If you find RF and microwave textbooks dry and unpalatable, you should read magazines. They make learning so much easier. I am fortunate to have a big quantity of electronic magazines collected by myself, as well as passed down from my dad:

Australian Radio TV and Hobbies

Mainly passed down from my dad. I built my first crystal set and 1 transistor regenerative set from articles here. Mainly valve and transistor audio and radio projects. My Ebay pseudonym "grid.current" is based upon a funny character from this mag.

Popular Electronics

US based magazine. The "better" quality paper on which it was printed did not survive well here in the tropics, as the paper tends to stick together after 20 to 30 years. Aimed at the hobbyists, and contained a good mix of general electronics as well as RF stuff.

Practical Electronics

From the UK. One of my favourites during my young days, with lucid illustrations and descriptions

Practical Wireless

Also from the UK. Many easy to understand articles of interest to hams. Mainly aimed at hobbyists. Beautiful “pre-cad” hand drawn pictures.

Wireless World

Good, serious articles on all aspects of electronics. My main technical diet after getting my degree. Many well known regular contributors like JL Linsley Hood, Ian Hickman, Ivor Catt.. and the list goes on. The university library had bound copies dating back to the '50s and over these I spent many delightful hours. Something happened around the year 2000, it changed owners (and editors), and became thin, with many articles having their diagrams stretched to make up the pages. Also the regular contributors disappeared, and their articles were replaced by thinly disguised "technical articles" written by Marketing Managers, and young engineers from the application labs of semiconductor manufacturers. These articles were more like "me too" types, as the application engineers from different companies frequently copied from each others' "flavour of the month" topic. With this sad state of affairs, I ended my 20+ year old subscription of this magazine in 2001.

Byte

Good only during its initial years while Steve was around. Went to the dogs after a few years with 70% of the weight of the mag made up of adverts. I still have a collection of the earlier years when it was still a hardware-firmware mag

Electronic Design

The crème-de-la-crème. Keep your paper copies if you have any. I had a free paper subscription for several years. That sub ended abruptly one day with the announcement that paper subscriptions to locations out of the US had to be paid. Printed of good quality stock and the diagrams were super.

EDN

To me, this seemed like a “small brother” version of Electronics Design. Its ability to give free paper subscriptions to this very day in 2011, I think, stems from the astuteness of its publishers in publishing ”me-too” app notes from semiconductor companies as well as “technical articles” by marketeers. There is even a Chinese edition.

Elektor

This is the king of present day hardware mags. Fine mix of analog, digital and RF electronics. They have taken care not to allow their publication to become too dominated by “hot-air” articles. Keep it up!

Circuit Cellar

Started by Steve of Byte fame. Compared to Byte, this was like a breath of fresh air after pages and pages of glossy adverts. Finally, a hardware-firmware mag. Lately, there are no fresh ideas, except for some new themes from Robert Lacosse on RF topics. They get a lot of their publication “meat” from design contests sponsored by various microcontroller and related silicon manufacturers.

Jun 2011: I decided to end my subscriptions for the simple reason that the editorials have gone stale; we are getting a recurrent stream of embedded I/O and rehashed ideas from design contests. Goodbye Steve. .

Spare Time Reading

Home

Topics