In the most frantic or confused of times, I always reach for In The Orchard to calm my thoughts. The clear voice of Charlie Pratt and the simple yet elegant thoughts expressed provide safe haven for the mind in troubled times. To find comfort, some people put on a favorite disc, others have a special food. For me, In The Orchard brings calm and certainty in a way nothing else does. The book describes life in a New Hampshire orchard. Like Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It, this book is the life's work of a thoughful English teacher who has quietly published a masterpiece. Buy this book and put it in your medicine with the Advil. Use the book instead.

I read this book as a reference rather than a formal class textbook. As a self-studying student, the first book I bought to study satellite communications was the famouns 'Digital Satellite Communications' ritten by Dr. Tri t. Ha. It is actually a quite good book. However it was just too much for a eginner. Too much mathmatical fomulars and too less literatual explanation for a new concept. It took 8 months to read just one third of the book during my militarry service. Since I have been assigned to a digital satellite earthstation construction project recently, I needed a new book that explains more practically and easilly. This 'Satellite Communications' by Dr. Timothy Pratt and Dr. Charles W. Bostian.

To cover allmost all area of the satellite communications, the overall composition is simillar to other books. At charper 3, 'SPACECRAFT', I could find fine explanation on the satellite beam and coverage. Especially, this helps me with understanding and analyzing the SRS-CDROM data. This is really great for me. Some basic and important concepts like Noise, C/N and G/T are very well descibed in chapter 4, 'SATELLITE LINK DESIGN'. Freankly, most books tend to jump to mathmatical method to explain concepts. The author spared more pages to explain the concept and the physical meaning of the terminology. I know this is a very eficient and simple way to show the existing and potential meaning of terminology. But there are hundreds of good reasons to have this kind of kind book for a slowly understanding engineer like me. :-) At chapter 5 and 6 to explain the modulation, multiplexing and multiple access, there are less fomulas and more tables and graphs. First, I read over those two chapters and went back to Dr. Ha's book above to learn the mathmatical expression. That's how you can expand the concept to individual field applications. The 'Design of Large Antennas' in chapter 9, 'EARTH STATION TECHNOLOGY' was helpful for me, too. It is pretty hard to find propper information about large antennas ahtough you have to face a bunch of confusing terminologies when you visit antenna company web sites like Vertex, RSI (recently merged to Vertex to make VertexRSI), or Datron.

I believe the combination of this ook, 'Satellite Communications' and 'Digital Satellite Communications' will give you almost all knowledge you need from fundamental to practical level in satellite communications engineering field.