I was recently updating one of the online workbooks for the RF Technology Certification program and decided to try and re-write one of the calculators using Python. The topic is teaching how to convert from dBm values to milliwatts without using a calculator, so the calculator does not just calculate the conversion, rather it tries to demonstrate the process of approximation in your head. In the end, I decided to keep the original Javascript calculator with some updates rather than replacing it with the Python version.

Another application of using Python to demonstrate RF concepts comes in the form of a calculator to plot L-C series reactance. This plot shows two useful concepts: resonance and the effect of parasitic capacitance or inductance. For a capacitor, the magnitude of the series reactance decreases with increasing frequency, while the opposite is true for an inductor. For a capacitor with parasitic inductance, there will come a point where the two reactances are equal in magnitude and cancel each other out. This point is the resonant frequency of the combined circuit.