Radio Science Observing, Vol. 2

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good VLF to Radio Astronomy Reference
Review: I do not own either of the two RadioScience (vol 1 and vol 2) books by J. Carr, but I had the chance to browse through them at some length at a bookstore. I would pretty much agree with Robert Jones Amazon review remarks. In fact, I'd like to hear from him and have posted my e-mail address with this review.

The books contain a wide variety of information meteors, (even) telemetry, solar observations using VLF and other topics. It didn't seem to be terribly deep in the area of radio astronomy. There are plenty of circuit designs, and I may be a bit unfair here, but in the area of radio astronomy (RA), it may not have been enough. I consider RA the radio science part of things that deals with objects outside the earth, sun, planets, stars, nova, galaxies, etc.

Both books are accompanied by a CD-ROM but I couldn't find much of a description about the contents of either. Both books have very thorough indexes, which I appreciate in any technical book. I'd agree with Mr. Jones comment about the book needed an editor. The publisher is part of the Howard Sams 'empire'. I'd add that there are few books for beginners on these subjects and that they all seem to be lacking an editorial touch. That's too bad because it seems to have allowed the authors to wander a bit on the subject. In the case of the two books, it appears that it has also led to some slight difficulties in the presentation. If you are really intereested science and radio applications, it would seem that these two books, at least volume 1, would be useful way to get started. He has some good supporting authors (Mims, etc.) and has a respectable collection of references.

Rating:
Summary: In Agreement with Robert Jones
Review: I do not own either of the two RadioScience (vol 1 and vol 2) books by J. Carr, but I had the chance to browse through them at some length at a bookstore. I would pretty much agree with Robert Jones Amazon review remarks. In fact, I'd like to hear from him and have posted my e-mail address with this review.

The books contain a wide variety of information meteors, (even) telemetry, solar observations using VLF and other topics. It didn't seem to be terribly deep in the area of radio astronomy. There are plenty of circuit designs, and I may be a bit unfair here, but in the area of radio astronomy (RA), it may not have been enough. I consider RA the radio science part of things that deals with objects outside the earth, sun, planets, stars, nova, galaxies, etc.

Both books are accompanied by a CD-ROM but I couldn't find much of a description about the contents of either. Both books have very thorough indexes, which I appreciate in any technical book. I'd agree with Mr. Jones comment about the book needed an editor. The publisher is part of the Howard Sams 'empire'. I'd add that there are few books for beginners on these subjects and that they all seem to be lacking an editorial touch. That's too bad because it seems to have allowed the authors to wander a bit on the subject. In the case of the two books, it appears that it has also led to some slight difficulties in the presentation. If you are really intereested science and radio applications, it would seem that these two books, at least volume 1, would be useful way to get started. He has some good supporting authors (Mims, etc.) and has a respectable collection of references.

Rating:
Summary: Useful information, but watch out for errors
Review: The good news is, there's a lot of good information in this book. The sections on natural radio emissions, VLF receivers, and loop antennas are particularly useful. The bad news is, the editor/typesetter should be bound to the mast and flogged.

First, the level of prior knowledge assumed is a bit inconsistent, and a few bits of information seems overly elementary while other sections beg for more background. For example, the millivolt is defined (incorrectly, see pg 37), but knowledge of frequency vs. wavelength, voltage [neither volts nor microvolts were defined], current, power, resistance, capacitance, reactance, impedance and decibels are all assumed. Also, the included information sometimes seems irrelevant. For instance, the (long) section on receivers deals with characteristics of SSB, CW, RTTY and even radar receivers, even though these operating modes have little to do with natural radio emissions, the stated purpose of the book. As an extreme example, the author expends a short paragraph and a figure on the tangential sensitivity of radar receivers. That's relevant? Then, after a long (and slightly belabored) discussion of the importance of dynamic range, spurious responses, third order intercepts and the like, the author provides a number of circuits with little or no associated performance specifications. How is the reader to know what level of performance to expect from each circuit?

