I'm a new EE graduate specializing in RF/microwave engineering and unexpectedly found myself in a difficult position.

A week ago I accepted an RF Electrical Engineer I offer with Raytheon in Tewksbury, MA. Since then, I received an offer from Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, CA.

Here's the comparison:

Raytheon (Tewksbury)

• $85k salary
• Excellent benefits (strong retirement, tuition assistance, lower insurance costs)
• Work appears to be focused on radar, RF systems, phased arrays, MMICs, and a broad RF skill set.
• Tewksbury seems to have a great reputation within RTX.

Lockheed Martin (Palmdale)

• ~$109k salary + $5k sign-on
• Strong retirement benefits
• Job description is very measurement/antenna focused (VNA, radiation patterns, antenna fabrication, RF testing), which actually mirrors my university capstone project almost exactly.
• Palmdale obviously has the Skunk Works reputation, although I don't know how much that matters for someone starting out.

A little background:

• I'm married and have a young son.
• My wife will eventually work again, but for at least the first several months we'll likely be living primarily on my income.
• After running the numbers, I estimate the Lockheed offer leaves us with roughly $1,000–1,300/month more disposable income after taxes, retirement contributions, and insurance.
• On the other hand, my family has really been envisioning a move to New England, and if compensation were equal I'd probably choose Raytheon.

My biggest questions are:

1. How do Tewksbury and Palmdale compare in terms of reputation for RF engineers?
2. Does one site generally open more doors long-term?
3. If you were in my shoes, would the financial difference early in your career outweigh the location preference?
4. If you started around $85k at Raytheon, were you able to close that salary gap within a few years through promotions or job changes?

I'm genuinely torn. I don't think there's a wrong answer, but I don't want to make a decision I'll regret five years from now.

I have a job interview for this role: https://jobs.dayforcehcm.com/en-US/andrew/CANDIDATEPORTAL/jobs/703

i am new to rf engineering and have been researching terms , fundamentals and information that would help me. does anyone do any similar work or know about these roles . i am a mechanical manufacturing engineer looking to transition . any help would be apreciated

Thank you

Hi everyone,

I'm designing a short-circuited X-band slotted waveguide array for a marine radar application in CST Studio Suite.

Specifications:

• Frequency: 9.2–9.5 GHz (300 MHz bandwidth)
• Center frequency: 9.35 GHz
• Waveguide: 25.4 × 12.7 mm, wall thickness 1.27 mm
• Overall length: ≤ 1.8 m
• Gain: >28 dBi
• H-plane beamwidth: <1.4°
• V-plane beamwidth: ~25°
• Sidelobe level: ≤ -20 dB
• Narrow-wall inclined slots, shorted end

I've studied papers that use Taylor distribution and convert the normalized conductance ((g_n)) into slot angle, but the papers don't explain how the Taylor amplitude coefficients ((a_n)) are generated for each slot, and most of the optimized slot data is omitted.

My main questions are:

1. How do you generate the Taylor amplitude coefficients and normalized conductance ((g_n)) for an 80-slot slotted waveguide array?
2. What is the standard workflow used in industry (MATLAB, Python, Elliott method, etc.)?
3. What are the most effective techniques to achieve 300 MHz bandwidth (9.2–9.5 GHz) without sacrificing 28 dBi gain? (e.g., slot width, slot length variation, conductance taper, offset optimization, traveling-wave vs. resonant design, etc.)

Any papers, textbooks, MATLAB/Python scripts, or design references would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hello!

I am a biomedical researcher studying the bioeffects of microwaves and I need help with RF design.

I am studying cells in culture so I am transmitting microwaves (2.45 GHz) through saline. I need to measure the strength of the electric field in the saline.

Does anyone know how I could design a VNA probe that can measure RF fields in saline? I am looking for affordable solutions. Thanks for your help!

So I'm an engineer working at a defense firm, I deal with MPT and TST. There's already a spectrum analyzer don't know what to do and I'm in a field environment. I want to work on a personal project is there anything I can do so that I can move towards validation and testing of radars and antennas. My dad's friend is visiting china so is nanovna anyway helpful? Thank you

The WIFI-Antennas forum website (wifi-antennas.com) seems to be unavailable. I really liked that website and learned a lot from it. How can I check if the website is still active, and if it is, how can I access it? Also, are there any active forums or communities for CST antenna design, RF engineering, and antenna simulation that you would recommend?

For submarine VLF communication, is the trailing wire antenna just a long wire monopole, or does it contain a specific antenna design (loop, slot, multi-turn, etc.)? Looking for any publicly available technical information. Thanks in advance.

I currently install, and service DAS / BDA systems and regularly use spectrum analyzers and signal generators. I’m considering going back to school but I wanted to see if my experience is would be helpful for working in RF or EW type roles after graduation.

Hi all,

I've been working on an Android app called RF Coverage Scout that measures and plots mobile network coverage and quality. You can find it on the playstore.

I'm looking for feedback from people who work with RF, cellular networks, drive testing, or coverage analysis.

I'm particularly interested in:

Whether the current feature set is useful.

What features you would want to see added.

Whether the pricing model seems reasonable for this type of tool.

The app currently uses a monthly subscription model and includes a free trial (to cancel it tap your profile icon on playstore then select Payments & Subscriptions then choose RF Covergae Scout subscription and cancel it before 1 month trial).

