What are you reading? October 2019 Edition

Whoops! A couple weeks late! What did you read this October?

We love hearing about other peoples’ book choices and adding to my ever growing reading list. I usually split what I’m reading into business, technical and fun books, but you are welcome to post however you’d like!

Technical:

  • Introductory Circuit Analysis (13th Edition) by Robert L. Boylestad
  • ARRL Ham Radio Operator’s Guide

Class work:

  • Photography, the whole story

Entertainment:

  • The Shanara Chronicles book 2 out-loud to my daughter.
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  • Currently reading

  • Recently finished

    • Technical
    • Business
      • Skunk Works - A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed
        • I had heard about this book for years, namely in a previous work group I was in that tried to replicate some of the magic of a separate entity that works on special projects. That was a doomed venture from the start, namely because we took on almost none of the same characteristics that made the Skunk Works valuable inside their organization. It was fascinating reading what actually made the Skunk Works able to churn out so many iconic airplanes on such a tight timeline with a shoestring budget. Reading about it now, I’m rather glad I don’t work in such a group (it made for a rough home life), but the things they accomplished are amazing.
      • Eccentric Orbits
        • This was a good book and I stand by my update from last month that it was “really good”. However, I was a bit weighed down at the end reading about all of the back and forth of the lawyers and between the management of Motorola. It really seems amazing that they saved it, and I believe it was the author’s intent to show just how much they had to go through in order to save the satellites. I found the book to be an interesting contrast to the fervor we’re seeing with current satellites like Starlink from SpaceX. I talked about the book on episode 462 of The Amp Hour.
    • Enjoyment
      • Educated (Audible)
        • Fantastic story telling around a rough family situation. The author went on to get tertiary degrees from Harvard and Cambridge after not having set foot in school for the first 16 years of her life. This has been a best seller for months for good reason.
      • Tiamat’s Wrath (Expanse Book 8)
        • Finished book 8 of the series and now I am in the same spot as everyone else, waiting for the 9th and final book to be released. I feel like the authors followed up well from the previous book where I was unsure how they were going to progress the story.
      • Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1-5)
        • After running out of dystopian space novels that I could read/listen to, I decided to try out this earth bound dystopian near-term story. It’s set up like 5 short stories, the first one or two of which could probably stand on their own. Set inside a silo in some wasteland of a future, it’s once again a good look at what happens when you trap a bunch of monkeys (humans) in an enclosed area and still have human nature, which evolved over thousands of years above ground. There are two other books in the series, “Shift” and “Dust”, which I may try next.
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Hi Chris, thanks for motivating me to read more.
The only books I am reading at the moment are technical because of a personal project I am working on:
-Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur
-Experimental Methods in RF Design
-The ARRL Handbook, 2006
-Plus various articles I have accumulated in my file system.

I am working on building a 75/80 Meter SSB/CW Transceiver from scratch. I will be laying out my pcb in KiCAD.

Rev. O. Alan Jones, N8WQ

Sounds very ambitious! Are you going to share the plans when complete? 73 from KI5GJW.

I am a bit embarrassed here as I cannot read more than one book at a time :smiley:
Currently Reading:

Does anyone know a good Signal Integrity reference book? I think it will be my next one…
I saw Signal and Power Integrity - Simplified by Eric Bogatin on Amazon and I wonder if anyone on the forum has gone trough it. I cannot find any book/notes form Rick Hartley, which seems to be a master in that matter, aside random videos and posts on the web…

Sure, I will be glad to share my plans. I will post my design on my blog site at: http://n8wq.blogspot.com/

+1 on the Lafayette book. I enjoyed a couple of Sarah Vowell’s non-fiction books, but I ended up listening to this particular one a couple of years ago because it combines my interest in the American Revolution with the fact that I was commuting through the town of Lafayette, NJ and was curious about its history.

@andrea.longobardi85: My experience is that the Bogatin book is by far the best when it comes to practical guidance. IIRC, the 3rd edition is only different from the 2nd because of some added chapter-end questions but the 2nd is much improved on the first. The Hall/Heck book is also very good, but more theoretical and a bit harder to reference for a rough answer very quickly. You also may want to check out Right the First Time for some good, practical design information. There are many, many other good books, articles, DesignCon papers, etc., depending on what you’re looking into. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any specific SI/PI questions you feel like discussing.

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