Customer Reviews

Practical Oscillator Handbook

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First, my background. I'm a software engineer by profession. I've got an undergraduate degree in Applied Math. I'm interested in radio frequency electronics as a hobby -- I'm licensed as an amateur radio operator in the US and I'm particularly interested in building my own equipment.

I bought this book pretty much blind, and have been pleased with it overall. I think it's helped me understand and build RF oscillators with more confidence. It's certainly not filled with abstruse mathematics; it is practical, as the title claims. It's also not filled with construction hints, although it's not entirely devoid of them.

It primarily consists of a general discussion of oscillation, followed by a catalog of various types of oscillators, including both tube and solid state designs. Design parameters and special features of the various circuit types are discussed.

The inclusion of tube circuits gives the book a bit of a historical feel, although I don't think that was the intent.

On the down side, there are numerous small typographical errors, and places where diagrams and drawings have been corrected with pen and ink.

That being said, the binding is very nice and the overall layout is decent, IMO, and all the typographical errors were minor and easily corrected by this reader from context.

If you're interested in more detail on radio frequency design and aren't afraid of some (minimal amount of) math, also check out "Introduction To Radio Frequency Design" by Wes Hayward, a fine book.

I expected a tutorial and design guide, but this book turned out to be just a brief introduction to a few oscillators. It does start off with a good introduction (feedback theory, LC tanks, etc.) but falls short with a proper explaination on actual oscillators. Recommended only if you have a prior understanding of oscillators.

I don't know, this is quite a good little book but something is definitely missing. It covers a lot on oscillator theory but when I needed to build a special saw tooth oscillator, it had no information at all. It seems to have a blind spot for practical circuits and ideas and above all certain equations. (scratching my head I wondered if the censors had banned oscillators slightly recently) It is still a good book though and if you've never seen a klystron before is very interesting.

Book just doesn't seem to have anything useful in it. For what appears to be a basic book on the subject, it totally lacks any general theory of the subject.