[R-390] Good technical reference books.

[Tim Shoppa]

Perry Sandeen <sandeenpa at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 2.  ARRL Handbooks.  Mid 70?s. Also found on Ebay.  Search by name.  Usually $10-$20. In this age
> range they still have tube theory and info on using dual gate MOSFETS so we can SS our R-390 and
> other BA receivers.  In this era you didn?t have to be a MIT EE graduate to understand the
> explanations.

The monthly QST's were good too. The Handbook construction projects tend
to be very pedestrian and while the details vary from year to year there
is overall not a lot of variety (but a lot of really good reference
material). The QST articles tend to be more exotic and detailed.

My personal taste in Handbooks is 50's and 60's. By the 70's all the
ads are gone. But on the sand-state side they start getting heavy into
robust simple receivers and QRP equipment.

The Handbook was a bit cookbook-like, and that was probably a good thing.
(There was also this bizarre fascination with 7360 beam-deflection mixers
for everything including the kitchen sink!)

A good tube textbook I remember was one by Seely, "Electron Tube Circuits".

I also subscribe to the HBR mailing list on qth.net. Highly recommended.
When I was a kid I got to read all this stuff but didn't have the money
to play with it. Now I can afford it but don't have enough time!

> 3.  Communications Receivers by Ulrich L. Rohde, Jerry C. Whitaker, and T. T. N. Bucher (Hardcover
> - Jan 15, 1997).  Found on Amazon.com.  Search using Ulrich L. Rohde.  Usually can be purchased
> used for $25-$30.  Rhode is a ham and THE AUTHORITY on receivers.  Practical as well as all the
> math you could ever handle.  He wrote for years for Ham Radio magazine. WARNING:  Extensive use of
> SAND STATE!  Ludites should avoid this one.

I really really like Clark and Hess, "Communications Circuits: Analysis
and Design". Maybe too much math for a lot of hams: they spend a lot of
time making approximations to waveforms so they can integrate to get
semi-analytic results, but today a lot of
the analysis would be done with computers (even a spreadsheet would be
leagues beyond what they do in the book, but with less rule-of-thumb-derived
in approach). Does both transmitters
and receivers, tube and transistor and just a little IC. (Admittedly
more transistor at least for the receiver side.)

Tim.