Electronics tools...

[Chester]

To those who are, more than likely, smarter than I...
as someone who has just enough electronics knowledge to successfully electrocute myself but wants to get into the hobbying thing (i.e. building audio equipment- amp, receivers etc), how does one bridge the gap between theory and practice?
In other words, there are plenty of books on op-amps, transistors, ICs blah blah blah. And, I have a fairly solid understanding of electronics and signal flow (save how to actually assemble a PCB)
But, how do you go about understanding the basic concepts of how these components are frequently applied within audio circuits? Is this all a bit prohibitive to someone trying to do the self-teaching thing or am I just as ignant as I presume I am.

Thanks

 

[Flugelman]

AT "A" school did it for me....

Kidding aside, I don't know if the Navy still uses the electronics basic course books but as I recall there was a whole lot of basic info presented there. You might check with your local AT shop and see what is available today.

 

[Sly1978]

I can't remember ever seeing a more appropriately titled thread.

 

[Flugelman]

I can't remember ever seeing a more appropriately titled thread.

And when yer TACAN won't Tac and yer UHF won't Huff and yer RadAlt won't Rad.... Don't bother calling this Tool.... :icon_tong

 

[Sly1978]

Easy now. I love my ATs, AEs, etc. I was more referring to the first post. Without the AEs there would be no one to rig my iPod for ICS.

 

[Flugelman]

^^^^^^^
No problem, smilies in effect. Just enjoying the back and forth...

You let the One-Wires work on the ICS now? Back in the day that was the Tweets' province...

 

[Chester]

Epic threadjack... I'm not even mad.

 

[IKE]

Surprisingly, Radio Shack still sells a few basic electronics project books. Don't expect the cell-phone-pushing sales guys to know anything about them though (unless perhaps they're 50+).

If you want to follow someone else's design to build an amp, simple radio, etc., I would say it's not prohibitively difficult. Design of anything interesting without Electrical Engineering experience probably is a little more trouble than would be fun.

 

[dephyler]

If you're really ambitious about it, you can always head to a college website, look up the electrical and/or computer engineering dept websites, and look for labs posted online. I know my school put almost every lab online for us to work on. A great class we had that focused on filter design still has some data online. We made a heart beat monitor in that class: http://www.ce.rit.edu/studentresources/reference_materials/560/
Look here too: http://www.ce.rit.edu/studentresources/coursereference.htm

I know MIT has some engineering courses posted online. And play-hookey.com got me through much of my early electronics/circuits classes.

 

[Chester]

Awesome. Thanks to all for the guidance. I'll be heeding that advice right after I complete a totally sweet Dungeons and Dragons marathon.

Brings to mind a quote from Half-Baked:
"What was that thing we used to eat back in the day?"

 

[Beans]

Nearly every MIT course has materials posted on the web: ocw.mit.edu