Satellite Books

Modern CRT TVs are very complex. Many years of evolution have taken place. Can you be an expert in TV repair after reading this book? No! Does the book provide a background about TV circuits and probable repair causes? Yes!

I have an older CRT TV. With HDTV coming on strong, I was considering scraping the old TV in favor of an LCD/Plasma flat screen. After reading the book, I isolated my problem to several capacitors in the power supply. The repair was simple because the problem was easy to find.

This book is not for everyone, but in this age of throw away electronics, it was refreshing for me to find and solve the problem. Call it luck or a quest for personal achievement, but this book helped me.

This book unfortunately does not live up to its hype. From reading the back cover, you'd think that you could fire up the ol' soldering iron and actually get some work done. Definitive repair guide? Definitely not.

Information is too general, with circuits as block diagrams only. Considering the complexity of TV circuits, this is a no-no. Included schematics don't tell you what ICs or components do, with general references like IC304 and D101. You'd be hard pressed to make sense of a circuit even if you have electronics as a background. What more if you are a beginner?

Better information, guidelines and help can be found over the net in the form of usegroups, independent and manufacturer's web sites.

Bad way to spend 30 bucks...

Certainly there are quite a lot of information in this book. But to say it's for beginners is misleading. The book lack organization. Many technical jargon is just put out without explanation. Sentences that need explanation are not explained. If you wanna start from scratch this is not the book for you, you may need to look for another book. However the book may be good as a reference for solving specific problems as done in the later chapters. But frankly I couldn't get any good understanding of TV inners from the first chapters. Also the figures are horrible. Name of ICs in the diagrams do not match the text description. And many diagrams for vital components are just black and white photographs that doesn't show you anything but confuse you.
Again, not recommended for a beginner or as a sole reference.

I read this book before get my Consumer Electronic Certificate
and I left impressed with the easy ways to explain all subjects

The book teaches general knowledge on tv repairs its good for a layman not for professionals.

This book answers a lot of "first time" questions on satellite broadcasting and from this point of view is good, however some information here and there is now out of date and there are too many illustrations which are too small or "cramped" to be of much use.
My opinion is that the book is well written but needs updating and re-presented, and because of this the price is too much.

I found this book to be a good introduction to Satellite TV. It was an easy read. I think I went through the whole thing in a weekend. The first half of the book is pretty general. The second half is focused more on specific home satellite TV systems (I skimmed this part). The book comes with a CD-ROM which has color copies of many of the books figures.

This book is not worth the money. It has outdated information and in my opinion is poorly written. Save your money.

All the explanations and solved problems in this book are too simple. I think I made a mistake buying this "tome"....

This book is an excellent text to compliment any introductory astronomy text. The review material is concise and well written, and the questions follow the same format and reasoning found in many textbooks. A good buy.

This book is not recommended. Over the years, I have bought many of the Schaum Outlines and found them carefully written and comprehensive - until this one. Right from the beginning it is fraught with sloppy definitions and careless work.
Example from page 31, Chapter 2 "Sky and Telescopes"
Right Ascension (RA) is analogous to longitude. The ecliptic is the plane of the solar system, or the path that the Sun follows in the sky. Because the axis of the earth is tilted, the ecliptic and the celestial equator are not in the same place, but cross at two locations, called the equinoxes.
Comment - the ecliptic and the celestial equator are planes and intersect in a line.
Qne of these locations, the vernal equinox, is used as the zero point of right ascension.
Comment - but which one? The question is important because Right Ascension is measured from the Vernal Equinox
Example from page 33, on Tides
The Earth experiences one full set of tides each day (two highs and two lows), everywhere on the planet. Tides are caused by gravity. The Sun and the Moon both contribute to tides on Earth
Comment - the reader might wonder why there are two highs per day if the phenomenon is due to the rotation of the earth under the moon. Author gives no hint.

I must say that I was disappointed in this book. There is very little new information, and while the art work is pleasing to look at, it really doesn't do much to detail equipment and installations. No single space warfare system is really highlighted. The author makes several brief references to the X-20 "Dynasoar", but these aren't substantive and the Air Force's equally interesting Manned Orbiting Laboratory program is completely ignored.

