 SYMATTR Value 50 SYMBOL voltage 1216 -80 R0 SYMATTR InstName V2 SYMATTR Value 9v SYMBOL res 1328 144 R0 SYMATTR InstName R2 SYMATTR Value 50 SYMBOL cap 1296 128 R90 WINDOW 0 0 32 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 32 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName C1 SYMATTR Value 330nF SYMBOL res 864 464 R0 SYMATTR InstName R3 SYMATTR Value 20 SYMBOL res 1104 144 R0 SYMATTR InstName R4 SYMATTR Value 220 SYMBOL res 864 -64 R0 SYMATTR InstName R5 SYMATTR Value 200 SYMBOL res 624 -64 R0 SYMATTR InstName R6 SYMATTR Value 3k3 SYMBOL res 624 304 R0 SYMATTR InstName R7 SYMATTR Value 680 SYMBOL cap 544 272 R90 WINDOW 0 0 32 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 32 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName C3 SYMATTR Value 33nF SYMBOL res 624 160 R0 SYMATTR InstName R8 SYMATTR Value 1k SYMBOL cap 592 224 R180 WINDOW 0 24 56 Left 2 WINDOW 3 24 8 Left 2 SYMATTR InstName C4 SYMATTR Value 33nF SYMBOL cap 1008 544 R180 WINDOW 0 24 56 Left 2 WINDOW 3 22 4 Left 2 SYMATTR InstName C5 SYMATTR Value 330nF SYMBOL res 864 352 R0 SYMATTR InstName R9 SYMATTR Value 10 SYMBOL cap 1008 448 R180 WINDOW 0 7 52 Right 2 WINDOW 3 9 13 Right 2 SYMATTR InstName C6 SYMATTR Value 56p SYMBOL res 176 208 R0 SYMATTR InstName R10 SYMATTR Value 10k SYMBOL res 336 176 R90 WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName R11 SYMATTR Value 47 SYMBOL npn 816 96 R0 SYMATTR InstName Q2 SYMATTR Value BFG198 SYMBOL npn 1056 16 R0 SYMATTR InstName Q3 SYMATTR Value BFG198 SYMBOL npn 816 240 R0 SYMATTR InstName Q1 SYMATTR Value BFG198 SYMBOL cap 160 176 R90 WINDOW 0 0 32 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 32 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName C2 SYMATTR Value 2nf SYMBOL npn 352 144 R0 SYMATTR InstName Q4 SYMATTR Value BFG198 SYMBOL res 176 0 R0 SYMATTR InstName R12 SYMATTR Value 33k SYMBOL res 784 128 R90 WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName R13 SYMATTR Value 10 SYMBOL res 784 272 R90 WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName R14 SYMATTR Value 10 SYMBOL res 1008 48 R90 WINDOW 0 0 56 VBottom 2 WINDOW 3 32 56 VTop 2 SYMATTR InstName R15 SYMATTR Value 10 TEXT 424 -152 Left 2 !.ac oct 512 1e5 2g TEXT 424 -176 Left 2 ;'Modified Clifford Wideband Amplifier TEXT 728 -152 Left 2 !.include bfg198.mod

Here is the PLT file

[AC Analysis] { Npanes: 2 { traces: 1 {589826,0,"V(q3e)"} X: ('G',1,100000,0,2e+009) Y[0]: (' ',0,0.794328234724281,2,15.8489319246111) Y[1]: (' ',0,-480,30,-90) Volts: (' ',0,0,1,4.2,0.3,7.5) Log: 1 2 0 GridStyle: 1 PltMag: 1 PltPhi: 1 0 }, { traces: 1 {589827,0,"V(vs)"} X: ('G',1,100000,0,2e+009) Y[0]: (' ',0,0.316227766016838,1,1.12201845430196) Y[1]: (' ',0,-72,8,16) Volts: ('m',0,0,0,0.48,0.03,0.78) Log: 1 2 0 GridStyle: 1 PltMag: 1 PltPhi: 1 0 } } [Transient Analysis] { Npanes: 2 Active Pane: 1 { traces: 1 {524293,0,"V(vout)"}

Y[0]: (' ',1,-1,0.2,0.8) Y[1]: (' ',0,1e+308,20,-1e+308) Volts: (' ',0,0,1,-1,0.2,0.8) Log: 0 0 0 GridStyle: 1 PltMag: 1 PltPhi: 1 0 }, { traces: 2 {524290,0,"V(l1r11)"} {524292,0,"V(vs)"}

