Good book. It really goes into detail. The MATLAB code does not work due to missing functions "unitr" and "crossr".

Robert Collin is a wonderful teacher, an his books never fail to communicate the necessary details with both practical examples and with all of the underlying theory.

The ARRL Microwave Expermenters Manuel is written by people that know their audience. The book is a collection of origional material and articles that have appeared in QST. It is not a text book. It does require some previous exposure to radio theory. It is fun to read. It has lots of pictures and graphs.Its a great book for a technician who wants learn about UHF and amateur radio. These people do a good job of explaining difficult material. Twenty years ago I sat in a metal hut and took microwave classes from one of the authors. When they last twenty years, their is a reason.

Very good book for the novice to the extra class. If you have wire you can make an antenna. Very good graphics and instructions on how to make all kinds of wire antennas. From field day projects to the avid dxers you will enjoy this book. K4TWT

I have the utmost respect for Professor Wong, he has written a good account of a fascinating and deep subject.

However, I have some minor points about the book to raise.

Firstly, the references quoted are not quite as extensive as they might be. The majority of references are taken from the Journal of Optical and Microwave Engineering, a Wiley journal which may be quite difficult to find - many of the aquisitions departments of Universities in the UK do not have complete volumes, or in many cases, any copies at all. Many good references can be obtained from the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Transactions, which are more accessible but it does, again help to have access to a good library!

Secondly, I am a little concerned about the absence of a glossary. This is a problem when there are incomplete extracts from existing papers. It can be confusing when talking about k (subscript xxx) when it is not very clear that the assumptions behind the paper presuppose a radially anisotropic dielectric layer and these are the diagonal components of the permittivity tensor! The other side to this is that when quotations from papers are as incomplete as this, the book CANNOT (and this was very sad) be used as a one stop guide to constructing numeric methods for solving the many beautiful examples in the text - you need to look to the original papers. And this occurs, sadly, many times throughout the text.

Thirdly, and this is less of a problem, there is no discussion of the stability of the resulting sets of coupled integral equations. I know that the Galerkin method has excellent prognosis for solutions in nearly all cases, but in some equations there are mild singularities in the kernels, and I really was hoping that there would be some discussion about the numerical convergence issues.

Thirdly, and this is ever so slightly more disappointing, there are no references to pattern synthesis algorithms suitable for curved surfaces. I would expect there to be a chapter on canonical synthesis methods, that is pattern synthesis using dipole or simple multipole sources positioned on curvilinear surfaces, using conventional transform theory and techniques such as the Remez exchange algorithm. This is completely missing! There is, however, a good amount of detail on element to element coupling, so this is valuable detail for engineers with access to these methods.

I would also like to see much more information on the kind of mechanical techniques used to construct these devices. This of course has a bearing on the actual values likely to occur in dielectric non-ideality and give the reader some preparation for attention to this well before other commitments are made. There are some excellent papers written on anisotropic dielectrics - Manuel Horno is one author worth looking up.

Another somewhat mising area is the subject of near field to far field transformations, which in the case of curvilinear surfaces, very interesting indeed.

I have a feeling that the missing material was possibly the result of a constraint placed on the length of the manuscript by the publisher. The author clearly is very proficient with this very difficult subject and has done a terrific job of uniting many sources into one reference book. The text is very well written and very engaging.

On the whole, I am very pleased with the book, it is fascinating and I know I will be very absorbed in it for some considerable time. Thank you, and best wishes, Prof. Kin-Lu Wong.

This is a self-contained reference book for smart antennas. This can also be used as a textbook for senior university students who are studying mobile channels, diversity and antenna array.

Pratical issues such as branch correlation and mutual coupling among antenna elements are presented. It also presents a semi-analytical approach to analyze optimum array in the presence of branch correlation and multiple cochannel interference.

As a graduate student I was fortunate enough to fully experience this book in all its terrible glory. The book is FULL of errors and if you attempt the problems you will realize this. Moreover the conceptual content was very insufficient. Anyone who doesn't already know a lot about this subject, cannot hope this book will explain anything. The instructor told me that even the solution manual had errors. This is the worst textbook I have ever owned.

An interesting find - antennas and propagation from the point of view of the practioner, rather than a rehash of academic generalities.

Its not quite organized like a college text, but flows like the radio system design itself. From a base, rippling through a cluttered city, to a user, a person. This is an "only source" for the "radio model" of man, detailed if somewhat belabored, but available no where else. At this date [2002] perhaps pagers and paging are not timeless, but the udates from the original edition do touch on wireless telephony -- and always timeless: radios near the body. Worth a 5* for the unique content!