The sections on antennas (other than loops) seem like an incomplete cookbook, with not enough information given to build some of the examples, but also not enough background to figure out the missing details yourself. There is a program on the included CD-ROM that will calculate dimensions for several of the designs. Might have been nice to mention that in the text, however. In fact I saw no mention in the text that the CD-ROM even existed.

These complaints are minor quibbles. However, the poor typography and (lack of) editing are not. A few examples:

Pg 37 refers to a "previous calculation" that doesn't exist.

Pg 37 defines 1 mV = 1/1000 mV.

Pg 48 has the square root of the quotient 5/2.8 becoming "v5/2.8". It happens again on the same page and again on page 50. I guess that typeface doesn't have a square root.

Pg 98 calls the Earth an "oblique spheroid" when I believe it is an oblate spheroid.

Pg 157 mentions a 1972 paper describing observations of a 1979 eclipse. Time travel.

Pg 196 has the Greek letter lambda being replaced by "l" for wavelength.

Pg 201 Definition of mu (permeability) for Eq. 12-1 is wrong due to an extraneous "p".

Pg 203 Eq. 12-3 is wrong by a factor of 1/pi.

Pg 224 Fig 13-2 substitutes "Earth's service" for "Earth's surface".

Pg 342 Eq 20-1 is wrong due to an extraneous factor of 2.

There are others. There are several places where information is omitted, e.g. Chapt 10 claims to discuss direct conversion receivers but doesn't, parts lists leave out parts (L1, pg 131-132), diagrams leave out critical information (e.g. dimensions in Fig 8-3) or diagrams are missing altogether (pg 183). Units get switched (Pg 171), variables get switched (Pg 359), and algebraic signs get switched (Pg 46). A pet peeve of mine is that absolute temperature is given in degrees Kelvin instead of just Kelvins. There are other places where the discussions are incomplete. In short, where on earth was the editor in this process? The copyright page shows that the editor, typesetter, and indexer were all the same person. Surely she read the manuscript? If I could pick up the above problems with one read and no editing background, shouldn't a professional editor of technical books do at least as well?

I'm not trying to berate the author. Mr. Carr is a prolific and knowledgeable writer of both books and magazine articles. The book reads like a good draft manuscript, and any manuscript will have errors and oddities like the above. That is what the editor is for. The problem here is, the publisher, apparently thinks that being prompt equates to no editing.

Now, can I recommend this book? Yes. In spite of my whining, the book brings together information that is hard to get elsewhere and the author did a pretty good job, even if the editor didn't. If you are interested in natural radio emissions the book IS worth having, despite its editorial faults. See also Volume 2.

Rating:
Summary: Useful information, but watch out for errors
Review: The good news is, there's a lot of good information in this book. The sections on natural radio emissions, VLF receivers, and loop antennas are particularly useful. The bad news is, the editor/typesetter should be bound to the mast and flogged.

First, the level of prior knowledge assumed is a bit inconsistent, and a few bits of information seems overly elementary while other sections beg for more background. For example, the millivolt is defined (incorrectly, see pg 37), but knowledge of frequency vs. wavelength, voltage [neither volts nor microvolts were defined], current, power, resistance, capacitance, reactance, impedance and decibels are all assumed. Also, the included information sometimes seems irrelevant. For instance, the (long) section on receivers deals with characteristics of SSB, CW, RTTY and even radar receivers, even though these operating modes have little to do with natural radio emissions, the stated purpose of the book. As an extreme example, the author expends a short paragraph and a figure on the tangential sensitivity of radar receivers. That's relevant? Then, after a long (and slightly belabored) discussion of the importance of dynamic range, spurious responses, third order intercepts and the like, the author provides a number of circuits with little or no associated performance specifications. How is the reader to know what level of performance to expect from each circuit?

