Review: How Radio Signals Work

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How Radio Signals Work
by Jim Sinclair

Publisher: McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0070580588

Skimpy on the math yet still thick with information - How Radio Signals Work is a good place to begin your learning experience into radio theory. But don't think you can just buy this book and get away with studying nothing else.

It's written like a textbook; there are introductions and summaries of every chapter, and the reader has the ability to jump around from chapter to chapter without losing the learning curve. Some chapters are required reading for an overall understanding of the subject; the book does a good job of alerting the reader of what you must read and what you can gloss through. This makes it valuable to both the newbie and experienced engineer alike.

How Radio Signals Work starts with a basic science lesson on the multiple forms energy takes in our universe, then ties them into a good overview of how radio energy makes the transmission of messages possible. You'll find understandable definitions of frequency and wavelength, and the importance of bandwidth to the sending of radio messages. There are also good descriptions of the functionality to the different parts of the radio spectrum, and the characteristics that both help and hinder their use in the real world.

However, if you're looking for a "how-to" type of style, you won't find it here. For example, while there's a significant amount of pages devoted to how antennas work, you won't find instructions on how to build any specific one. This is a theory text, after all, not an engineering handbook. Even so, there is a nice section on troubleshooting radio equipment - but it does tend to follow a general outline as opposed to getting into electronics specifics, and sometimes reads more like a discussion of human psychology than radio theory.

This does present a couple of drawbacks; at some points it seems like How Radio Signals Work could go into greater detail on a specific subject without losing its focus; instead, you're referred to your local public library (although the author's kind enough to point you to the right section to find the information you need). And, at times, the flow seems a bit disjointed - for example, the discussion of how electrons behave and the scientific terms used to describe the characteristics and behavior of electricity are discussed in Chapter 10, but the subjects come up repeatedly in previous chapters.

It's also important to remember that the book is not specifically about radio broadcasting; just about every use for radio is covered in here, and so its breadth of scope may be a bit taxing for those wanting a more "straight-to-the-point" read. But if you walk away from How Radio Signals Work without a basic knowledge of the theory behind the physics, it's your fault - not the book's.