Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Out of curiosity, does that include the IEEE Transactions on Antennas
and Propagation and the IEEE Antenna and Propagation Magazine? I'm
currently debating the merits of re-joining the IEEE mostly to obtain
these publications. In the past, they were literally gold mines of
interesting ideas on antennas. However, like all gold mines, I had to
dig through a considerable amound of rubble and useless garbage to
find the gold. I've seen little of this stuff on university web
piles, except after publication by the IEEE. I drag myself up to UCSC
and borrow a few issues, but I prefer to have them online
(downloadable and searchable) which costs money.

Do I spend the money, or do I seach for your secret horde of free
university publications on antenna design?

A lot of universities have Transactions for most of the societies like A
& P as well as the Proceedings. IEEE members get free access to online
Proceedings and all past issues of Transactions for all societies they
belong to. For example, if you're a member of Antennas and Propagation,
you can access online any paper in any issue of the Transactions on
Antennas & Propagation. The incremental cost for joining a society is
modest -- A & P is $36.00 per year once you're an IEEE member. (I think
you can get Trans. on A & P or others without joining, but at a much
higher price.) I just renewed my membership and joined the Microwave
Theory & Techniques Society for only an additional $14.00. Now I'll have
online access to all the past Transactions for that group.

Incidentally, anyone can purchase and download any individual IEEE paper
online for around $20. A lot of other organizations like the IEE (U.K.),
physics societies, etc. have a similar offer. I've gone this route a
number of times when it was worth it to me to avoid the hassle of going
downtown to the university library or waiting for an interlibrary transfer.

If you're used to looking at A & P transactions from the '40s through
the '60s, you'll probably be disappointed with current issues. Research
has always concentrated on where the money is, and now it's coming from
much different industries than it was a few decades ago. Samplings from
the current issue: "Synthesized-Reference-Wave Holography for
Determining Antenna Radiation Characteristics" and "Parallel In-Core and
Out-of-Core Solution of Electrically Large Problems Using the RWG Basis
Functions". No Brown, Lewis, and Epstein papers, those! But there was an
interesting paper on putting RFID tags on explosive ordnance as a
possible way to locate it when unexploded and buried, and a short paper
on coax loss.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL