Matt wrote:

Greetings,

I'm a relatively new ham with not much in the way of electronics knowledge
who wants to be able to build and understand my equipment. I recently
enrolled in an electronics program at the community college to try to change
that. Unfortunately, there are no rf/antenna/wireless related courses
(sadly the wireless program was cancelled last year). What kinds of general
electronics classes (or other type) will best help me understand radio
electronics? This quarter I took DC circuits. Next quarter will be solid
state. I'll take an AC principles course later. While the local university
has electrical engineering courses, they don't teach them at night, so I'm
limited to what the community colleges can offer.

Thanks,
Matt
KD7PPK


It sounds like you're on the right track. If you can take a
semiconductor devices course at the right time that'd be good, but
they're usually 3rd-year courses & may not be taught at community college.

You should have a copy of the ARRL Handbook. The 2004 copy that I have
does a pretty good job of presenting all of this stuff. From my
perspective as a practicing EE it's a bit watered down, but the
information is quite accurate as far as it goes and it's certainly
adequate for a lot of design tasks. The handbook is a book that you can
reasonably expect to see on the shelves of any EE active in RF design,
and you can expect that it'll get referred to from time to time.

Going beyond the handbook Hayward's "Radio Frequency Design" is a good
book to read after you get through the AC principals course. I have it
and I like it, but it is written assuming you have quite a bit of EE
coursework under your belt. If you can't take a devices course you'll
either have to spend lots of quality time with the ARRL handbook or get
a text from a devices course and ask lots of questions. I hear
"Experimental Methods in RF Design" recommended here, although I don't
have a copy myself.

If you really get serious about the handbook you should try getting one
copy per decade going back to the 70's. Their opinion of what's
"useful" changes from time to time, so it's not just the same book over
and over again. If you go nuts about the handbook you should get one
copy per year, perhaps two or three (one for display behind glass, one
to read in the living room, one for the shop...). I'm up to 9 copies,
including the '76 copy from when I got interested and my uncle's '45
copy that I found in my grandmother's attic. I find I have a terrible
fascination with the circuits in the '33 handbook with those open-air
tank coils with 2kV on them -- and capacitors located so you have to
reach over the coils to adjust them. It puts the term "electrical
safety" into a very interesting perspective.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com