Y[0]: ('m',0,-0.12,0.04,0.32) Y[1]: (' ',0,1e+308,10,-1e+308) Volts: ('m',0,0,0,-0.12,0.04,0.32) Log: 0 0 0 GridStyle: 1 PltMag: 1 PltPhi: 1 0 } }

Save this as BFG198.MOD

.model BFG198 NPN(IS=1.8998E-15 ISE=7.1424E-14 ISC=2.0992E-15

  • XTI=3 BF=132.75 BR=11.407 IKF=0.44125 IKR=0.010016 XTB=1.5
  • VAF=15 VAR=4.1613 VJE=0.85909 VJC=0.81533 RE=1.1351 RC=0.27485
  • RB=1.2652 RBM=1.0893 IRB=2.8135E-5 CJE=5.0933E-15 CJC=2.3278E-12
  • XCJC=0.14496 FC=0.92887 NF=0.89608 NR=0.91008 NE=1.3235 NC=1.4602
  • MJE=0.69062 MJC=0.46849 TF=3.5786E-11 TR=1.2466E-9 PTF=0 ITF=0.062059
  • VTF=0.10681 XTF=0.44444 EG=1.11 KF=1E-9 AF=1 MFG=Siemens)
Reply to
John Silverman

Martin Brown scribbled thus:

Hi Martin,

I'm a relatively new client of "EE" which uses the Orange network. Now remember I'm not a Windows user ! I have spoken to their tech support several times and each time they want to take over my computer to put my setting right. So I say "OK" then they tell me that my computer is no good and I have to buy a new one... What bullshit !

So I dig out an old Win XP machine and set up outlook Express with my details and ring them again. Same old rigmarole. So they take over the XP machine mess about with all the settings and then tell me that there is a problem at their end. Well I knew that from the begining.

I've been through this four times with my machines and at least a dozen times for clients of mine. All Linux users and in every case taken the XP machine and set it up with my clients details and have the same problems.

Ah but they have changed my password several times, and at this moment don't actually know which one of the five is supposed to work. I use Kmail in Linux, though I have tried TB and Squirel.

Well I ended up with EE because O2 sold out to Sky and Sky demand that you pay them a fee for services you don't want or use. Which is actually another bone of contention.

With O2 I was on a special retention offer of 6 months free broadband, which actually only expired 14th April. However, Sky took over the service on 20th January and then proceeded to bill me from the begining of January. Taking money out of my bank account without my consent.

Sky totally ignored my request to return the money they had taken so I went down the DD guarantee route with the bank

Terrible is right ! The only way you can make contact is by phone. OK its a free call to do that, but Emails simply get ignored. Even by phone you might have to wait on hold for, in one case 75 minutes.

"Your call is important to us, please hold". Yea sure it is...

Rant over. :-)

--
Best Regards: 
                     Baron.
Reply to
Baron

It's stable enough for the frequency counter to track, but varies depending on whether I attach 2" or 12" of wire, and whether the other end is grounded - and a bit when I wave my hands near it.

The main thing is it doesn't oscillate without provocation, which I was half-expecting :).

I only have a 20MHz CRO, but when I can get a lock, it's a high-amplitude near-sine.

C7 is right on the front end, and C8 right beside the output device. I could add series resistance and a third decoupling cap, I guess. But it seems more important to shield the top side of the front end.

Everything earthy is within 2mm of a via to the back copper, so I'm not sure how much better it could be.

I'll attach my attempt at bootstrapping the drain, though I can't see how it can improve the frequency response; though perhaps improving the step impulse accuracy is what Phil was aiming at. Tell me if the attachment gets stripped.

In hand-held HF direction-finding equipment you have short leads, and two antennae, one a short whip for the E field, very high impedance, grounded via an RF choke, and a loop or loopstick for the M field, very low impedance. I need to know what signal levels these two will produce to choose the RF amp gain, before a quadrature hybrid combines them to get a cardioid pattern.

So the VHF performance of the amp is just a bonus, not necessary this time.

BFR93, or BFR93A? I'm using a subckt model with the SOT23 parasitics, by Philips in 1995.

I'll try that.

Now that EAGLE has LTSpice import/export, it would be good if it exported the PCB trace parasitics too.

