A second printing of the 1927 ARRL Radio Amateur’s Handbook (Second Edition) purchased on eBay rounds out my ARRL Handbook collection.
Front cover of the ARRL Radio Amateur’s Handbook (Second Edition, second printing) from 1927Title page of the 1927 Radio Amateur’s Handbook.Copyright page and editions listing
For a 94 year old book, it’s in remarkably good condition and doesn’t show a whole lot of wear.
The name “John R. Lacy” (or perhaps “John R. Locy”) is written in pencil across the top of the title page inside the front cover. There’s also another name written in pencil on the front cover that’s fainter and difficult to make out.
Another name written on the front cover
Looks like “Cecil W______”. The rest of the last name is tough to make out. Wonder if this was another person who owned the book.
Other than these two names, I haven’t seen any other writings, notes, or other markings inside the Handbook.
I’m quite happy with this addition to my Handbook collection and now I consider my collection complete. I have at least one handbook from each decade it was published, except for the 2020s. Unless someone has a 2020 – 2022 handbook they give me, the next one I’ll get will be the 2023 ARRL Handbook, which will be the 100th edition. I think the only other Handbook I’d actively look for would be the 1970 Handbook, the year I was born. I won’t seek one out on eBay or anything like this one or the last one, but if I happen to come across one at a hamfest or something for a decent price, I’d probably pick it up.
The newest addition to my ARRL Handbook collection is one from 1931, the 8th edition of the ARRL Radio Amateur’s Handbook.
8th edition of the ARRL Radio Amateur’s Handbook from 1931
It’s not in the greatest condition but for a 90 year old book, the condition isn’t too bad considering books like these were meant to be read and re-read. The binding has deteriorated and there are a number of loose pages. I wonder what it would take to preserve the binding or rebind the book.
Compared to recent handbooks and even those from the 1940s and later, this early handbook is quite thin at less than 220 pages.
Table of contents
I haven’t had a chance to look through much of this book yet, but when I do I’ll have to be careful so that I don’t make any more pages fall out.
A collection of ARRL Handbooks from 1944, 1950, 1971, 1974, 1979, 1980, 1993, 2005, 2012, 2014
Somewhere along the way, I apparently thought it would be cool to have at least one ARRL Handbook from each decade. Over the past few years, I’ve managed to acquire a few Handbooks toward that goal. Some I found at hamfests, some through the annual ARRL Auction, and some through SK estates.
The most recent additions were the 1980 and 2005 Handbooks. They came from the collection of one of my ham friends, Willie/WB4SOG (SK), who died recently. Willie was a prominent member of the local amateur radio community, and he’ll be missed by many people. I actually met him several years before I became a ham through his wife who volunteered with the same lab retriever rescue that I did. His friend Bruce/KI4YST brought several boxes of books and QST magazines from Willie’s collection to the club meeting for club members to take. I’m glad to be able to give some of his books a new home in my collection.
Handbooks from the 1920s and 1930s would be a nice addition to the collection. I’m sure I could find them if I looked harder. They’ve shown up in the ARRL Auction in the past, and there’s a 1932 Handbook in this year’s edition of the ARRL auction. Bidding on that Handbook sent the price pretty high early on. Probably plenty of old Handbooks on eBay too.
I haven’t read them all yet, but I’ve looked through a few of them and they give a nice look at how amateur radio has evolved over the past century.
The Handbook I’m planning to get for the 2020s will be the 2023 edition, which will be the 100th edition of the ARRL Handbook.
Speaking of the ARRL Auction, it seems like the interest in older handbooks is a lot higher this year and there’s been a lot more bidding on them than in previous years. Past auctions I think also had more Handbooks up for bid if I recall correctly, so maybe that was a factor.
CARS has set up an operating day at the club station, WA4USN, on board the USS Yorktown for this year’s ARRL Rookie Roundup (SSB). For Rookie Roundup purposes, a Rookie is someone who was licensed in the current year, or within the past 2 years (2013, 2014, or 2015). If you’re a rookie or new ham and want to experience the HF side of amateur radio or just want to operate from the club station (it’s a pretty neat place to play radio from), this is your chance!
The club room will be open starting at 1PM, April 19. Rookie Roundup starts at 2PM EDT and goes to 759PM EDT (1800 – 2359 UTC). If you’re interested, drop me a note and I’ll put you in touch with the proper people.
Spent a few hours on the radio this weekend playing in the ARRL RTTY Roundup. It’s my first digimode contest and it was an interesting experience.
I’ve found that with digital modes, I like to have the sound on so that I can hear (in addition to see) the activity in the passband. I started off on 20m and right off encountered a bunch of loud and overdriven signals. Some of the transmissions were so bad that they washed out the entire passband during the transmission. Here’s a brief sample of what some of the better transmissions looked like.
20m RTTY passband during the 2014 ARRL RTTY Roundup
I also found that fldigi’s decoding the RTTY signals seemed to be spottier than PSK decoding. I’m not sure if that was just because of the quality of the transmissions it was having to decode or just the nature of RTTY. I’ll have to try to find some non-contest RTTY to test with.
For most of the contest, I was running 30-35W which seemed to be pretty sufficient to get me heard reasonably far. I finished up with around 110 QSOs and decided to call it a day a few hours before the end of the contest because I was getting tired of sitting.
Highlight of the contest was a 20m contact with VK3TDX all the way in Austrailia. That sets the record for my longest QSO at over 16 000 km. Here’s the excerpt from the fldigi log
There’s some garbled decoding, but it looks like he got everything. Using 35W, I was very surprised he was even able to pick up my signal. I suppose it’s possible he was listening remotely using a station closer to me (with SDR and Internet connected radios, you can listen and potentially operate from anywhere in the world from the comfort of your computer desk). I’ll hang on to the thought that I just had some astoundingly good propagation.
AB4UG-VK3TDX QSO
(Sweet, just checked on LoTW and it’s confirmed there. Woohoo!)
At a couple points toward the end, my sound card interface started acting up and would rapidly switch PTT on and off. Not sure what was causing it, but both times it happened there were some really strong signals coming through the radio. Don’t know if it’s related or not, and this is the only time the interface has acted up like that.
After today, I haven’t quite decided if digimode contests are quite my thing. I think I’ll have to try a few more contests out.
