[CW] Qrl?

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/11/06 7:44:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, n1ea at arrl.net 
writes:


> Several things get my goat about ARRL. 

Devil's Advocate mode = ON

 The "Straight Key Night" change is 
> 
> one of them.  I don't object to bugs, but they aren't the same thing.  They 
> should either make it just straight keys, or change the name to "mechanical 
> key night".
> 

This one I agree with. But there's a reason for the change.

Nowadays the electronic keyer and the Morse keyboard has become the defacto 
standards, to the point that many hams I know have never used anything else. An 
incredible number have never seen a bug or sideswiper in use, let alone used 
one themselves. 

By allowing such keys on "Straight" Key Night, they hope to focus attention 
on non-electronic ways of sending Morse. Having a separate night for bugs 
wasn't going to generate the interest that SKN does. 


> In 1965 the ARRL License Manual cost $1.00, adjusted for Consumer Price 
> Index to 2006, this would be $6.43 today.  The manual consisted of the study 
> 
> material for the three (then) licenses, Novice, 
> Technician/Conditional/General (same written test), and Amateur Extra.
> 

That 'study material' consisted of the study guides supplied by FCC, 
reprinted with permission by ARRL. No secret - they said so in the manual. There were 
also a schedule of FCC exams and the procedure for both by-mail and FCC office 
exams.

> The "ARRL License Manual" also included the full Part 97 of the FCC rules 
> and regulations, plus extracts from the ITU Radio Regulations which applied 
> to Amateur Radio.  All this for a buck.
> 

Or $6.43 in today's money.

What was *not* included in the LM was any instruction on how to learn the 
code. And the study guides consisted of essay-type questions and answers, but not 
a detailed explanation of the underlying theory. You had to study other books 
for that - the purpose of the study guide was to show you the general areas 
the test would cover, without giving you the exact Q&A.

Today's study guides are stand-alone instruction books and include the entire 
current question pool. In some ways they are an anachronism because you can 
download the pools and Part 97 for free from various sources. 

> The other ARRL publications were also about $1.00 to $3.00 - I guess the 
> Handbook was around $6.00.
> 

The Handbook was $4, books like the VHF Manual, Antenna Book, Understanding 
Amateur Radio, the Sideband Manual and the Mobile Manual were all $2, and the 
other books went from 50 cents to a dollar.

That was back when postage, paper, and printing were inexpensive by today's 
standards. Note too that many ARRL publicationsof that era were actually just 
compilations of past QST articles.  

> The Rag Chewers Certificate (RCC) was one of the first certificates earned 
> by new hams.  They learned about it shortly after they received a packet 
> from "The Little Print Shop" from Texas - and that packet usually arrived 
> BEFORE your FCC license did, when the ARRL sent a "Welcome to Amateur Radio" 
> 
> packet.  They enclosed a flyer about ARRL, QST and other info.
> 

My packet came long after the license.


> Up until about 1978 or so, ARRL used to publish in "QST" what were 
> "landmark" papers about radio - breaking stuff that was quite technical. 

Were they really "landmark" stuff? Or simply things that were new at the 
time? I have and read those old QSTs, and the stuff seems about right for the era.

If you want a comparison, look at the RSGB Handbooks for the same era. The 
RSGB books were more technical, and more focused. They also cost a lot more and 
were rewritten a lot less frequently.

 It 
> 
> used to stretch my brain.  I understood about half of it after reading, but 
> then I read some more and understood some more.  I even used reference books 
> 
> to help.  I was an Amateur Extra, and 1st Phone and 2nd Telegraph Licensee 
> at the time.  The articles about SWR, Vertical Antennas, Conjugate Matching, 
> 
> Long Delayed Echos were some of them.
> 

I read all of those, too. But let's face it - we were both a lot newer to 
radio then than we are now. Much of that stuff - SWR, verticals, conjugate 
matching - wasn't new stuff at all. It was just new to a lot of us hams. 

> In the late '60s to early '70s, QST used to publish "QST Extras" - which 
> they used for extra technical stuff.  Some of the articles were mentioned 
> above, but there were others.
> 
> Now in "QST" most of the meaty technical articles have been moved to "QEX" - 
> 
> I'd love for ARRL to allow us to choose:  Either "QST" or "QEX" - they won't 
> 
> because they make lots of money off the advertising in "QST".
> 

I recall back then that QST and ARRL were constantly criticized by many for 
being "too technical" and "shoving all this new stuff down our throats". Others 
claimed ARRL was behind the times because the Handbook was not completely 
rewritten every year, and there were still articles with tubes in them!

On top of that was the ever-widening scope of amateur radio. In 1965, FM and 
repeaters were virtually unused in ham radio, even though the land mobile 
services had been using them for over a decade. RTTY was 60 wpm Baudot, done by a 
few folks who could get surplus Teletype machines or ante up the big bucks for 
a new one.  SSTV? Satellites? EME? Computers? All very specialized interests. 
 

Now look at all the things hams do, and all the technologies. At the same 
time, fewer hams want the really serious technical stuff. How to cover all of it? 
Put the serious technical stuff in another publication.


> Back in the 1970s it could take me a week to read "QST" and dig into the 
> articles.  Now it might take me an hour to read the magazine.


> Back then, I wanted to keep the old copies because they had valuable 
> information.  Now it is mostly fluff, and I throw them away.
> 

Is it that they are fluff, or that you have learned much in 40 years? Is it 
that they are fluff, or that there are many facets of amateur radio that you 
find of little interest?

I think in both cases, it's the latter. 

I know for me that even back in the 1960s, QST seemed to have a lot of 
oddball stuff that wasn't really of interest to me. I read it anyway, but at the 
time had no use for it.

Then, sometimes after years or even decades, I would come upon a 
situation/problem, and I'd remember that QST had once had an article about that. Look it 
up and save myself a lot of trouble.  

I once thought there were a lot of ads in QST now, compared to 'back when'. 
So I did a comparison - and found the advertising space (in terms of % pages of 
ads vs. % pages of articles) to be almost exactly the same. The new ones seem 
to have more, I think, because the ads are in color and there are more items 
and more vendors out there.

Sure, the questions in "The Doctor" column seem incredibly basic to me - now. 
But I remember a time when such questions weren't basic at all!



> I wonder if ARRL would allow members to receive the CD-ROM once a year like 
> 
> they do for foreign amateurs?
> 

One of the factors is that because ARRL is a membership organization, they 
get certain advantages by declaring QST to be the organization's journal, sent 
to every member or member household. But the mag has to be delivered monthly 
for that to work.

One more point:

Much of QST's content, then and now, is/was the work of folks outside ARRL 
Hq. People send in articles and some get published. Have *you* sent articles to 
ARRL? I have, and some got published in QST. They even paid me, something that 
they did not do in the old days. 

73 de Jim, N2EY