Rex ) writes:

At the beginning, Roy said, "It's intended to be more of an engineering
textbook than the more cookbook-like _Experimental Methods. . _"

And of course, it was published as a text book. It came out in 1982 from
a text book publisher, Prentice Hall. I seem to recall it carrying a
text book price. I think the only reason many of us took note of it
was because it was by Wes Hayward. I seem to recall it getting coverage
in the ham magazines at the time. I'm not so sure ARRL would have published
a second printing but for the fact that Wes Hayward is well known to hams,
and has had a book or two published by the ARRL.

It covers what it does well, and yes it is a much more involved explanation
than ham books. But it's field is quite limited. It's not so practical,
You can get very detailed explanation of the Colpitts oscillator, but
little about oscillators beyond that.

It's not cutting edge. It wasn't back in 1982, it was supposed to give
a grounding so one could take up other books and get the latest, and it's not
now; I gather there was very minimal changes in the ARRL printing.

This book came up in the other newsgroup in the context of someone wanting
to design a wideband VHF amplifier for his tv set. And no, he was not
advanced in his technical knowledge. It was indeed a lousy suggestion for
his purpose, because not only would he be better off with a cookbook type
book, but Intro to RF Design isn't about a lot of specifics.

On the other hand, the ARRL priting came with a flopppy disk of some basic
programs for designing circuits. I've really only glanced at them, but they
are a bonus for those buying the book.

Michael VE2BVW