admiration

[ke5frf]

I recently ordered a new book to read, "RF Circuit Design" by Chris Bowick WD4C (amateur callsign).

I've always heard good things about this book but never got around to reading it. Anyone have it in their library?

The point of this post, though, is to say just how much I respect people who have vast stores of knowledge in their memory banks about electronics. Buying this book led me to go to my garage and pull out several books I have in storage to read. Some on basic electronics theory, some on more advanced topics. Sometimes I get a lot out of reading things I've read before.

In fact, I'm always amazed at how much I have forgotten, never really learned, half-understood, or skimmed by. Sometimes re-reading old material will reveal something that I wasn't experienced enough to understand before, but after years of exposure the theory becomes more clear.

I still stumble over formulas though. I get very intimidated by complex mathematics with various constants, operators, and greek symbols that I have to look up on a table. In fact, I have a ton of books that I despise because it seems 90% of the pages are filled with math with little effort at layman descriptions.

I'm going through some simple polar and rectangular math right now, which is fairly easy...but I find that it takes a lot of refresher reading to take it all in. My brain doesn't do well with storing this stuff for later retrieval. I think it discards it after I sleep overnight haha.

But I have a lot of admiration for you guys who remember this stuff off the cuff. I always have to reference it later. I'm not an engineer, but it isn't even about being an engineer, because I know lots of engineers who wouldn't function without pocket reference books and computer software

 

[Dr. Evil.]

In all of the work I have done I have always picked up books relating to what I had to do with that job. I dont have a huge library by any means but I have met engineers who had far less than me as well!
They are also the ones who always look at me weird for just being able to do something without spending half a day with a calculator before doing it! I read up on the subjects and do my day to day hands on work with my job that relates to those subjects. Thats how I knew how to do it I guess.

I never cared for that Greek math gobbeldy gook stuff either. Practical math I definitely use, that Greek stuff never made sense to me either. Those who did understand it would explain it to me and then I would just end up telling them that there is a common simple formula that the guys like me who actually have to work with that stuff use that is far simpler and easier and will give the same answers for a lot less work!

Dont be afraid to buy a book. You will always get something out of it. It may not be what you thought but still you can get useful items from it anyway!

 

[ke5frf]

Yeah, generally speaking whenever I am confronted with the need for specific information I usually consult one of my books that deals with that particular subject. For instance I have a great book on analog sensors and amplifiers that has been a great resource. Or sometimes a quick browse on the internet will be fruitful. I think the key is not to be an expert at every subject, but rather to have exposure to and familiarity with a broad variety of concepts and focus on the ones that are most pertinent.

 

[HiTech]

I have boxes of old electronics magazines and project/theory books. Every now and then I'll read one of them for a trip down memory lane. Like when Popular Electronics and Electronix Illustrated published their magazines in the small format and used "pictorial wiring" diagrams. Loads and loads of home correspondence school advertisements in them!! An advanced project back then used 3-4 transistors tops otherwise it was vacuum tubes and germanium diodes!!!