Adventures in Engineering

This report describes both a general methodology and some specific examples of passive radio receivers. A passive radio receiver uses no direct electrical power but makes sole use of the power available in the radio spectrum. These radio receivers are suitable as low data-rate receivers or passive alerting devices for standard, high power radio receivers. Some zero-power radio architectures exhibit significant improvements in range with the addition of very low power amplifiers or signal processing electronics. These ultra-low power radios are also discussed and compared to the purely zero-power approaches.

http://www.sandia.gov/mstc/products/usystemsprod/rfandoptosystems/saw.html

http://www.sandia.gov/mstc/documents/saw3.pdf


This is *exactly* what we need at work right now. A way for the master unit to tell all the field units to "wake up" and prepare for incoming transmission. And it uses zero battery power. Even some of the powered designs only use microwatts of power, which you can easily get from entirely passive devices like a solar panel or a thermocouple.

Neat shit.

Please, everyone, tell me that I need to not be buying toys when I'm so close to killing off my credit card debt.

Christ, I'm like a frikkin' crazy cat lady, except with swords! I've already got two junkblades, a bokken, a shinai, and a foam whacker sitting up on my bookshelf.

HELP! SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!!

(I mean really, I should be saving my money for one of Howard Clark's L-6 bainite/martensite blades, anyway...)


Edit: After a lot of further research, it looks like most of these mid-grade Hanwei katanas pretty much suck. The only one I like much is the Tsunami, that's basically a lipsticked-pig version of the Wind & Thunder. It would be a decent blade for $250. At $700 it's a major, major ripoff. :P

The Bugei Crane katana is not bad, but it's more than even I can justify spending on a sword toy. The Hanwei Bushido kat is decent as well, but I just don't like the aesthetics - I'd have to custom build a new tsuka and stuff for it. And if I'm going to do that, I'll just buy a bare blade and save myself the expense and trouble of buying stuff that I'm just going to throw away.

Maybe I can find one of these used on EBay for a decent price...