Customer Reviews

Radio Astronomy Projects

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I'm an electrical engineering student! This book sucks if you want to build your own radio telescope. The basic theme of this book is use sat-dish components to assemble not build a radio telescope. The projects are plentiful in this book but each project is 1 or 2 pages.. hardly a project. Buy this book after you build your telescope and when you don't know what to observe. Very disappointing. I was expecting a schematic for each project! There is only one complete project 6 pages (whew..hew).. and that project is already online for free. I really don't understand what the hype about this book. This book does not deliver what it says. According to Lonc... the simple idea of observe the sun at 4GHz qualifies for 2 pages of B.S. and is called a project. No shematics, no parts list. The same block diagram is reapeated over and over for many projects. LNA-Powe amp-chart recorder... Thats it! If you want to learn astrophysics pick up a text book. This is for high school kids!

If you already have a reasonable introduction to RA (radio astronomy), then this book might help you get started with some projects. There are some interesting bits of info hidden away, but for beginners this is not the place to be. I don't think I'd suggest this book until one has gotten one personal project under their belt or done some solid reading elsewhere. It's not quite that the fundamentals aren't explained, but they just sort of spring up. It's sort of like someone first wrote the projects and then said, I guess I'd better add some info about fundamentals, but didn't quite tie it in with the projects.

Radio Astronomy Projects by William Lonc is a delightful addition to the library of any amateur radio astronomer. While it is not a textbook, it is full of useful information and a fascinating record of projects undertaken and inspired by this dedicated experimenter and teacher.