I bought this book when I needed to analyze antennas in arrays in and found it very competent and logical. There are many things to like about it:

1. comprehensive coverage of antenna types and analysis techniques

2. Chapter 2 contains a nice compendium of definitions according to IEEE standards, with enough mathematical detail to make it useful in its own right.

3. Good explanations of the material. It's not a cookbook (that's good!). Balanis provides clear text and derivations of the key results, with illustrations. He hasn't watered down the level of sophistication of his topics; they aren't at the research level, but they are fully at the level of the established state of the art.

4) Error-free. I typically wrestle with a few errors or typos in a text as I repeat derivations or perform calcs in the course of my work. I haven't found any errors here so far.

Coverage of the various antenna types is pretty standard. It's in discussions of topics like the Method of Moments, reciprocity, and self- and mutual- impedance, and the method of stationary phase where the book shines--they are clear, easy to follow, with sufficient detail to solve real problems.

Shortcomings of the book are few, but include:

a) sparse or no treatment of advanced topics such as scattering, array implementation, network approach (foster's reaction theorem, relation of mutual coupling to measured scattering parameters), etc.

b) inclusion of Fortran (!) programs for the calculations. Matlab, Mathcad or just plain descriptions would be more useful. Puzzling since one Matlab file is included.

I recommend this book heartily. Engineering practicality and mathematical rigor are balanced nicely. The lack of advanced topic coverage is easily made up by going to specialty texts or the research literature. It worked well for me as a self-study text, and should work for you too.

This is a real excellent book for learning antenna theory. I enjoy this book very very much. By now I have not found for me another book that is better than this one, refer to antenna theory.

Any one who have had an introductory course on electromagnetics may use this book either as a reference for an antenna design or as a perfect learning material. Balanis' clear, informative language, enhanced with many illustrations help the student to understand the subject easily. Due to its wide range of topics, the book is of invaluable help for an antenna designer. The diskette provided with the book includes FORTRAN codes for many practical design problems and frees the reader from complicated formulas. A must have for any enginneer involved in the subject!

This book is too much basic and elementary. The language is poor and little pleasant to read. The scanner mods are very explicit, but you can find similar on the net, with same results. The graphics are very poor, with bad resolution (sounds like a dratf). The topic about antennas is a little more interesting, but it provides little help with decimal system, because all formulas use inches and no convesion tips are provided. It's really a VEEEERY introdutory scanner book. You can find better information on the Internet. I didn't like it.

Mr. Pickard has obviously spent a lot of time and research to pick up the best Scanner and antenna mods available. Now, You might say "Why Buy the book, I can find these mods on line free". I have a junk pile of burned up radios and scanners I'll sell you if you believe that to be the case. I have literally burned up scores of radios following "On line" advice. The Most recent was almost an expensive 10 meter Radio, something kept saying to me "This isn't right" so I stopped and drew out the circuit myself.. Bingo.. I had almost torched this baby.

You won't have that problem with Jerry's book, his designs and mods are based on sound, proven mods and practices on the more popular scanners of our time. He has good color photos, and walks you through each mod step by step. He gives you a list of tools needed and how to use them.

I personally enjoyed the section on antennas. Antennas are an often overlooked part of radios, which are probably more crucial than the radio itself! Jerry covers many antenna types, as well as "Stealth Antennas". His Stealth antenna may be worth the price of the book alone if you are ever in a situation where you NEED an antenna but fear discovery. This book is Solid, well written, entertaining and provides the novice hobbyist a chance to learn new skills and techniques. Beginner or Pro, it doesn't matter, you'll enjoy this book!

The ten (10) chapters of Bill Orr's text start with the basics of feedlines, ground loss and antenna height, and move through wire antennas, multiband dipoles, loops, 160mtr antennas, tuners, construction projects and related analysis. As a licensed amateur radio operator interested in the HF band, this is the SECOND book I would buy - the ARRL Antenna Book (18th Edition) is the first.

compre este libro en al año de 1992 y desde entonces lo uso mucho cuando instalo antenas en mi casa o ayudo a mis amigos a diseñarlas, salmente me gustaria que actualizaran las fotografias de los ejemplos y publicaran mas proyectos de antenas de costos baratos para hacer en casa. felicidades gracias. Javier Barbeyto XE1XKU 73'S