Argusy wrote:
That's the first one I ever bought (graduated that year, that's how I
know) but sadly, now gone.

Graham AKA VK5CRC


Juan M. wrote:
I still have my 64 edition.

"Argusy" wrote in message
...


J-McC wrote:

I used to really enjoy the ARRL handbook. I used to purchase a new
one every so often here in Australia. I think the best valve ones
were in the late 80's and then naturally it slowly evolved to
semiconductors, integrated circuits and printed circuit boards and
more sophistacted circuits etc.


Just took a look - I've still got a 1977 issue. Threw out the earlier ones
when I moved around the countryside (RAAF Bases Amberley, Edinburgh,
Garbutt, Laverton (now some other name), not in any particular order)


I think the old days of truly making your own receiver and or
transmitter are allmost gone.


It's not a question of can't. It's a question of don't want to.

Look at a Mini-Circuits catalog sometime. What people would have given
for those parts in 1940...0r 1960?
http://www.minicircuits.com/

My biggest beef with ARRL handbooks were they were too specific to
Amateur radio. If you knew RF theory and good design practice you could
build anything you wanted. They used to publish all these homebrew
receivers that were actually poor designs because they assumed the
amateur wanted a ham-band-only receiver and nothing else, and also did
not have a generator to align them with. They were also very trendy in
that when the new came in they promoted it to the exclusion of all
else. For example, they went over 100% to solid state on PCBs in the
early 70s, despite the fact a lot of hams never liked making PC boards
and quit building when they were convinced the tube equipment was no
good. They did not promote the idea that you needed good test equipment
and encouraged the use of half-assed methods and procedures. When they
did publish test equipment projects it was for the stuff you could buy
cheaply, not for what you really needed that was expensive. They never
published a frequency counter that was any good even though counters
were high dollar relative to build cost until the 1990s.

Still, there's a lot of good data there. My favorite ARRL books are
1955, 1962, 1965 and 1976. The RSGB books from that timeframe are also
excellent and the W6SAI book can be as well, but he was a poor editor.