Ham Talk Live! Episode 87 - The New 2018 ARRL Handbook with editor Ward Silver, N0AX

Thursday night on Ham Talk Live! at 9 pm Eastern time, Ward Silver, N0AX will take your questions about the new 2018 ARRL Handbook. Ward is the editor of this major revision, and will be here to tell us all about it.

Tune into Ham Talk Live! Thursday night at 9 pm Eastern time by going to hamtalklive.com. When the audio player indicates LIVE, just hit the play button! If you miss the show live, you can listen on demand 24/7/365.25 also at hamtalklive.com; or a podcast version is on nearly all podcast sites a few minutes after the live show is over. Some sites include Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, SoundCloud, and iHeart Podcasts; and it's also available on YouTube.

Be sure to CALL in with your questions and comments by calling 812-NET-HAM-1 live during the show, or by Skype. Our username is hamtalklive. You can also tweet your questions before or during the show to @HamTalkLive.

 

I've bought a couple of the ARRL Handbooks in the decade or so I've been licensed. Rarely did more than glance at it and pull the CD for reference. I figure mostly because I can search the web for the answers to my questions 1000x faster. In this day-n-age, printed material seems more about tactile desires and nostalgia than practical usefulness. Ask any newspaper.

 

When all else fails you can still read the book. Some of the old still derive pleasure from reading the printed word.

 

I love filling my bookshelves (about 4500 volumes)with all the 'useless' "paper" books people trash. This way I don't depend on someone else's whims on what deserves to be 00's and 1's.....in case you didnt notice, that changes. Getting old books on google ain't what it was meant to be either.

The web has a lot of trash. Although I have had a picky episode with Ward in the past,he does do a great job of editing. Who edits the trash on the web before you see it?

My son is reading the tree-killing hardcopy of the Feynmann lectures. This is not an 'old age' preference for paper.

I have several handbooks. Some old, most new.

 

I too like to have the printed word. I also enjoy using the web for research. However, I have found many solutions to problems, or more in depth answers when I can sometimes revert to previous versions of the handbooks, etc.

My only complaint is that the print seems to be getting smaller and smaller.

Chuck k

 

Hi Ward and Everyone involved;

This book had been such a great motivator and beacon for the HAM radio hobby!!!

Everybody at MDSR is very pleased to see this great book get another update and release.

Alex (VE7DXW) and the MDSR Team

 

Ward is a great author, whether the text is on paper or a screen.
Lud·dite
ˈlədˌīt/
noun

1. a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16).
   • a person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology.
     "a small-minded Luddite resisting progress"

 

Have the 2018 Handbooks shipped yet? I ordered one near the end of September, and have yet to see anything.

 

I have saved Ham books dating back to the 30's on antenna building. Application of antenna theory hasn't changed and it won't. So why trash the Book . It has things the internet won't.
My suggestion is read the book then JUDGE.

 

Sorry that I just saw this. As a new Ham I bought the 2017 edition. When I was looking for some topic in particular, I loaded the CD only to find that each chapter is a separate document! Thus I couldn't search the book with Ctrl-F like I do for most things in PDF format. No way I was going to do that for each chapter to maybe find what I was looking for. Hopefully they load the entire book as one PDF sometime in the future.

 

I got my copy a few days ago.

Thanks and well done!

 

I ordered a copy because my last one (the 2017 version) is worn out from use. Not to mention coffee-stained when I got clumsy one day. I use both the hard copy and the CD copies but find the hard copy more useful for studying as I can "dog ear" or bookmark pages then flip back and forth between them as I study/read. That's very hard to do with the digital copy. The information inside is of great value to me.

 

Is there an option to get the CD only?

 

The CD has been replaced by a digital download. You have the option of downloading either a Windows download or a Mac/Linux download.

 

The physical book is a beautiful thing as is the vinyl recording