Monday, January 27, 2025

Golden Age?

Back in the late 70's and early 80's, when I was a Novice we had:

QST

CQ

73 Magazine

WorldRadio

HamRadio

Ham Radio Horizons

Now all that's left is QST and a few digital ARRL publications? NCJ, QEX, On the Air? I think the ARRL's "On The Air" is the only publication left with new comers in mind? 

Filling the void somewhat are e-zines like the K9YA Journal that's written in a style a lot like WorldRadio. More human interest stuff than technical; and we need that. WorldRadio drew me deeper and deeper into the hobby. I was never the electronics engineer type and contesting was never my bag. I enjoyed reading about the non-technical side of the hobby, and what other people were doing and some good historical articles, too.

I wish we had more publications like that today. 

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:11 PM

    Hi Larry
    There are still lots of hhuman interest type stories out there, but online.
    Qrper.com and the SOTA reflector have lots of "doing" type posts. I don't care for the massive selling job qrper.com does , but ghere are some good posts.

    Rick N8TGQ

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  2. I'll second the suggestion of QRPer.com. But I don't feel it does a massive selling job. Print magazines, with their 'half the pages are advertising', seem like a massive selling job. QRPer just seems to offer links to stuff that gets used by whoever writes the post. I suppose you can call that a sell job, but someone telling me that the nice cable with a ferrite choke built in was purchased from someplace feels a lot less intrusive than the last third of QST being one big MFJ catalog.

    Full disclosure - I'm pleased to say I support QRPer via the Patreon system, so I probably have some built in bias.

    Paul W7PFB

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