Books – AB4UG Radioblog

Portable operating and Hamsats

Added a couple new books (that are not ARRL Handbooks!) to the collection.

Portable Operating for Amateur Radio was one I’d been wanting to get for a few months now to support my portable operating ambitions, and I happened to find a copy on the shelves at a used bookstore. Seems like a pretty good book with some useful information for different styles of portable and mobile operating.

Front cover of Portable Operating for Amateur Radio by Stuart Thomas KB1HQS. The cover features a man kneeling on a mountain top summit holding a microphone connected to a radio on a metal frame backpack.

A copy of Amsats and Hamsats (an RSGB publication) also happened to be on the shelf too, so I thought I’d pick that one up too. Aside from listening to the ISS repeater when it goes overhead, I haven’t looked into doing much with amateur radio satellites yet but I’ve always thought it would be interesting and fun. This book seems like it’s got a decent collection of information in it.

The front cover of Amsats and Hamsats by Andrew Barron ZL3DW

A new ARRL Antenna Book

The 25th edition of the ARRL Antenna Book is on the shelf now, joining the 22nd edition book I picked up when I was first licensed in 2012.

The cover of the 25th edition ARRL Antenna book — 25th edition of the ARRL Antenna book

It’s a pretty big book, and the digital download weighs in at about 1 GB (~1.4 GB uncompressed). About 1GB of that is the supplemental content, software, propagation prediction, and antenna modeling files. By contrast, the CD included with the 22nd edition was just under 650 MB.

Content wise, it’s pretty similar to the 22nd edition with some expanded sections on antenna modeling and propagation. Where this version shines is in all the extra content provided in the digital download. The supplemental files for each chapter alone accounts for about half the size of the digital download (about 770 MB).

The 25th edition goes for the same simple black cover and silver text as the 100th edition ARRL Handbook.

Looks pretty good next to the 2014 Centennial edition and 2023 100th edition of the ARRL Handbooks.

2014 Centennial edition and 2023 100th edition of the ARRL Handbooks next to the 25th edition of the ARRL Handbook

New Handbook additions

Some new amateur radio handbooks got added to the collection this week.

At a used bookstore with a much larger selection of amateur radio related books than expected, I found a hardcover 1989 ARRL Handbook in pretty good shape and decided to add it to the collection.

Front cover of the 1989 ARRL Handbook — 1989 ARRL Handbook

It’s about as hefty as the 1988 ARRL Handbook that was added to the collection a while back. I really like the 1980s and 1990s ARRL Handbooks for all the homebrew projects they have in them.

Thanks to my father-in-law, I also now have a 23rd edition of the Radio Handbook by William Orr/W6SAI, which will go along with the 17th edition Radio Handbook I was given a while back.

Front cover of the 23th edition Radio Handbook by William Orr W6SAI — 1997 23rd edition Radio Handbook by William Orr W6SAI

He also gave me a copy of an 8th edition of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook by A. Frederick Collins, from 1940.

Front cover of The Radio Amateur's Handbook by A Frederick Collins — 1940 8th edition of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook by A. Frederick Collins

Title page for The Radio Amateur's Handbook. The left page is a photograph looking up to the top of a tall tower. The title page reads: A complete and practical g uide to radio construction and repair by A. Frederick Collins author of Wireless Telegraphy. Eighth edition revised by E. L. Bragdon radio editor of The New York Sun. — Title page of The Radio Amateur’s Handbook

Lots of good info in these books. Going to have to make some more room on the shelves to squeeze these in.

The Radio Handbook

Another radio handbook has joined the collection, but not an ARRL handbook this time.

This one comes to me courtesy of a local ham friend who’s been downsizing a bit. A very nice gesture for which I’m very grateful.

The Radio Handbook (14th ed), edited by William Orr/W6SAI and published in 1956 by Editors and Engineers Ltd. It’s a well used copy and the spine is not in the greatest shape. It’s come unglued from the book and is quite literally hanging on by the threads of the cloth covering. I’ll have to see if I can do something about that. The rest of the book seems in reasonable shape for a 66 year old book.

Front cover of the 14th edition Radio Handbook edited by William Orr, W6SAI

Title page of the W6SAI Radio Handbook — Front cover of the 14th edition Radio Handbook edited by William Orr, W6SAI

I haven’t gone through a lot of the book yet but based on the table of contents, it seems to cover many of the same topics the ARRL handbooks cover.

First page of the table of contents for the W6SAI Radio Handbook.

Figure of common crystal cuts from the W6SAI Radio Handbook — First page of the table of contents for the W6SAI Radio Handbook.

It might be an interesting and fun exercise to compare this edition of the Radio Handbook with the 1956 ARRL Handbook.

A 1985 ARRL Handbook

In this year’s ARRL Auction, I managed to score a 1985 ARRL Handbook to add to the collection.

It’s in pretty decent condition, although the binding is broken in about the middle of the handbook. Going to have to see if there’s a good way to patch or fix that.

This handbook probably would have first gone on sale in late 1984, so I would have been in the middle of my first year of high school when this handbook came out. Even as late as 1985, there’s still a pretty big section devoted to vacuum tubes and vacuum tube gear. Aside from an old broken radio that was in our basement, I don’t think I had encountered any electronics that used vacuum tubes back then (well, televisions perhaps, but those are a different kind of vacuum tube).

The table of contents covers radio topics you might expect for radio technology from 37 years ago.

Interestingly enough, there seems to be more on vacuum tubes in the 1985 Handbook than there is in the 1980 Handbook. At some point between the 1980 and 1985 Handbooks, the Handbooks gained a considerable amount of ~~weight~~pages.

Size comparison between the 1980 and 1985 ARRL Handbooks

Might be interesting to go through the two and see what kind of content got expanded on with all the added pages.