Observations on textbooks

I haven’t had time to devote to amplifier fun this week (although I have devoted some thought to it, and believe I have a much better understanding now for component selection — will blog on that when I get a chance).  In the meantime, I thought I’d vent a little bit about the books we all turn to in order to understand electronics topics.

In terms of QRP radios I feel that there are kind of two categories of books one can turn to.  The first are written for hams specifically, often endorsed by the ARRL or a well-known QRPer/designer.  The authors are usually trained in the “school of hard knocks” but some also have formal engineering or technical training.  The focus is generally on easier to understand intuitive approaches, minimal math (although that can vary), and practical considerations.  I have many of these books and find them crucial to becoming a person who can design and build QRP radios.

The second class of books are written often by brilliant engineers, sometimes with PhDs, sometimes not.  The focus is generally on the theoretical with little or (more commonly) no practical application presented whatsoever.  The approach is as divorced from intuition as can possibly be obtained, often lying exclusively with algebraic or calculus expressions.  One can follow the information in such books, chug through the math successfully if he/she has the appropriate background, and can often arrive at successful and correct analyses of idealized circuits.  I also have many of these books, probably more than the ham variety, and I’ve studied all of them extensively.

Here lies the problem.  There seems to be this Grand Canyon-sized gap between the realities of a pile of transistors, some copper clad and Radio Shack vs. the theoretical analysis.  In other words, I can analyze a circuit to death with algebra and spreadsheets, and get correct answers, but have zero understanding for how this circuit was designed and what the designer was thinking.  I simply get answers, I can’t design — I can only analyze previously designed circuits from others.  Conversely, I can follow the ham books like a recipe, stuff a board by following their example schematics, and gain a lot of understanding for the purpose for the circuit (big picture) and maybe even what the designer was setting out to do, but have almost no understanding of the details behind the “turning the crank” algebra and design process and analysis which underlies that design.  I’m left either to trial and error/cut-and-try approaches with a basic skeleton of the proper design to work with, or I just have to search for appropriate circuits from a library someplace and hope that I can make minor tweaks for what I need without losing circuit functionality.

I started out as a teen with the ham books.  Later, I went to the engineering side and focused exclusively there.  Now, I’m trying to marry the two.  And I’m shocked that more authors haven’t attempted it already.

I get frustrated when some of the ham/hobby resources just plop a circuit on the page with little or no explanation for why a resistor is here or a capacitor is there.  When I was younger, I used to think that it was because I just wasn’t “in the know” and the author was just saving space by not publishing “the obvious”.  But now I’m not so sure.

I think part of it is, publishing algebra and especially calc can turn off a lot of people.  Part may be, in some cases, the inability of the author to do a thorough analysis or explanation.  But it’s really unfortunate in my mind because some of the analysis, at least with simple transistor circuits, is easy and kind of enlightening to the understanding.  If you coupled that analysis with the knowledge that hams often have with decades of solder melting, you’d have a very powerful and helpful text.

The engineering books are the flip side.  Sometimes I feel there is a purposeful intent to reduce every possible element to nothing more than some numbers, as though the practical world just gets in the way of a fun math problem.  Which again is a shame, for the same reasons as above.  When I sit down to roll my own circuits, I’d like to engage in the math, but I’d like to do so with knowledge of practical considerations and a “big picture” for what this circuit is supposed to do, who designed it maybe, how it can be built, etc etc.

I feel that using either approach gives unsatisfactory results.  With most of the ham books, I find I can build stuff but not always understand how it works or the process behind design.  So I have a pile of circuits that do fun things — too bad I can’t make my own versions of them!  With the engineering ones, forget about building things most of the time!

Of course these are generalizations.  I realize there are some ham-oriented books that also walk through detailed analysis.  There are a few engineering books that also touch on construction or give more background and information on the circuit.  But I find that even the best books in either camp are still not adequate to cover all bases when I’m sitting down at the drawing board.  I’m still forced to use multiple books by many authors on both sides.

Maybe this is just the nature of this field.  Or maybe there are some key texts that I just haven’t run across yet (I’m always seeking more).  My one big drawback is lack of experience in building or designing stuff.  I just haven’t done much of it yet.  If I devote some years to it, my guess is that most of my frustrations I’m having now will subside, at least for the simple stuff.  There will always be complicated things I won’t totally understand.  But for now, I’d like to at least master transmitter and receiver circuits, from design to analysis to build and test!

It should be fun to see how this all plays out (hopefully with a totally Bert-designed and built ham station!).