Also though I've designed all RC passives for 0805, many of my R's are actually 1208. not sure what difference that would make except making construction harder.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

I really like the attachment method. XNews automatically saves it so I don't have to copy the asc file to the clipboard and save it to a file. I also don't have to fiddle with line wrap problems.

The first problem I found was

Error on line 3 : j1 n001 n003 vs jbf862 njf Unknown parameter "njf"

You need to change the reference for J1 from the original "NJF" to "JBF862" to get it to accept the model statement.

Even when I did that, it still couldn't find the model statement. I had to delete J1 and reinstall it. Then I changed the reference to "JBF862" and it ran without error.

The second problem was the gain was around -62dB. This was caused by setting the AC amplitude for V1 to 100u. It is not necessary to do this in AC Analysis. When you set the amplitude to 1, the gain changes to a bit under 18dB. The amplifier does not saturate.

The next problem was to do a .trans analysis to check the bias for each stage. The first problem was the input voltage was set to 10u. I want to see how symmetrical the clipping is, so I had to raise the input voltage.

The next problem was the time was way too long. I set it to 20n and skipped the max time step.

This gave a number of overlapped waveforms so I disabled the step command.

As I increased the input voltage, distortion stated to appear on the negative cycle at around 140mV. It appears to start in the jfet input stage and gets worse going through the cascode. But if you are only interested in low level signals from an antenna, maybe it is not much concern.

This has been an interesting exercise. I thought you were looking for performance in the VHF region. I guess if I were doing something similar, I'd aim for a much lower bandwidth. If you are only interested in HF, having a bandpass going up to 500MHz or 1GHZ is only going to add noise and increase the difficulty of getting it to work. It also opens you to interference from local telephones and all kinds of tv stations and mobile transmitters.

But I can see now why you want a jfet as the input stage. I don't know if changing to a BFR198 would help or not. If you are only interestd in DF work, can you add a tuned circuit at the input to select the desired frequency?

Reply to
John Silverman

Gain in dB is conventionally 20*log(Vout/Vin), or 10*log((Vout/Vin)^2). This implicitly assumes the same impedance levels for source and load. If you really _must_ have power gain _and_ the impedance levels are different, you _must_ then use the appropriate impedances to get Pin and Pout and plot 10*log(Pout/Pin), which is the original definition of the dB. People rarely bother.

Your 36dB of gain comes from LTspice displaying 20*log((Vout/Vin)^2), which makes no sense. The actual gain is 18dB.

It helps to set Vin to 1V in AC simulations. LTspice linearizes the circuit, anyway. You can then simply plot Vout in dB.

Jeroen Belleman

Reply to
Jeroen Belleman

Yes, I was aware of breaking the rules :) Thanks for the reminder.

Yes, ok.

Yes, but I switch back and forth from AC to TRANS, and that's painful enough without having two things to switch around. Any suggestions on how to make that easier?

Reply to
Clifford Heath

You don't need to! The AC directive of a source is *only* used for small signal AC analysis. The PULSE, SINE, EXP, etc. are *only* used for transient analysis.

Jeroen Belleman

Reply to
Jeroen Belleman

I think if you want to get past the first level support droids you will have to be (at least temporarily).

Can you get in OK on the webmail interface?

formatting link

Something odd then. Their service is ahem.. very primitive but it does work after a fashion but with no security on passwords or content.

I am certain TB will work with their server (and is available on Linux).

My gripe with O2 was that as a result of their merger with Vodaphone the signal where I live went from usable to unusable and they tried to increase the contract price for good measure. I jumped ship to Three.

I find the distorted music more than a little annoying but it is what a hands free phone is for... You have to persist to get through the first tier of clueless script droids who exist mainly to prevent you talking to anyone who actually knows what they are talking about. Once you get some level of escalation it isn't so bad.

I'd have thought that them blocking the IP they have allocated to you from sending emails would rank quite highly as a service issue. My experience is mainly due to ancient corroded faulty rural phone lines and trees on the line (or rather breaking through it).

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

Martin Brown scribbled thus:

Yes I agree ! That is why I setup a Windows box. But unfortunarely it gets me no further.

No ! For some strange reason I seem to end up on the French web site.

I've just about given up trying.

The TB mail client works well on Linux.

I have a Vodaphone cell tower about 150 metres from me. It makes

144.Mhz unusable ! One of the IF's is just inside the bottom of the band.

Ah well... Only another seven months to put up with them before I jump

--
Best Regards: 
                     Baron.
Reply to
Baron

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