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ARRL Membership Value Proposition Increases

arrl membership value

Check our the new ARRL membership value proposition. You can get their four leading magazines for the price of one! Well done.

For most of my time in ham radio, I have belonged to the U.S. based American Radio Relay League. At one time, Canada was a “section” in the ARRL, but now instead we have Radio Amateurs of Canada as a separate organization.

ARRL and Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) are the most useful English-speaking ham organizations, at least in terms of their information publications. I value these very much as sources of ideas and assistance. Both have been around for more than a century.

I belong to ARRL mostly to receive its monthly publication, QST. Typically, I sign up for 3 years to get a small discount. My annual cost for receiving QST in the mail is CDN $83, not too bad, but not cheap for a retired guy, either.

So, a few weeks ago I got my renewal notice and asked myself: do I really need QST? And if so, do I really need a print edition mailed to me? Switching to digital edition would save me nearly CDN $20/year.

Or, maybe I should drop ARRL and just join Radio Amateurs of Canada? RAC also has a monthly magazine, The Canadian Amateur. RAC membership with the magazine is CDN $56 annual for print or $48 for electronic. Trouble is, I find TCA a far cry from QST.

ARRL Membership Value Raises Its Game

So, while I was wrestling with my decision, I read in the latest QST that ARRL is going to provide all four of its major magazines for the price of one membership rather than additional subscriptions.  Wow. If I renew my ARRL membership this month, I can get all four magazines electronically for CDN $66/year.

I am sold. QEX is a great technical journal, which I would love. NCJ is about contesting but also has some helpful articles. Before this new deal, QEX alone would have cost me CDN $50/year.

On The Air is ARRL’s recent magazine geared towards newer hams. I checked it out and found it contains useful technical articles which complement QST.

So, I am thrilled with the improved ARRL membership value proposition, and my renewal is in the mail! I will just have to adjust to reading QST on my iPad.

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