More distressing, in spite of his credentials, there is some reason to question the author's basic knowledge of the physics of space flight. At one point the text seems to suggest that a satellite could be positioned over Korea, almost as though it could hover there. That section could simply be poorly phrased, but elsewhere the text clearly asserts that "... if a country puts (a Multiple Orbital Bombardment System) in (geosynchronous Earth orbit) it could aim a warhead above a target indefinitely." The sentence seems to imply that a warhead from such a platform would drop to Earth like a stone. In truth, from a military point of view geosynchronous orbit would likely be a terrible place to base a warhead as it would take it a very long time to descend to Earth and could only be targeted at locations near the equator - though certainly not necessarily those directly beneath it!

I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of this title because I had hoped that it would throw some further light on advanced technologies that the US has been deploying in space for at least the last 20 years or more. Alas, not much substance in this volume beyond what, I admit, is a generally good summation of the orthodox technologies that are regularly trotted out for public consumption. Chemical fuel rockets, old school electronics, bicycle technology, etc. But the real US space program goes far, far beyond that...and there is a wealth of credible material on that subject available in published books and on the internet. In my opinion, this volume could have so easily been much more substantive without compromising its credibility one bit.

This book offers little new. Its a rehash of other books published over the past several years. The photo quality is good, but again, I saw nothing I had not seen in other books.

Don't waste your money! I expected much more than a 36 page book.

While Mr. Gaffney's book doesn't cover anything new in the area of reconnaissance satellites, its format and coverage are excellent for the audience - mainly geared towards elementary and middle school children. While the area of space policy and national defense don't cross the desks of most children, "Secret Spy Satellites" gives kids a peek into a very secret area of government - taking pictures from space. It might not whet the appetite for Ph.D's or parents, but its enough to get kids to say "Wow! I can't believe we can do that!"... and that sometimes is the only impetus needed for these future NRO employees to say "That stuff is cool - I want to do that when I grow up.

For parents, teenagers and future rocket scientists, there are many other texts that have the juicy, meaty details of these satellite launches and operations.

This is an unusual book. Rather than filling the text with solid pages of formulas, which is what one usually finds in books on this subject, the author has instead chosen to editorialize on the successes and failures of the mathematical methods used in the solution of some of the classical problems which celestial mechanics attempts to solve (astrometry, determination of orbits, perturbation theory). The discursive writing style is refreshing to someone already familiar with the subject matter, but it seriously detracts from the use of the book as a reference.

It also contains misleading arguments and some serious omissions. The criticism of the preliminary orbit determination method of C. F. Gauss is mostly unfounded, as many astronomers engaged in this work will attest. The author's proof of the radius of convergence in time of the f and g series for elliptical orbits is much longer and complex than the classical proof by F. R. Moulton. The massive volume of literature on the Hamiltonian approach to perturbation theory is essentially ignored. And there is hardly any reference to numerical methods, particularly integration methods, indispenable tools to anyone working in orbital mechanics.

In my opinion, the book belies its title and cannot realistically be called a "guide" at all. Spend your money instead on an old copy of the classic book by Brouwer and Clemence on solar system celestial mechanics, or on Herrick's "Astrodynamics" for space flight applications. If you can find them, that is.

The application of numerical methods to problems in celestial mechanics does not really seem to be the main focus of this text, as might be taken from the title. Instead, the reader is guided through many related topics that could be aimed at different audiences: some would be of more interest to observational astronomers, while others are perhaps relevant to astronautical applications involving Earth-orbiting satellites. One entire chapter is dedicated to "Odds and Ends," for example.

There are many anecdotal but ultimately useless admonishments, such as "I also remind the reader that any child can keep the CPU of the largest machines continuously going - it takes a bit more thought to have it compute something interesting or useful." (p. 394). Unlike the author's better book, Computational Spherical Astronomy, the presentation here is somewhat overbearing (the "Taff-Hall technique" [p. 282], "Taff's proof" [p. 266], etc.). While entertaining at times, the editorializing is overdone and results in a substantial loss of technical readability, if not credibility. This is regrettable, since some of the work in this book is seemingly original in presentation or idea. The author himself implies that some of his strong viewpoints are alienating (i.e. "It may be so much of a minority opinion that it is unique." (p. 288)). The subtitle "A Computational Guide for the Practitioner" seems ironic then, as one often finds unique philosophies at the very opposite of "practical".

