Reading technical articles can be amusing if you learn to read between
the lines. Here are comparisons of what authors say and what they
actually mean:
We can show that...
Well, it's not at all clear to us,
but we're shaming you into
taking it for granted.
It didn't operate as was predicted... It burst into flames.
A high transient thermal effect... We burnt our fingers on the
2N3055.
After many experiments, we found a solution...
We fiddled with it a long time
and finally got it to work.
A typical sample... The only time it did more or less
what we wanted it to.
We ran transient tests... The fuse blew every time we
turned it on.
As a first approximation... The value is flagrant guesswork.
You can improve this method... Nothing we tried had a hope of
working.
Here are the fundamental engineering principles...
We lifted this from another article.
you can solve the equation numerically... We got eight answers that looked
vaguely right.
It's interesting to compare... It isn't of the slightest interest,
but it fills more space, we'll get
paid more, and we can take a shot
at Fred's article published in...
However, you can't reach the theoretical maximum power output....
You'll destroy all the output
buffers if you adjust R3 when the
power is on.
The gain figure is suboptimal... It has no gain and the noise figure
is 22 dB.
We haven't optimized the amplifier's efficiency... It's giving 2W out for
10W in and the output
transistors are glowing
red.
Performance is extremely good. It worked for three hours and
then died.
We thank Joe Smith for his comments about our manuscript...
Joe Smith completely rewrote the article
at the last minute.
The author's wish to thank Chris Hendrie for his comments about the manuscript.
Chris gave us hell for using his dot-matrix printer so often.
The authors want to thank Elizabeth Scott for her assistance...
Ms. Scott finally got the circuit to work.
---
The above was taken from the December 1987 issue of Radio
Communication, the journal of the Radio Society of Great Britain. The
idea came from FM News, the Central Scotland FM group's newsletter and
printed in Electronic Design News 31 March, 1988.
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