Recently, we have talked about ham radio technical articles in QST as well as the ARRL Handbook. Time to consider ham experimenter’s QEX.
QEX magazine started life as an ham experimenter’s newsletter in December, 1981. Now, it’s a glossy magazine published six times a year by ARRL. While QST might be technical light, the Handbook technical everything – you will find that QEX is technical hard core.
I would class most of its articles as “advanced” and many as “expert”. For most articles, you need to be fairly proficient in the subject matter even to read them. This is not a bad thing, just the reality. And, in most cases, you need to be seriously into home brew.
Experimenter’s QEX started in 1981 as a type-written newsletter to exchange ideas among people with similar interests. You will see that the authors sought to balance original work with practical construction. And to introduce digital ideas as well as analog. They advised writers to send in short snippets of source code, but to make sure they installed a new ribbon first! (Remember printer ribbons?)
With a lead article on designing low noise pre-amplifiers for UHF, you immediately got the message this was a serious newsletter, not for the faint of heart in 1981.
If you want to take a look at all the QEX published between 1981-2016, you can find them here.
Experimenter’s QEX – Regular Reading
I still read QEX every two months. Usually, I find one or two articles in line with my interest. Lots of digital content, about things like using micro-controllers with ham radio. Lots of antenna content, typically about unique, not-yet-mainstream designs.
In March there was a good article on building a phased loop antenna array. Other articles over the past year including design and build projects for software defined radio.
While not for everyone, I recommend QEX which comes free with a QST subscription, and compliments it nicely.