Luhan said:
I first learned from the ARRL handbook (1953 edition). It is a very
good primer on all of electronics. After that, I found it easier to
study other, more advanced, materials.
Things have changed since 1953. They seem to have put effort into
tackling things in more detail, or maybe that they've enlarged coverage
to cover more complicated matters
I've yet to see the book in question, because of cost. I suppose if
it showed up at the local bookstore I'd grab it, but mail orders likely
the means I will have to use to get it, and it's easy to put that off.
It's labelled as a descendent of a previous ARRL book, "Solid State
Design for the Radio Amateur", from 1977 or 78. I wouldn't say that
book was theory intensive, but it dealt with more advanced matters than
the ARRL Handbook, to complement it rather than supercede it, and whereas
the Handbook was more like a cookbook of circuits (and outright constructiona
articles), "Solid State" went more in the direction of giving formulas
so people could compute values. It helped, I think, that the pocket
calculator was pretty common by the time of printing, which I think
did let formulas flow into hobby books and magazines where they were
rarely seen before that.
So from the blurb, I expect the new book to be covering things that
the ARRL Handbook doesn't, yet not dealing with common electronic concepts.
(Ie, it goes into mixer theory well, but won't ohms law). But it's also
a practical book, with actual circuits.
Whether or not it's the book the original poster wants, it likely is
a good book on practical matters (without being too much for the beginner)
and would complement a textbook on the subject areas covered.
One of the authors of "Experimental Methods" is Wes Hayward, who
was co-author of "Solid State Design" and also wrote a book "Introduction
to Radio Frequency Design". This was published by Prentice-Hall back
in 1982, and it was intended for the engineer. The ARRL reprinted it
in 1994, with little change, though I don't know if they sell it.
http://www.arrl.org The ARRL printing included a disk of simple programs
to complement the book. It is far less a practical book than the others,
which is an advantage and disadvantage, depending on what someone is looking
for. And it really is about basic radio concepts, mixers, amplifiers, filters
etc, rather than design of overall systems. It's the sort of thing one
would need if designing receivers (or transmitters), but one it doesn't
cover recent developments and one would still need a book like Rohde's
on communciation receiver design.
Michael