Life sucks when your stash of microwave parts is buried in the back corner of the garage and you can't get to it...
With that said, I need to find out where I can buy microwave transistors, diodes, etc.....
The usual places seem to be lacking in this aria...
So I need some direction.....
I think all semiconductors, discrete or integrated, will be despatched in sufficiently discreet packaging. Besides, people are far less prudish nowadays.
RF parts has some, but not enough.
Ebay is pretty good for microwave stuff. Especially used or new surplus cables, attenuators and various components.
There is some risk of buying fake parts but it's difficult to escape that risk unless you buy from official distributors. I've bought a lot of good RF stuff on ebay and the prices can be very low.
MMIC amplifiers can be bought on ebay as well in small qty. SMD resistors can be bought in a E12 or E24 kit in an A4 sized folder in 0603 or 0805 for very low prices on ebay.
You can buy small SMD porcelain cap kits direct from places like ATCeramics for reasonable money, eg 600S or 800B series. A typical 10-100pF or 1-10pF kit will contain about 250 caps and it costs about $90 USD IIRC. These caps are tiny but they should be laser etched with the code for the value so even if you mix them up you can see (with a microsope or eyeglass) what the value is.
At work I use the 600S series a lot and these are about the same size as 0603. They are great for use in microwave filters. They aren't so good for broadband use unless you mount them on their skinny side (called vertical mounting) because they can suffer from tiny resonances. Mounting them vertically improves the broadband performance but they still suffer resonances at higher frequencies. So ordinary cheap (non ATC) COG caps can be better sometimes as wideband DC blocks if you can accept a slightly more graceful loss characteristic. You can get COG 0603 cap kits in SMD cheaply on ebay.
http://www.atceramics.com/userfiles/design_kits.pdf
I generally buy from ebay or from RF Microwave in Italy, and also one store in Greece.
But I'm not going over 1296MHz for now.
Why not Murata?
http://psearch.en.murata.com/capacitor/lineup/gjm/I doubt many people at home work on project that require ATC priced components and Murata is much cheaper.
This is why use them and they perform as advertised if I simulate with their S parameters. to 6GHz and way above.
I buy most of the stuff on Farnell, Digikey and Mouser. Gets to me in 1 to 2 days, even dough it is not as cheap as e-bay.
BR
Interesting... the Murata parts look to be very good but it should be noted that they are only low voltage parts.
The ATC 600S caps are typically rated to 250V which makes them suitable for transmit and receive applications. AF6LJ is a ham callsign so I suggested microwave caps that can be used for both Tx and Rx up to reasonably high power levels.
Note: At work I'm not allowed to use Murata parts so I'm not that aware of what they offer these days. Murata don't allow their parts to be used for certain applications and unfortunately that includes an industry where I work...
But I might get some for home use/research if they are cheap enough
Ebay is pretty good for microwave stuff. Especially used or new surplus cables, attenuators and various components.
There is some risk of buying fake parts but it's difficult to escape that risk unless you buy from official distributors. I've bought a lot of good RF stuff on ebay and the prices can be very low.
MMIC amplifiers can be bought on ebay as well in small qty. SMD resistors can be bought in a E12 or E24 kit in an A4 sized folder in 0603 or 0805 for very low prices on ebay.
You can buy small SMD porcelain cap kits direct from places like ATCeramics for reasonable money, eg 600S or 800B series. A typical 10-100pF or 1-10pF kit will contain about 250 caps and it costs about $90 USD IIRC. These caps are tiny but they should be laser etched with the code for the value so even if you mix them up you can see (with a microsope or eyeglass) what the value is.
At work I use the 600S series a lot and these are about the same size as 0603. They are great for use in microwave filters. They aren't so good for broadband use unless you mount them on their skinny side (called vertical mounting) because they can suffer from tiny resonances. Mounting them vertically improves the broadband performance but they still suffer resonances at higher frequencies. So ordinary cheap (non ATC) COG caps can be better sometimes as wideband DC blocks if you can accept a slightly more graceful loss characteristic. You can get COG 0603 cap kits in SMD cheaply on ebay.
http://www.atceramics.com/userfiles/design_kits.pdf
ATC has always been good for caps.
They can be hard to find retain in small quantities, diodes and transistors are another story.
Interesting... the Murata parts look to be very good but it should be noted that they are only low voltage parts.
The ATC 600S caps are typically rated to 250V which makes them suitable for transmit and receive applications. AF6LJ is a ham callsign so I suggested microwave caps that can be used for both Tx and Rx up to reasonably high power levels.
Note: At work I'm not allowed to use Murata parts so I'm not that aware of what they offer these days. Murata don't allow their parts to be used for certain applications and unfortunately that includes an industry where I work...
But I might get some for home use/research if they are cheap enough
Johanson has good High voltage low capacitance parts that are reasonably priced, might find something for you there
BR
http://www.johansondielectrics.com/high-voltage-mlc-capacitors
You can try Mini Circuits, though those parts are the premium brand. Some of the parts you have to buy in bulk and cost quite a pretty penny.
Digikey and Mouser have NEC super low noise phemts, Cree and Macom GaN power hemts, Avago and NXP transistors, PIN diodes, Schottky diodes. What transistors and diodes are you having trouble finding?
I did find what I was looking for on the Mouser site, sometimes that site is not so intuitive.
What's heard in "Microwave Parts" stays in "Microwave Parts" ?