Chris Angove, Independent Professional Engineer
Chris Angove is a highly experienced and MSc qualified chartered electronics engineer specialising in electrical and electronics engineering. He manages and owns Faraday Consultancy Limited (FCL).
Book References
Use this link for the latest versions: HTML5 and CSS3. For any HTML or CSS editing, all required is a good text editor like TextPad, preferably a few installed popular browsers and a book like this. To understand how the HTML and CSS code work it really is worth practising a lot with the raw code. I can also recommend this online tutorial.
I invested in this around 1993 and it included 28 floppy disks (3.5 inch) to install on to my early Windows 3.1 PC so that took most of the day after dealing with all the usual qwerks one frequently got with installing applications of that era. Used a lot for getting C and C++ programs to work.
Just about everything you need to design any sort of analog filter, certainly LC around VHF/UHF with careful component selection. Hundreds of graphs of filter characteristics and quite good explanations but a few more relevant examples would have been useful.
Very practical, for the radio amateur.
A huge book of 2500 pages on thin paper which cost me GBP 5.00 from one of those discount 'excess stock' bookshops in the late 1990s. 150 articles by at least as many authors which are arranged like chapters across a vast range of electronics topics. I could not find the original price but I thought this was very good value.
This really is everything you ever wanted to know about transmission lines with lots of examples. This edition is a bit old (1968), even before ISBN numbers so it has applications to things like telephone line loading coils which are now a mature technology. Would you believe they are apparently still selling this same edition on Amazon? It now has ISBN 978-0070107472.
Very detailed phase noise reference, a bit cluttered and some confusing/ambiguous symbols but better than jumping around without explaining anything.
An excellent classic PLL book, often referenced from other PLL books and everything very well explained. A little dated for today's PLL/synthesizer technologies. I don't usually comment on bindings but this one is particularly high quality.
Unusual but a good reference in a conversational style. Actually published privately by the authors, so that must have been expensive as it has very good binding. Good on GSM system level but getting dated now like GSM itself.
Rather clunky translation to English from German but useful for microstrips.
Lots of good fundamentals. Like with any digital communications, a late edition is essential.
Next to Pozar, one of the best microwave textbooks I have used. More biased towards active devices.
Good on passive waveguide components.
I bought this book new in 1974 for GBP 0.50 and still use it on occasions if I have forgotten one or more of the calculus rules. Probably the best value-for-money I have ever had from a book.
Useful for optical fiber telecommunications infrastructure.
Good all round electronics. Getting a bit dated now.
Next best value for money to Teach Yourself Calculus.
Some quite useful recent WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) information, system level. What is happening now about WiMAX?
Very good undergraduate level all round physics
Good on EM theory and antennas.
I wanted a book for the Microchip PIC 24F series but this relates to another, however 75% of it was useful.
Good for revising those operational amplifier circuits.
I seem to have lost this book so I cannot remember much about it. VMEbus was a backplane standard started around 1990, still used today but faster more up to date versions are available.
Like most of the 'for Dummies' books, lots of information and quite cheap.
Very useful practical hands-on information as it is a radio amateur's book.
Lots of concise information with no rambling. Up to the usual Schaum standard.
Replaces the HTML 3 one, just as good. Click here for the latest HTML5 and CSS3 versions.
And another Schaum, same standard.
As I know little about acoustics, a reference just in case.
This is another one of the established, classic, industry standard references. All RF and microwave engineers must have this book. Rather more 'passive' than Microwave Transistor Amplifiers (Gonzalez)
In those days (early 1990s) this was included with an MS-DOS compiler on a 5.25 inch floppy disk (some readers may remember these). I still use this often for revising the odd 'C' code syntax which I have forgotten.
Actually this standard and many of the others are really like textbooks describing a real hands-on approach. I think this one may have been superceded by the latest edition of MIL-STD-462.
A strange book with good content but printed using a tiny font on what looks like badly recycled paper. But it was quite expensive at a reputable bookshop.
Another classic reference but quite an old one.
