Customer Reviews

Secrets of Rf Circuit Design

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

"Secrets of RF Circuit Design" contains no secrets and precious little design. Commencing with some RF basics, but not a lot, the book progresses through a hotchpotch of largely redundant information referencing to obsolete devices, interspersed with occasional tiresome moralising anecdotes. Such is the unevenness that one is informed along the way that pi is a letter in the Greek alphabet but the introduction of complex numbers receives no explanation. RF essentials such as transistor cascode, Miller effect, common base etc. are barely mentioned. Likewise recent (or even past) developments in RF communication, Lecher bars, stripline, or in fact anything of consequence receive at most cursory comment. But one is guided in the repair of IF coils. How useful. How appropriate. Pity that essential note upon the solubility of thin copper wires in solder was omitted. Duh.

Many basic circuits are mentioned, though detail is simply glossed over. Almost nothing is explained to a level which is useful. The descriptions of IMPATT, TRAPITT and BARITT and other obscure devices serve only to confuse potential designers as to what they might expect to find in industry, or even what they might find in catalogues. Warning of the danger of carbon tet might be relevant, were it actually available. And so it goes, irrelevancies and misdirection.

Then there are the mistakes, factual, diagrammatic, typo and dubious opinion. Laced with so many errors the text cannot ever be taken as authoritative. I certainly didn't know that "The nautical mile is 1/360 of the Earth's circumference at the equator, more or less." This is the third edition and it is simply gross ineptitude which lets rubbish like this slip through.

With its annoying "Radio Shack" demeanour, the obtrusive, extraneous in-text references and addresses serve only to distend the already bloated text. Writing is painfully wordy, imprecise and begs severe red pen editing. Large heading font, wide margins and huge simplistic diagrams also serve to fill over five hundred pages which if decently constructed would make a book a third of the size.

...I feel cheated. It was a waste of money. Almost uniquely amongst my purchases, this book is destined for the bucket. Unmitigated dross.

First a disclaimer: I have the previous version of this book, but I flipped through the new one and it's essentially the same book.

As a newbie to RF electronics, this book appeared to be the holy grail of radio knowledge when I first saw it in the book store.

I actually read the entire thing cover to cover. Then I reread chapters over and over and over again, trying to make SOME sense of it, all the time thinking that it was my lack of experience that was making it difficult to get certain concepts down.

Now with a little hind sight I see what an awful place this book was to start.

It has is a real strange mix of totally glossing over important information, but then spending countless pages explaining the most inane topics

For example there's a whole section on how to repair an antique bobbin type coil, yet it's painfully short on how you'd actually design your own.

Furthermore, throughout the book it's as if Carr drifts between assuming the reader has no knowledge of rf concepts, and assuming the reader is a full blown rf engineer.

It's SO frustrating.

Not to mention, even I as a newbie picked up on SEVERAL errors in calculations, images, and text. (in fairness, these could very well have been corrected in the newer edition)

Also while I'm being fair, I don't think Carr claims that the book is meant for inexperienced readers. But I really feel the book misses all audiences. It covers the basics while assuming you know all the magic "secrets" that connect the dots he lays out. And if you know those, you should already know the basics.

Maybe they should just rename it to "Joseph Carr's Thoughts on RF Design" that might be more appropriate.

Despite my lengthy criticism, the book is not totally without value, I did learn a few things. So I recommend it ONLY if you can find it used and CHEAP.

This book is more for the RF hacker than for an RF designer . It provides very little design info and theory of operation - it is mostly an RF 'cookbook' for people that want to design by trial and error or just experiment for fun.

A terrible book. An ok book on Radio theory, with plenty of schematics, but absolutely nothing to do with design. A better title for this book would be: Secrets I Don't Know About RF Circuit Design. After reading this book you will not be able to design a single RF circuit. I recommend an engineering book: RF Circuit Design.

As another reviewer wrote, "buy it used and buy it cheap." Well, I did, and _still_ feel cheated. After receiving it just this afternoon, and spending 15 minutes scanning through it, I have to say that TAB publishers, producer of this 3rd edition, obviously needs to clean house in their proofreading department, and the author, Joseph J. Carr needs to pay more attention to the galley proofs when they're sent out. Missing diagrams, wrong diagrams to match the diagram's text, and just plain wrong information renders this book untrustworthy, and therefore worthless. Amazon won't let me award zero stars so I am forced to give it one.

This is a great book on wireless technology for persons starting out in RF electronics, as well as for new RF technicians and ham radio operators. Carr's book explains RF capacitors, coils, transistors, receivers, propagation, antennas, mixers, amplifiers, impedance matching, filters, the Smith chart, etc. in an easy-to-understand way.

This is a worthless book, replete with errors and very little information on RF circuit design.
Virtually every page contains erroneous diagrams, missing references, and the ensemble reads like a cut and paste from a series of magazine articles. Save your money and buy a decent book such as "Experimental Methods in RF Design" by Wes Hayward, Rick Campbell and Bob Larkin if you really want to learn some design techniques.

This book was obviously written for those with prior knowledge of electronics. It does an excellent job introducing and explaining the concepts of radio frequency technology. Standard AM, FM and SW broadcast band is used for most examples. Light on math, but not afraid to throw in an equation or two where needed. More than a few typos, so read carefully! Good for radio amateur, technician or engineer who needs to understand the basic concept.

I agree with other reviews in that there are many errors in the book which should have been discovered and corrected before printing. It's not one of the worst books on the subject, but certainly not the best. The book is fun to read but is short on depth. It actually reads like a bunch of magazine article reprints that have been collected and assigned a chapter with some extra stuff thrown in. Some chapters have a lot of detail and others completely gloss over the subject (just like some magazine articles I have read). If you are looking for a general introduction to RF principles, then this book is just OK. If you are ready to get the simulator going and design a real RF circuit, you will be a bit hard pressed to make progress.

I agree with the other reviewers in the "Waste of paper" school, though I guess it's to be expected from TAB books, the worst publisher on the planet.

Strange that Cotter Sayre has given this a glowing review. Anonymously! Sure hope he's a better writer than reviewer, as his book is next in my pile!