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| Unfortunately, there are only a few magazines on the market dedicated solely to amateur radio. You can find these magazines, surprisingly at most of the major national book stores such as Waldenbooks, Border's, Barnes & Noble and B Dalton. If you have a well stocked local newsstand you might also find at least one major ham magazine there. Typically, they don't buy too many copies unless demand in a particular store is high. More often than not, you have to grab your issue off of the stand soon after the new monthly issue comes out if you don't want to start a subscription. |
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| There are a few libraries that also have some Amateur mags on their shelves, but again, we hams face the same lower numbers of representation problems that we have in other areas in the last few years. If they don't get much action after a few years the libraries may just allow the subscription to lapse, so even if you don't see any ham mags on the shelves you might ask the librarian if there's a file of past issues in the back somewhere. Subscribing to a ham mag may seem to be a good solution to you if you live in an area where you can't find many on the stands and in the bookstores, or if what they get sells out fast. Be aware that sometimes you will lose an issue in the mail if you do subscribe and you'll end up buying one off the stands anyway. (Unless you happen to be close enough to League HQ to walk in the door and get your lost copy of QST as I've done.) I wonder how many ham mag editors and publishers realize how much the local Post Office delivery determines how many subscriptions they'll get as opposed to off-the-shelf sales. |
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| The most common Amateur Radio mags in the USA are QST, CQ and 73. These mags are totally involved with amateur radio and may have an occasional light-hearted "human interest" type of story or article that may be of interest to hams because ham radio played a part of the story in some way. It could be a story about two friends who met on the radio and have very little operation in the story after that fact is stated. As I write this, King Hussein of Jordan passed away only a few weeks ago now. Since he was an amateur radio operator you can be sure that there will be a flurry of stories in the ham mags about him sometime around May (by the time the story to print delay catches up). I have had the pleasure of meeting a few hams that have worked him and one ham I talked to became a dinner guest of his and actually kept in touch with him over the years. (The things we hams get to do!) |
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| Each magazine has it's own style and air about it and fosters a reputation for what readers with a little reading experience can come to expect in the type of articles that each magazine regularly prints. Like a fine wine, it seems best to keep a consistent flavor and serve their reading public the type of articles they expect from that particular magazine. |
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| From conversations I've had personally with ham mag editors, hitting the mark for their own reading public seems to be the hardest thing to nail down. If the articles become too basic, the old-timers will shun the magazine. If the mag caters to HF operation too much it will lose the VHF readers. If the articles become too technical the numbers will drop and the mag will serve only the hams who do heavy experimenting and building. A magazine printed a few years back called "Ham Radio" was a good example of this. Although it published technically accurate articles with good state-of-the-art theory in them, it failed to adopt a broad enough spectrum of readers every month to get enough hams to spend a few dollars on a copy of their own to take home. A quick look through the magazine in the store let a prospective reader know a lot of it was over their heads. Although everyone hailed the magazine it went out of print. I remember a fellow ham once, telling me that he just bought his last issue of "Ham Radio" because the editorial that month was just too technical for the average ham. (The piece was about GAsFETs and used a lot of technical terms and specs.) |
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| QST is the number one ham mag around, certainly in terms of distribution and content. They are what Hertz is to the car rental business or IBM is to the computer industry-- the magazine that everyone competes with. Since its first issue in 1915 it has had the distinction of being the official journal of the American Radio Relay League. A lot of content of the early issues was generated by the League's founder Hiram Percy Maxim, an early radio pioneer and inventor. The friendly and humorous attitude he incorporated comes through to this day. Even detractors of the ARRL have remarked to me that QST is a great ham mag. If you wanted to sell a new radio or a product to the amateur community, which mag would be your first choice to advertise in? Many years ago, QST had good technical articles but it lost the attention of some of it's readers at times with technical articles that were a notch above the interest level of some of its readers. This trend has reversed somewhat today and although there might be an article or two that a newcomer to the hobby has a tough time following, it does seem that they try to explain the basic electronics behind the articles a bit better. |
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| As with any ham magazine, if you don't read it this particular month for the articles in it you'll want to read it just to look at the advertisements and see what equipment is around now for sale. Every time I buy a new rig, invariably an advertisement in a mag catches my eye and I finally break down and buy one for whatever features the radio promised in the ad. It can be maddening at times, though. About ten years ago I was about to buy a two meter handie-talkie when I saw a newer, sleeker model, one of the first ones built with surface mount technology, on the inside back cover of Popular Communications. I was so happy that I caught that ad! They had scooped the other mags since none of the others had the ad until the next month. |