To his credit, Dr. Taff intriguingly suggests that history's high regard for Gauss' re-discovery of Ceres using least-squares is based on historical myth (although I wasn't sure how this helped the practitioner in his own computations), and that Gauss himself was prone to exaggeration (p. 220) when claiming that it was possible to determine an initial plantetary orbit from a few days observations. But, the author counters that Gauss' classical method of initial orbit determination is generally unacceptable based on the partial justification "I have computed more initial orbits on high-eccentricity objects using angles-only data than has anyone else" (p. 274)! Since this books publication (and because of it), Gauss' method has seen sound defense in the open literature (i.e. Marsden (1991), Astron. J. 102 (4) p.1539).

In summary, this text is probably valuable as an example of how *not* to present technically-oriented material. However, the publisher's asking price for this paperback is nothing short of shocking: the curious reader would be best served by making his purchase from the plentiful supply of used copies or reviewing it at his local library.

This book is an overall collection of Arthur C. Clarke's theories , mathematical equations , and abstract ideas about space travel , and means of obtaining interplanetary flight. The book includeds articles from when Arthur C. Clarke first started writing and a comic book that Arthur C. Clarke used to read as a small child. My opinion of the book is one of : It accomplishes its tasks by providing Arthur C. Clarke's theories and mathematical equations on space travel , but who wants to read those things anyway. Let the rocket scientists figure those things out , let us the people dream about it through science fiction.

Book has useful information. But, has a lot of typos, too. The typos overcome much of the books usefulness.

I bought this book with the premise to learning about Core-Satellite asset allocation technique. However, as I explain below, I was mislead and disappointed.

The chapters in the book are:
- A Core-Satellite Appraoch to Portfolio Management
- Quantitative Finance
- Core Equity
- Core Fixed-Income Management
- Satellite Bonds - High Yield and Distressed Debt
- Management of Currency Fluctuations Associated with International Investments
- Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities
- Hard Assets
- Finding Value in Small Stocks
- Risk Measurement of Investments in the Satellite Ring of a Core-Satellite Portfolio
- Indentifying and Adopting Best Practices for Institutional Investors

As you will notice, of the 11 chapters in the book, only 1-2 are dedicated to the actual Core-Satellite portfolio allocation technique. The balance of the chapters are allocated to explaining the different asset classes, general risk-return nuances and some practical issues to be borne in mind.

This is my main grip with this book. There are umteen books explaining each of the asset classes. I did not buy another book for that. Also only a chapter describing as asset class is hardly enough to go out and actually invset in the asset class.

At best, it expands your context, making you aware of the different asset classes to be included in the Core and in the Satellite portions of the portoflio. At worst, it is a waste of time and paper!

I would have much rather preferred the book to have focussed on the following issues:
- What criteria to use to allocate an asset either to the Core or Satellite portion of the portfolio
- How to first construct the Core portfolio
- How to the systematically add Satellites to the Core portfolio and the measure the impact of these additions
- How and when to move an asset from the Satellite asset class to the Core asset class
- How do you do portfolio allocation on the Core and Satellite classes individually as well as a whole.
- etc. etc.

Overall, it not worth the expense and time; and while it did add to my overall investment perspective, it did so with diminshed return.

This book is a mixture of Electronics/Telecom basics and no updated Satellite TV Technology. Around 1/3 of the book shows basics concepts ( Resonance , Heterodyning , Demodulation , Full-Wave Rectifiers , Zener Diode Regulators , etc. ). Chapters 3 , 4 and 5 ( around 90 pages ) describe the old Big-Dish Systems , used to receive C-band signals .Chapter 8 , dedicated to DBS systems , is very superficial ( just 25 pages ). The same occurs with chapter 10 , that presents Encryption/Decryption Technologies : 29 pages with no updated information. Finally , the Index found in the end of the book is very confused ; for example ,DBS Satellite Transponder refers the reader to page 214 , where will be found the schematic diagram for an IRD channel display circuit .