In article , "Jim Hampton"
writes:

My gut feeling is that a lot of mags have or will drop.

Yep - first "ham radio" over a dozen tears ago, and now "73".

Yes, there will
(likely) always be antenna construction articles, articles on safety, DXing,
and a (very) limited amount of homebrewing. Do you remember the
construction articles of the 50s and 60s?

And the '70s, '80s, '90s...

Still plenty of construction going on. But a lot of it winds up on websites
instead of magazine pages.

Homebrewing is, in part, the victim of affluence and less expensive
manufacturing methods.

Back then, there were a lot of
home brew projects.

Sure - and most of them were the result of work done by hams in their own
workshops.

Even Heathkit threw in the towel a couple of decades
ago.

Heathkit ran into several problems, but the main one was that the basic
advantage of kitbuilding was the cost savings resulting from eliminating labor
cost. When electronics assembly required lots of hand labor, that savings gave
Heath an edge.

But kits are not dead. See

http://www.elecraft.com

for a look at what's available today. Over 5000 Elecraft rigs have been built
(3500+ K2s and 1500+ K1s, plus accessories and now the new KX1).

How much did anyone learn dropping in an integrated circuit that
contained the whole if amplifier?

Are you against PROGRESS? ;-)

That plus postal rates going threw the
roof hasn't made it any easier for magazines.

One wonders sometimes if it wouldn't be less expensive to send us CDs.

I've dropped all magazine
subscriptions except tv guide (sign of the times LOL). Even when I
assembled my first computer (a Heathkit H-8, which I still have), there were
modifications to be performed. I had to chuckle when Kilobaud had an
article on increasing the transfer rate from the tape deck to/from the
computer from 1200 baud to 2400 baud. I was already running 4800 baud (and
could get it to sync, but not transfer, at 9600 baud. I think the cheap
cassette deck had something to do with it.).

HAW!

Which raises a question - is my computer "homebrew"? It was built from parts
obtained from a variety of sources. But no soldering or metalwork involved.

Those days are long gone; today we have satellite tv and BPL (hopefully, not
for long on the BPL!!!).

I sure hope so.

73 de Jim, N2EY