Anyone recommend a "decent" book that would cover oscillators, small
signal RF amps and matching techniques sufficiently to enable a novice
to start experimenting with circuits and have enough detail in the text
to tweak the circuits to get them running properly ?

"Experimental Methods in RF Design" by Hayward, Campbell, and Larkin,
available from the ARRL, would be a good place to start. It's the
successor to the classic "Solid-State Design for the Radio Amateur"
from back in 1977.

If you can find copies of Doug Demaw's "Design notebook" and "QRP
notebook", there's some good reading there as well. Not as advanced
as "Experimental Methods" but perhaps a bit more accessible.

Buying a bunch of back issues of QRPp might also be helpful. In a lot
of the articles which discuss QRP receiver and transmitters, the
authors go into detail about their own particular circuit preferences,
tweaks, construction and debugging techniques, etc.

For a slightly deeper background, I'd recommend "Troubleshooting
Analog Circuits" by Robert Pease. It's not specific to RF but is full
of useful tricks and ideas.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
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