Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

Tsk. Poor reasoning there :-) The worst case scenario here is that *someone* has lost some knowledge; but to get that far you would have to show that hw knew it in the first place :-) Actually, I only have a tenuous grasp (for some suitable value of "tenuous") of how the thing works anyway. I've only ever possessed one, it currently still seems to cook as well (or badly) as it ever did so I've had no cause to examine it in any detail. If it breaks, it will get looked at (although I suspect, without ever having checked, that a new megnetron will cost a significant fraction of the price of a microwave oven). Still, there's always the chance that the controller or its keypad will give up the ghost. AFAIK they are. I remember reading an article in (I think) one of the IEE rags some time ago that described some new generation of semiconductors that could handle the combination of power and frequency, but they were only being used in specialised applications because of the cost. I assume that your average TV transmitter mast will stay with valves for a while yet. If "large" == "big enough to fry the occasional bird", I think I'd tend to agree! Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org