Joe Carr expands on Volume 1, covering techniques and methods, hardware design and construction, more RadioScience theory, and related geoscience and planetary science activities. A CD-ROM with all new material is included.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful, however...,
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This review is from: Radio Science Observing, Vol. 2 (Paperback)
You might want to start with my review of RadioScience Observing, Volume 1 by the same author. This book is better, probably because the author states that he got some feedback from readers and tried to address their wants. Again, in my opinion the editing comes up short.The hardware sections of this book are in general very good, and the sections describing specific circuits tend to be well-written and useful. In a few places, I thought he included information that didn't add much, for example the UHF stripline mixer circuits. Not many hobbyists will get UHF stripline circuits working. The author does give an excellent, detailed treatment of a universal IF strip that could be the basis for a lot of useful receivers. I wish that there had been a set of converters for ELF - HF and some good local oscillator designs to go with it that were described as completely. There was also no real discussion of local oscillators. This is a significant omission to someone wanting to build a receiver. Another subject needing more coverage is detectors. The chapter on magnetometer sensors was well done, with a couple of minor quibbles. One, the author states "the sensor should be pointed towards the source". Since magnets are dipoles (or a larger even number of poles) "source" has little meaning. For maximum sensitivity, the sensor should be aligned with the field lines, which in many cases mean that the sensor is arranged at some angle (or even perpendicular) to, not pointed at, the "source". The other gripe is with undefined terms. He puts a conversion for Gauss and Tesla in a table of conversion factors (it's backwards, but at least it's there), then describes most of the fields in Oersteds (in air, if H = 1 Oe, B = 1 Gauss = 10e-4 Tesla). He also uses gamma without definition (1 gamma = 10e-9 Tesla). A brief discussion of H vs. B and the appropriate units would have helped. Squawking aside, there is more truly useful information on instruments for measuring static magnetic fields in this one chapter than the rest of the recent "hobbyist" literature combined. Good stuff. The invited chapter on measuring solar UV by Forrest Mims III is excellent. Perhaps because this information had been previously published in Scientific American, it has the editorial polish that that magazine is known for, and didn't suffer from the inattention of this book's editor (more on that below). More likely, based on the other Mims work that I have seen over the years, he self-edits to the point of polish. The other invited hardware chapter, Allan Coleman's description how to lengthen the period of seismometers, was also good, with the exception that he neglected to mention why anyone would want to do such a thing! An invited chapter on SETI by Dr. Paul Shuch was similar to one included in Vol 1, both being well-written invitations to get involved in amateur SETI. On to the bad news. Why is it that Prompt Publications can't seem to do a decent job of editing? A few examples: Table of Contents: "receiver" is misspelled in the entry for chapter 3. Pg 7 states units will be either CGS or MKS. Table 1-2 uses neither system, instead gives length as meters, mass as grams and time as seconds. MGS? Pg 8: Fig 1-2, Extraneous "1 second" label for a sinusoid of supposedly arbitrary frequency. Pg 8: Eq 1-2 wrong due to extraneous factor of zero (!) Pg 8: Eq 1-3 wrong due to algebraic or typo error. Pg 13: Table 1-4 conversion between Gauss and Tesla wrong (backwards). Pg 36: text refers to wrong figure. Pg 37: typo (1,4500 kHz instead of 1455 kHz) Pg 55: Text has wrong component ID (fig 3-20 has correct number). Pg 88 states that lightning generates up to 15,000,000 volts. Vol 1 (pg 120) says 250,000,000 volts. Big difference, which is right? Pg 88 paragraph 2 says that lightning travels at 100,000,000 ft/sec. Paragraph 4 (same page!) says that lightning travels at the speed of light (almost 1 billion ft/sec). Pg 108: use of archaic "200 mmV" (milli-millivolt) instead of 200 microvolts. Pg 179: 1 dB switch and 9 dB switch is 10 dB of attenuation, not 3 dB. Pg 320: Eq 15-5 missing term(s). Pg 335: Section heading incorrect. Pg 378: Table 1 (cable specs) missing. General gripes: The fundamentals in Chapter 1 of this volume belonged in Volume 1, BEFORE all the detailed discussions based on that information. Needless to say, I am unimpressed by the job Prompt Publications editors did on Volumes 1 & 2 of this work. All books have a few mistakes, and maybe I'm being picky, but I paid good money for two books that should have been better than they are. Are they useful? Yes. Did the editors do their jobs? No way, and the customer gets a marginal product. C'mon people, it takes more than just a good manuscript to make a good book. After all, if the manuscript is perfect, what does the author need an editor for? Be a little less "prompt" and a lot more thorough.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
In Agreement with Robert Jones,
By W. Watson (Nevada City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Radio Science Observing, Vol. 2 (Paperback)
I do not own either of the two RadioScience (vol 1 and vol 2) books by J. Carr, but I had the chance to browse through them at some length at a bookstore. I would pretty much agree with Robert Jones Amazon review remarks. In fact, I'd like to hear from him and have posted my e-mail address with this review.The books contain a wide variety of information meteors, (even) telemetry, solar observations using VLF and other topics. It didn't seem to be terribly deep in the area of radio astronomy. There are plenty of circuit designs, and I may be a bit unfair here, but in the area of radio astronomy (RA), it may not have been enough. I consider RA the radio science part of things that deals with objects outside the earth, sun, planets, stars, nova, galaxies, etc. Both books are accompanied by a CD-ROM but I couldn't find much of a description about the contents of either. Both books have very thorough indexes, which I appreciate in any technical book. I'd agree with Mr. Jones comment about the book needed an editor. The publisher is part of the Howard Sams 'empire'. I'd add that there are few books for beginners on these subjects and that they all seem to be lacking an editorial touch. That's too bad because it seems to have allowed the authors to wander a bit on the subject. In the case of the two books, it appears that it has also led to some slight difficulties in the presentation. If you are really intereested science and radio applications, it would seem that these two books, at least volume 1, would be useful way to get started. He has some good supporting authors (Mims, etc.) and has a respectable collection of references.
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