All QST Articles 12/1915 - 12/2004 Available on ARRL Web Site

Ed,

I'm very pleased that the League made this effort, so much so that I'd like to help make the results even better. To that end, if the cost wouldn't cause my checkbook to burst into flame, I'd be willing to "sponsor" the rescanning of one or more back issues of QST at higher quality. If others were to join in, you might be able to afford a better scanner and perhaps some student help, properly supervised, to ensure high scan quality.

Again, thanks to everyone for making this resource available.

73,

 

Never mind, you answered my question.

K2WH

 

If ARRL has plans to rescan QST/QEX, ... perhaps it will be better to go through something like www.jstor.org . JSTOR is a nonporofit organization maintaining an online archive of scholarly journals. I am sure that ARRL will be able to arrive at some arrangement with them to make the content available.

73 de vu2lid / n8li

 

Great job, ARRL! I'm enjoying reading old QST articles from way back. Good stuff!

73

 

Server Disappeared?

I just tried to click on several different articles and got the "white screen of disappearance."

Hmmmmm. An overload, or, worse?

 

Thanks for the kudos, Lee. I was just one of the team, and far from the one that did the most work.

Just to make sure everyone knows, the downloadble articles don't include the Ham Radio articles. Our license to use that material allows only putting it on the CDs we sell. ARRL does not own the copyright to Ham Radio. We can't even make photocopies. The search-engine is the same one that has always been on the ARRL members' page, and it searches QST, QEX, NCJ and Ham Radi. The downloadable articles includes only QST from 1915-2004. The newer articles are availabe on the annual periodical CDs. The ARRL Technical Information Service (TIS@arrl.org) staff can make photocopies of new articles.

73, Ed, W1RFI
ARRL Lab

 

Thanks. There are no plans to do a wholesale rescan, but I will pass along the information you provided to the people who will know what to best do with it.

I can't see a wholesale rescan of older issues. For most applications, for most articles, the existing scans are usable. The advantage to using the present scans is that it could be done right now! With all of the many thousands of downloads that have happened so far, we've had zero requests for photocopies, indicating that most people find the scans usable.

Jon Bloom is looking into the best way to report errors. In the meantime, errors can be reported to TIS@arrl.org. There are some errors we are finding in the database (even after all the time the QSTView products were sold). If members run across misisng pages in the download, or misspellings in the database, let us know; we can fix those with a simple change to the database.

Major scanning errors also must be fixed, IMHO. One member told us of a crooked page with some words cut off. Any photocopy requests that come in in will be evaluated by the Lab and we may do some rescanning as needed to fix those. I'm looking into whether using the "cut pages" we have of old issues and a flatbed scanner may be an economical way to make photocopies.

So this is all seen as a good opportunity to make the service better. I just have to look at Lab-staff resources to make sure we strike the best balance between doing some rescanning against the other things the Lab needs to get done on a regular basis. But a lot of good ideas are being considered, so let's see where this goes from here.

73, Ed, W1RFI

 

If you have cut pages of issues then you may save yourself a lot of time and work by getting a sheet-feeding scanner. Then when you get a request for an article, you can process the whole issue at once, shredding out all of the articles with little additional effort. Making a copy of a specific article would involve nothing more than printing a file.

 

This is GREAT!!! I just spent all morning downloading all kinds of articles on Heathkits and Hallicrafters, wow! What a wonderful service! I also entered my callsign and was astonished to find a little article I didn't even know was there about something I did back in the 70s! SO KUDOS to the League for a wonderful addition to the website!

 

I should have been patient.

The article links now have a new link that lets people report errors. (Kudos to Jon.)

Members can now easily tell ARRL if a title, author, page number is wrong, missing pages, or if a scan is simply not usable. Reports sent to tis@arrl.org will still be addressed, but there is now an on-line error-report form.

I am a bit surprised to see that a number of the older issues have "contined-on" pages that are not right in the database, but a simple reporting mechanism will probaby get us most of them in fairly short order.

73,
Ed, W1RFI
ARRL Lab

 

That has crossed a lot of minds, but some of the cut pages are fairly old and somewhat brittle with time. They are an important resource that we do need to take care of, as the very process of cutting and organizing was pretty expensive to begin with. Unfortunately, paper feeders have a design pretty similar to paper shredders, at least if my experience with the paper feeders in the office photocopy machine hold true.

Ed, W1RFI

 

well it make those who have bought all the CDs suckers huh

What a huge waste of money buying all the CDs from 1915 to date. They don't even allow the installation of the CDs to a folder on a hard drive to view and search without changing out each CD one at a time.

Thanks for nothing.

PS some of the pages have the black and white colors reversed.
life member.... reeeeeal disapointed
K4TWO Gsry

 

KR2D -- Predecessor to R2D-2 ?

 

Sour Grapes, Eh?

OK, there, Gsry. (Did you mean Gary?)

Since you want to gripe, you have the luxury of reading the magazines, am I not correct? You know, from cover to cover. We don't, unless we choose to do as you did and buy the CD collection. Also, any articles newer than 2004 are not downloadable.

There are many who keep stacks upon stacks of paper copies, just so they can refer to them. And, you have the privilege of doing it very easily on your computer.

I don't know this for certain, but I suspect that not every remark and comment of a given search subject will be downloadable. If it isn't, then you still have another distinct advantage.

As to not being able to extract a desired article or story, I'm not so sure that's completely blocked. Even if it is, there probably is software that will allow you to copy a file that you want to store separately.

Enough said.

73.

 

Just being able to look at anything and everything Doug Demaw ever wrote for QST over the years makes it well worth being an ARRL member.