ARRLWeb: Engineering References

While hams aren't expected to be engineers, it can certainly be helpful for advanced amateurs to avail themselves of engineering textbooks, references, and computer programs intended for students and professional engineers. While textbooks are relatively expensive, the education and insight they can provide may be well worth the cost. Often, old editions are perfectly suitable for hams. Similarly, demo programs available for a free download have all the functionality needed for most of the simple engineering tasks undertaken by hams. While they may not be able to fully simulate a design, they can often get close enough to allow easy optimization by trial and error.

Recommended Books

Handbook of Filter Synthesis
By Zverev -- A wealth of charts and tables for designing LC filters without a computer--an excellent starting point for designing filters with a computer. It is now available in paperback form.

Antennas
By John D. Kraus W8JK. -- While too theoretical for the average ham, this is the book for any ham who wants to better understand the theory behind antennas and how they are modeled by computers. The Second edition covers methods of moments, the fundamental concepts behind computer programs like NEC2. The first edition, published in 1950, is too early for computers. It is now on its third edition.

Art of Electronics
By Horowitz and Hill -- This book is meant to help physics students gain the Electrical Engineering knowledge necessary to be successful in their careers. Well written, with only a little mathematics.

The legendary Smith Chart inventor's original, classic reference book describing how the chart is used for designing lumped element (inductors and capacitors) and transmission line circuits (coaxial, waveguide, stripline or microstrip lines). Includes tutorial material on transmission line theory and behavior, circuit representation on the chart, matching networks, network transformations and broadband matching.

HF Radio Systems & Circuits
By William E. Sabin and Edgar O. Schoenike, Editors.
A comprehensive reference book for the design of high frequency communications systems and equipment. Formerly published as Single Sideband Systems & Circuits, this revised edition has been retitled to more accurately describe the wide range of its content. It covers a wealth of information from system definition and performance requirements down to the individual circuit elements that make up radio transmitters and receivers. Thorough attention is given to key circuits like oscillators, synthesizers, filters and amplifiers, plus more advanced topics such as speech processing, AGC systems, high linearity amplifiers, and solid state power amplifiers. Accompanying software contains utilities on filters, matching networks, and receiver analysis.

Inductance Calculations
By Frederick W. Grover, PHD. (Dover Phoenix edition) -- This classic, originally published by Van Nostrand Company Inc. in 1946, attempts to allow the calculation of many types of inductors using tables. While intended for low frequency work in which the skin effect can be ignored, it is still useful as a reference or starting point.

Introduction to Radio Frequency Design
By Wes Hayward, W7ZOI.
A thorough treatment of the fundamental methods of radio frequency design using mathematics as needed to develop intuition for RF circuits and systems. You'll find emphasis on applications of simple circuit models whenever possible. Prepares readers to actually design HF, VHF and UHF equipment.

Radio Antenna Engineering

Dave Platt AE6EO has made Edmund A. Laport's textbook Radio Antenna Engineering available in electronic form. According to Dave, Radio Antenna Engineering was published in 1952, and presents an excellent overview of the state of commercial antenna system engineering as practiced in the first half of the 20th century. As its name implies, it's not solely about electromagnetic or radio or antenna theory although these issues are certainly a part of what it talks about. Rather, it focuses on matters surrounding the nuts and bolts (and logs, beams, bars, wires, and insulators) of actually designing and implementing a large-scale antenna system

Free Programs of Interest to Hams

http://www.ansoft.com/ansoftdesignersv/
This student program is an excellent choice for RF circuit design using S parameters. 1GHz to 18 GHz S parameter data is often provided by microwave transistor.

http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~jpe/voacap/
Information on using VOACAP, a free program from the NTIA/ITS (National Telecommunications and Information Administration/ Institute for Telecommunication Sciences)

ITS High Frequency Propagation Models
The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences Web site's page for downloading high frequency propagation models. The ITS is the research and engineering branch of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Additional Links sought!

If you know of another good free engineering program of interest to hams that you think would be useful to have as a link on this page, please send a note to tis@arrl.org.

Article Reprints:

You can get a photocopy of any ARRL published article for $3 ($5 for nonmembers) for each article requested. Contact the ARRL Technical Department (reprints@arrl.org ), 1-860-594-0390) if you wish to get photocopies.

This information was prepared as a membership service by the American Radio Relay League, Inc., Technical Information Service, 225 Main St., Newington, CT 06111 (860) 594-0214. Email: tis@arrl.org (Internet). ARRL HQ is glad to provide this information on the Web free of charge as a service to League members and affiliated clubs.

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