This book was sold to me early in my career on the strength that it did not have very advanced mathematics, quite useful to me then because I had to prepare for some 'hand-waving' presentations.
Another classic, this later edition has more digital communications.
Over the last 10 years or so I have used this more than any other reference for digital communications, so hopefully that speaks for itself.
One of many technical books I bought cheaply from a second hand book shop in Maldon, Essex. I am sure it will be useful for something one day.
A text on detailed development work by the author on these type of transformers. They differ fundamentally from 'traditional' inductively would transformers and are very useful in combiners and dividers to provide good wideband performance. Since this edition, better high frequency ferrite materials have become available so the frequencies can probably be extended.
Good for hands-on development of class B and AB PAs using mostly Motorola FETs (now Freescale or NXP).
Another early Schaum, actually with no ISBN. If you are trying to evaluate a tricky integral there is very likely a similar worked example in this book.
Does what it says on the tin. If this is basic, I'm not sure I want to see the advanced.
Some good things on digital receiver front ends. Quite a lot on IC design aspects.
Excellent, very well written from first principles and explains the basics step by step with many examples. If, like me, you really need to improve your knowledge of some DSP fundamentals this is a good place to start.
Actually, I used this for the free version, VB 2010 Express which I have found more than adequate.
Another book I found at a second hand bookshop which may be useful one day if I get any acoustic work.
Good for hands-on PIC development, but I do not think all the aeroplane analogies helped. Jasio also has a later 32 bit version.
Unfortunately, I did not manage it in 24 hours but I won't ask for my money back.
The standard routers you get loaned by DOCSIS and ADSL service providers are very basic so if you want to do anything useful with them or hack them you need to buy your own modem and/or router and program it with some open source firmware. The WRT54GL was one of these, still in use but there are newer ones now.
Fred Dibnah was a celebrated and eccentric steeplejack in the UK who used traditional and unconventional methods to demolish chimney stacks, relics of the former industrial areas. Search You Tube for some entertaining videos.
The brilliant Nobel Laurette American physicist, Richard Feynman.
This part of Richard Feynman's autobiography includes his contribution to the Presidential Enquiry into the Challenger Disaster. If you are an engineer trying to get management to approve your safety critical features you must read this.
This books looks at how to transmit high speed signals around circuits, especially multi-layer PCBs of the types used in PC motherboards and other equipment. The favoured technology now is serial data over differential pairs. For higher speeds use more pairs as for example in PCI-e. Another industry standard reference.
Very interesting history of Apple.
Originally GBP 11.99 but marked down to GBP 2.99 from a local discount bookshop. Another fascinating Bletchley Park book.
Yet another cheap book from the discount bookshop.
I bought this to improve my FPGA design knowledge. It is worth also buying a good FPGA development system for a popular device like Xilinx 'Spartan'.
The best book on Alan Turing I could find which my Wife bought me for my birthday. Not centered on his personal biography. Fascinating detail and stories by many authors, leading academics, engineers and historians.
Actually I use the free version of this called Visual Basic 2010 Express, which does more than everything I have ever needed from VB.
A very good starting point for Matlab® to support the vast online help and downloadable documents if you have a Matlab® licence. I understand that 'Octave' is a good open source alternative.
Very good hands-on like the 16-bit version, many examples to try on the many Microchip development platforms.
Very interesting but it is an autobiography. I don't know if he may have used a ghost writer. I recently stayed at quite a modern hotel in Ireland and they still had Amstrad CRT TVs.
Supplements some excellent lectures on You Tube. Search for Christof Paar. A good place to start for encryption standards like the NIST AES-CCM-128 algorithm.
They say '8 books in 1' so that is >1000 pages for about GBP 25 (2020). Sounds like good value for money but a bit to early to comment. I will update later.
Yet another 'for Dummies' book purchased at the same time as HTML 5 and CSS3 from a big online retailer. Having improved my HTML and CSS skills the plan is to move to JavaScript.
One concise short book out of a series with key essentials, about 100 pages.
This is the first place I go for most antenna problems.
843 pages and a classic: everything you would need to know about antennas.