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| 73 magazine is a little easier for the newcomer to digest. The articles are, in general, shorter than QST, for instance. The publisher, Wayne Greene was always pushing the envelope of operation and writing about it in 73, such as when SSB started to take over in popularity for phone operation as opposed to AM, when Radio Teletype became affordable to the average ham and when two meter FM started to dominate the scene. Today 73 is looked upon as a mag that appeals to two meter FM and VHF/UHF operators. At least, that's what I think of when I think of 73. It's a good read for newcomers. |
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| CQ has been published since the Forties. It's grasp of a broad scope of articles is good, with a wide variety or themes found every month. It has a lot of good things in it for HF operators as well as VHFers. Sometimes it really scoops the other ham mags by printing a really great project that nobody else has anything close too at the time. Like the other mags, it does have it's own flavor that you may only relate too after sampling all the ham mags and making up your own mind if it's going to be your fave or not. A few years ago CQ also came out with CQ VHF, primarily aimed at the VHF operator. Although I consider myself primarily an HF operator, I find CQ VHF very well written with lots of good information for all hams. |
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| Popular Communications is primarily aimed at Scanner enthusiasts and Short Wave Listeners, in my humble opinion, but is a good, easy read for all. They do tend to hold the involved theory down. My main complaint with this mag is that its content seems repetitive to me. I can go a few months without reading an issue and feel like I picked up the same issue again. It is a good mag, and carries a lot of scanner and short wave radio sources for buyers. I enjoy it. |
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| Occasionally you will find a nice article geared towards hams in the other electronic magazines such as Popular Electronics or Electronics Now. General electronics mags seem to go in and out with their level of ham devotion and seem to aim themselves more towards the working electronics engineer or tech or someone who has a lot to do with computers and enjoys building non-RF projects. I tend to pick up a copy of these kind of mags only if I see an article concerning a project or some point in theory (such as how a Beverage antenna works) that I really want to read about. You can find a real killer article in them sometimes, though. |
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| All of these magazines have to have quality content in them or they wouldn't be around! Be it said that my comments here are intended to steer you towards the best first magazine for you in particular. Be warned-- you may find out that you like enough content in every magazine you pick up that you'll want to buy them all. It can get quite expensive. If you find an article in a particular issue that clarifies some point of theory in your mind you'll remember that article for the rest of your life. I still remember reading the article about how cells and batteries work in a Radio Electronics mag when I was thirteen years old and exactly where I was reading that article when batteries became de mystified to me. |
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| You can find back issues of ham magazines with a little looking around. You can even get old "Ham Radio" magazines to this day. (An enterprising fellow that I talked to one day bought the rights to sell some back issues from CQ.) The ARRL has CD-Roms of every issue of QST from the beginning and you can still get the actual issues from years back of QST, 73 and CQ if you are in luck and they happen to have that issue in stock. Send some email to me if you need help in getting any ham mag back issues of any kind. |
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| Some hams read foreign mags. The gang at the League subscribes to some magazines from Japan and they don't speak Japanese! Why? They look at the ads to get an idea of what new equipment has been released in Japan months before we even get a whiff of it here in the USA! I have met a lot of hams who like the mags put out by the Canadian, New Zealand, Australian and UK counterparts of the ARRL. Even better, they're in English. I did meet an Austrian ham who subscribed from the USA to a German mag once. As I said, he got to see what the European market was doing with available ham gear for their hams. |
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| If you have any criticism of my opinions here, realize that opinions are what they are-- one guy's opinion. You can email me all week about your opinion on a particular mag but it won't change my mind much, so don't waste the effort. We can talk about better things. You'll notice that I didn't say anything much negative about any of the mags above. Well, that's because I honestly have little bad to say about ham mags in general. I get a kick out of them all! As I said, some months I want to buy every one. |
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| Do I think that magazines are relevant in this electronic age? I can only answer this way: Besides books, magazines were what I learned Electronics and Radio from. Mags are better than books in the way that they are current (typically three months or less behind now). Magazines offer a venue with flavor that no other medium can. One of the first things I recommend for a newcomer to ham radio to do is to start reading the mags. |
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| Magazines will get you into ham radio like no other teacher can and nobody will be looking over your shoulder to see what you didn't understand in any particular issue. Soon enough, you'll get it all, cover to cover. |
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