The sections on antennas (other than loops) seem like an incomplete cookbook, with not enough information given to build some of the examples, but also not enough background to figure out the missing details yourself. There is a program on the included CD-ROM that will calculate dimensions for several of the designs. Might have been nice to mention that in the text, however. In fact I saw no mention in the text that the CD-ROM even existed.

These complaints are minor quibbles. However, the poor typography and (lack of) editing are not. A few examples:

Pg 37 refers to a "previous calculation" that doesn't exist.

Pg 37 defines 1 mV = 1/1000 mV.

Pg 48 has the square root of the quotient 5/2.8 becoming "v5/2.8". It happens again on the same page and again on page 50. I guess that typeface doesn't have a square root.

Pg 98 calls the Earth an "oblique spheroid" when I believe it is an oblate spheroid.

Pg 157 mentions a 1972 paper describing observations of a 1979 eclipse. Time travel.

Pg 196 has the Greek letter lambda being replaced by "l" for wavelength.

Pg 201 Definition of mu (permeability) for Eq. 12-1 is wrong due to an extraneous "p".

Pg 203 Eq. 12-3 is wrong by a factor of 1/pi.

Pg 224 Fig 13-2 substitutes "Earth's service" for "Earth's surface".

Pg 342 Eq 20-1 is wrong due to an extraneous factor of 2.

There are others. There are several places where information is omitted, e.g. Chapt 10 claims to discuss direct conversion receivers but doesn't, parts lists leave out parts (L1, pg 131-132), diagrams leave out critical information (e.g. dimensions in Fig 8-3) or diagrams are missing altogether (pg 183). Units get switched (Pg 171), variables get switched (Pg 359), and algebraic signs get switched (Pg 46). A pet peeve of mine is that absolute temperature is given in degrees Kelvin instead of just Kelvins. There are other places where the discussions are incomplete. In short, where on earth was the editor in this process? The copyright page shows that the editor, typesetter, and indexer were all the same person. Surely she read the manuscript? If I could pick up the above problems with one read and no editing background, shouldn't a professional editor of technical books do at least as well?

I'm not trying to berate the author. Mr. Carr is a prolific and knowledgeable writer of both books and magazine articles. The book reads like a good draft manuscript, and any manuscript will have errors and oddities like the above. That is what the editor is for. The problem here is, the publisher, apparently thinks that being prompt equates to no editing.

Now, can I recommend this book? Yes. In spite of my whining, the book brings together information that is hard to get elsewhere and the author did a pretty good job, even if the editor didn't. If you are interested in natural radio emissions the book IS worth having, despite its editorial faults. See also Volume 2.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good VLF to Radio Astronomy Reference
Review: This book is a great reference book for the VLF hobbyist to professional. It explains stuff about mostly propagation, VLF to HF antennas. Also there some pretty good projects to let you
get your hands on some VLF theory. Also for extra education this book is made for the college student that needs some extra
background on the subject of radio science observing. If you can master this course you have a communications degree waiting to be hung up on the your wall with honors. Also there is Radio Science Observing Volume 2 . Please Note you must first get this volume before you can get the 2nd Volume. This book
volume 1 and 2 should grace on longwave radio, and SETI's serious hobbyist thru engineers, scientists bookshelf. Its almost like a college course that is still recommend for very radio enthusiast and serious engineer.

Rating:
Summary: Useful, however...
Review: You might want to start with my review of RadioScience Observing, Volume 1 by the same author. This book is better, probably because the author states that he got some feedback from readers and tried to address their wants. Again, in my opinion the editing comes up short.

The hardware sections of this book are in general very good, and the sections describing specific circuits tend to be well-written and useful. In a few places, I thought he included information that didn't add much, for example the UHF stripline mixer circuits. Not many hobbyists will get UHF stripline circuits working. The author does give an excellent, detailed treatment of a universal IF strip that could be the basis for a lot of useful receivers. I wish that there had been a set of converters for ELF - HF and some good local oscillator designs to go with it that were described as completely. There was also no real discussion of local oscillators. This is a significant omission to someone wanting to build a receiver. Another subject needing more coverage is detectors.