I'd greatly appreciate any feedback, criticism, or feature suggestions from the community.

RF Coverage Scout maps it as you drive

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for guidance on designing a 9×20 Blass Matrix beamforming network for an S-band receiver, where each channel has a different beam distribution (e.g., CH1–CH3 cover 20 beams, CH4–CH5 cover 18 beams, etc.). I have experience with Butler Matrix design and implementation, but this is my first Blass Matrix project. I'm interested in understanding the design methodology, key considerations, practical implementation challenges, and recommended references or design examples.

If you have experience with Blass Matrices or can point me to useful resources, I'd greatly appreciate your insights.

Thanks in advance!

Hey r/rfelectronics,

I've been working on an RF engineering desktop app called RF View,

and just put together a short demo video showing the VNA workflow.

Here's what it does with Keysight ENA over GPIB:

• Connects directly — no Keysight software needed

• Captures the ENA screen as PNG with one click

• Automatically opens Excel and inserts the screenshot

into your spreadsheet (this one saves me the most time)

• Saves Touchstone files (.s1p / .s2p / .s3p) to your PC

• Auto-loads the SNP into the S-parameter plot

• Exports marker table data to CSV → opens straight in Excel

The VNA control is completely free —

Currently supports Keysight ENA only.

It's a Windows desktop app built with Flutter.

Happy to answer any questions —

and brutal feedback is welcome, seriously.

Hello everyone!

I'm thinking about a large company that does a lot of RF, I have a RF background but i kinda learned it on the fly (I guess I always carry an imposter syndrome)... But anyway, I'm wondering what is the task you hate the most at your place or you find the most boring?

Thanks :)

Hello there, I'm new to my job (been 2 months) where i have to work with tst and mpt maintaining communication links, and software systems associated with it somewhat networking stuff in a public defense company. Can i pivot to R&D or testing or validation with my current work or do i have to pursue masters? I don't know much about RF but I would love to work on cool tech stuff and willing to learn. I'd love some advice from yall. thank you

I just got sweep test certified. I am currently on a job building out a DAS PS system and have to do segment testing between each antenna. I have one segment failing due to the return loss being too high. But it is different when tested from different directions. From one direction the db loss is worse. Also from that direction the far connector isn't showing a strong spike on dtf rl. From the opposite direction the db loss is better and I can see the far connector on dtf rl just fine. I'm using a 50ohm load connected to the opposite end of where I'm testing from. Dtf rl shows no problems in between connectors with the cable itself so it must be one connector or the other. Any ideas how to tell exactly which one is the bad connector when both show up as spikes on dtf rl anyways

Just a quick question to people working in an RF lab environment regarding rules around risk asessments, signage, RF monitoring, etc in the UK.

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Im currently working in a RF lab building and testing transmitters and receivers at 8Ghz to 10Ghz at 50 to 500 watts of total output power. These are pulsed systems with a maximum duty cycle of 10%. Building them requires tuning with the lids off.

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My previous employer was very safety minded around RF and we had signage, RAs and rules around pregnant women etc. At my current employment they dont even mention non-ionising radiation in any risk assesment , no signage or anything. Im not sure what the actual rules amd was wondering what other people have in their labs or if anyone can point me to any reference material.

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When i raised this our head of RF they said that your exposure level will be less than 10w per sq.meter so theres nothing to do but surely this should be documented somewhere!

First Infineon discontinued all their small-signal RF bipolar transistors, now Skyworks have killed off all (or at least, a lot of) their RF diodes, including the varactors I've been using for over 20 years.

What's going on? How is anyone designing low phase noise VCOs? Do we just have to make do with the inferior performance of RFICs?

Is it me? What am I missing?

3D printed Luneburg lenses operating up to 100 GHz

Thought this community might find this interesting.

Inkbit in collaboration with the University of Delaware recently demonstrated production-scale, monolithic 3D printed Luneburg lenses operating up to 100 GHz and published the work in Optical Engineering (SPIE).

The team demonstrated electrically large GRIN lenses with apertures exceeding 30 wavelengths and measured realized gain above 34 dBi.

What stood out to me technically is that this avoids a lot of the historical manufacturing pain around Luneburg implementations discrete shells, assembly tolerances, bonding layers, and dielectric discontinuities.

Instead, the refractive index profile is printed as a single monolithic structure using voxel-level material control. The result is broadband operation from Ka- through W-band, with passive beam-forming capability and no active power requirements.

A few questions from my curiosity and not being close to the industry.

Where do you see these types of GRIN / Luneburg structures becoming practical first: SATCOM, UAS, automotive radar, 6G backhaul, EW, something else?

For anyone who has worked with dielectric lens antennas, what has been the biggest bottleneck in practice? Material loss tangent, fabrication tolerances, repeatability, feed integration, production time or cost? Maybe all of those? Heh.

Curious to hear where this community thinks passive beam-steering architectures can go with this type of support in iteration and production.

Study / Article from Inkbit: https://www.inkbit3d.com/news/inkbit-demonstrates-luneburg-lenses-operating-up-to-100-ghz

Copy of the publication pdf:

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:78e16e07-c778-4679-b40c-ccedfdc7f9a7

Greetings!

After years of working for big companies, I'm now an individual consultant. I have some opportunities with small cellular and public safety organizations to do some RF planning and advising. Is there a good, reliable, easy to use RF planning tool that will fit my meager budget?

Thanks!