i recently purchased a soldering station (weller wlc100) and a
breadboard (protoboard by global specialties) in hopes of learning
more about circuitry and electronics in general. My question is, what
textbook do you recommend for learning the basics, but also showing
you how to wire components to a breadboard, solder correctly, etc. I'm
looking for something that is fairly simple to understand, but also
covers a good deal of theory and applications (this might be an
"intermediate" textbook). Anyway, thanks in advance.
Some initial recommendations, not knowing you at all:
(1) Find people around you who have similar interests. It might be a robotics
club, or an electronics class at a local community college, or it might be a
radio club. But one of the better ways to get going is to surround yourself
with others who are able to answer you or show you. Especially, show you. I
played at soldering on my own, but it wasn't until I learned soldering by
getting a job soldering at Tektronix, where they were willing to teach their
prospective (low paid) workers, that I really learned the details much better.
They could show me. And that was important.
(2) Find out what your own personal motivation is. Find your "center." If
this is just about "making some money" and there isn't some personal, driving
interest, then it's likely you won't stay the course long enough to get really
good at it. But if you have an interest area, use that interest to drive your
learning. If it's radio, build some radios. (One of my first projects was to
build a crystal radio "from scratch", getting a galena crystal from a rock hound
show and some lead to melt as a base for it, making the coil from a toilet paper
tube and some magnet wire I bought, making a capacitor from aluminum foil and
window glass, and making the earphone itself from some punched circles of metal
for the diaphragms, a cylindrical permanent magnet, magnet wire, etc. It worked
well enough to get the three or four major AM stations!) If it's rocketry,
consider making a launching pad. If it's just general electronics, you can pick
most any small project -- perhaps out of one of those project books at Radio
Shack.
You haven't really said what you have actually done or liked, so it's really
hard to judge much. You might try looking for Heathkit training manuals or else
look around for some of the military teaching books -- the ones I particularly
liked were those from the 1940's, except for the fact that I got an earful about
vacuum tubes and VR-150 voltage regulators and selenium rectifiers. But they
did cover a lot of the basics, with drawings and all.
And have you actually gone to Radio Shack and looked into one of the kits or
books they carry? If so, what did you dislike and what did you like about what
you saw? Have you tried any of them?
Jon