The chapter on magnetometer sensors was well done, with a couple of minor quibbles. One, the author states "the sensor should be pointed towards the source". Since magnets are dipoles (or a larger even number of poles) "source" has little meaning. For maximum sensitivity, the sensor should be aligned with the field lines, which in many cases mean that the sensor is arranged at some angle (or even perpendicular) to, not pointed at, the "source". The other gripe is with undefined terms. He puts a conversion for Gauss and Tesla in a table of conversion factors (it's backwards, but at least it's there), then describes most of the fields in Oersteds (in air, if H = 1 Oe, B = 1 Gauss = 10e-4 Tesla). He also uses gamma without definition (1 gamma = 10e-9 Tesla). A brief discussion of H vs. B and the appropriate units would have helped. Squawking aside, there is more truly useful information on instruments for measuring static magnetic fields in this one chapter than the rest of the recent "hobbyist" literature combined. Good stuff.

The invited chapter on measuring solar UV by Forrest Mims III is excellent. Perhaps because this information had been previously published in Scientific American, it has the editorial polish that that magazine is known for, and didn't suffer from the inattention of this book's editor (more on that below). More likely, based on the other Mims work that I have seen over the years, he self-edits to the point of polish.

The other invited hardware chapter, Allan Coleman's description how to lengthen the period of seismometers, was also good, with the exception that he neglected to mention why anyone would want to do such a thing! An invited chapter on SETI by Dr. Paul Shuch was similar to one included in Vol 1, both being well-written invitations to get involved in amateur SETI.

On to the bad news. Why is it that Prompt Publications can't seem to do a decent job of editing? A few examples:

Table of Contents: "receiver" is misspelled in the entry for chapter 3.

Pg 7 states units will be either CGS or MKS. Table 1-2 uses neither system, instead gives length as meters, mass as grams and time as seconds. MGS?

Pg 8: Fig 1-2, Extraneous "1 second" label for a sinusoid of supposedly arbitrary frequency.

Pg 8: Eq 1-2 wrong due to extraneous factor of zero (!)

Pg 8: Eq 1-3 wrong due to algebraic or typo error.

Pg 13: Table 1-4 conversion between Gauss and Tesla wrong (backwards).

Pg 36: text refers to wrong figure.

Pg 37: typo (1,4500 kHz instead of 1455 kHz)

Pg 55: Text has wrong component ID (fig 3-20 has correct number).

Pg 88 states that lightning generates up to 15,000,000 volts. Vol 1 (pg 120) says 250,000,000 volts. Big difference, which is right?

Pg 88 paragraph 2 says that lightning travels at 100,000,000 ft/sec. Paragraph 4 (same page!) says that lightning travels at the speed of light (almost 1 billion ft/sec).

Pg 108: use of archaic "200 mmV" (milli-millivolt) instead of 200 microvolts.

Pg 179: 1 dB switch and 9 dB switch is 10 dB of attenuation, not 3 dB.

Pg 320: Eq 15-5 missing term(s).

Pg 335: Section heading incorrect.

Pg 378: Table 1 (cable specs) missing.

General gripes: The fundamentals in Chapter 1 of this volume belonged in Volume 1, BEFORE all the detailed discussions based on that information.

Needless to say, I am unimpressed by the job Prompt Publications editors did on Volumes 1 & 2 of this work. All books have a few mistakes, and maybe I'm being picky, but I paid good money for two books that should have been better than they are. Are they useful? Yes. Did the editors do their jobs? No way, and the customer gets a marginal product. C'mon people, it takes more than just a good manuscript to make a good book. After all, if the manuscript is perfect, what does the author need an editor for? Be a little less "prompt" and a lot more thorough.