KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Catalogs are about possibilities

Posted: 23 Oct 2017 11:30 AM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


When I was a kid, I used to regularly get catalogs, such as the Allied
Radio and Lafayette Radio catalogs and pore over them for hours. Even if I
couldnt afford to buy the latest Knight-Kit or Lafayette shortwave radio, I
could imagine what it would be like. These catalogs were chock full of
possibilities.




I spent many hours poring over theÂ* Allied and Lafayette catalogs as a kid.
These two are from 1968, when I was 13 years old.

So, you can imagine how I felt when, last Thursday, I found both the
Autumn/Winter 2017 DX Engineering catalog and the 2018-2019 Newark
Electronics/element14 catalog in my mailbox.

DX Engineering has really taken the amateur radio world by storm over the
last ten years or so. I probably dont have to tell you about that. If youre
an active amateur radio operator, Im sure that you have heard about—and
probably ordered from—DX Engineering.

I think that they did a very smart thing by investing the money in a print
catalog. Theres something about browsing a print catalog that is just more
satisfying than browsing online.

DX Engineering has just about everything you need to have fun with amateur
radio. The one glaring omission? They still dont carry my study guides!

The Newark/element14 2018-2019 catalog is a completely different beast.
Amateur radio operators are only a small part of Newark/element14s market,
but one nonetheless. They have, for example, attended the Dayton Hamvention
for many years.

As such, the catalog is not a ham radio catalog, but if you build stuff at
all youll find something of interest in its 1,799 pages. It includes nearly
any kind of electronic part that you might need.

The section that might you might want to start with is the makerspace
section. In this section, youll find Raspberry Pis, BeagleBones, and even
micro:bits.

Like I say, these catalogs are all about possibilities. Get your own
copies—theyre free—and page through them. Id be surprised if you didnt run
across something that you didnt know about before, and it gave you some
ideas about your next amateur radio project.

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