Thanks to Walter KA4KXX for alerting us to this gem of a book. L.B. Cebik is best known as an antenna guru. I did not know that he also did a book on the homebrewing of rigs.
Here is the URL: https://archive.org/details/sevenstepstodesi0000cebi/page/n2/mode/1up Just click on the "borrow" box and you can look at the whole thing. Thanks too to the Internet Archive for preserving this important piece of ham literature.
I was a bit apprehensive when I saw "designing" in the title. We have talked about how, all too often, modern hams seem to challenge the homebrew nature of our rigs by asking if we had "designed" it ourself. "Well," I answer, "I did not invent the Colpitts oscillator, nor the common emitter amplifier, nor the superheterodyne receiver... But I did build this rig myself." I worried that OM Cebik might have been plunging us into this design debate way back in 1979.
But no need for worry. His definition of "design" is quite expansive:
Thanks again Walter.
Nice find, Walter! This book covers a lot of the fine points in the circuit selection and construction, that many other texts seem to just touch on tangentially, often due to page limitations. Cebik's book is that information. He describes why you may have a workable amplifier or oscillator with a simple, minimum parts count circuit but why you might consider the slightly more involved version that could yield improved performance and unit-to-unit repeatability (a.k.a. "Robust Design"). The advice given is timeless, doesn't matter if the design uses discrete or IC's , analog, digital or mixed-signal. Prof. Cebik gives the reasons why.
ReplyDeleteL.E. Cebik (W4RNL-sk) Website and Document Collection:
https://antenna2.github.io/cebik/