Sunday, August 14, 2011

Monitoring Times....

A few weeks ago I was at the local book store with Julie she was getting her supply of photography periodicals. While there I came across a magazine that has intrested me but I never had purchased..Monitoring Times.  Monitoring Times is a mix of Amateur radio, Short Wave and scanner information. As  I was looking the magazine over I noticed they offered it via email each month as a full color PDF. I did not end up purchasing the magazine but at home I looked  up the details of what Monitoring Times calls their MTXpress version. What I found out was it's cheaper than the paper version, it has click-able links which I find are a great
add on and if  you want it's printable. Finally and best of all as soon as the magazine is released it's  in your email box waiting for you to read. I let a subscription lapse on a bi-monthly magazine that seemed to consistently arrive during the second month of it's release. It would be great if CQ and QST could take advantage of this technology. I did end up paying for a year subscription of MTXpress and it's great. It has
KBPF3 board
rekindled my interest in Short wave listening. So it's back to the Elecraft K3...funny how a lot of my post's seem to sneak back to Elecraft. They offer and I just purchased a board you instal in the radio that gives you general coverage from 500khz to 30mhz and then from 48mhz to 54mhz. So in a few weeks my short wave adventure will begin once again.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

I would rather pay for a paper copy of a magazine every time. I hate how you have to spend more and more time looking at a screen.

There are some interesting online mags but I never read them. If they came through my letter box and I could pick one up and read it whenever I felt like it and wherever I felt like it then I would.

VE9KK said...

Good afternoon Julian, I am going to give this one a go but it's true there are limitations.

John AE5X said...

Ditto Julian. I've tried Kindle, MTXpress and even a Kindle-like app on my Droid but I keep coming back to the same notion that advances in technology don't necessarily represent advances in ease of doing things. Magazines & books were meant to be read without requiring circuitry.

If books had been invented *after" Kindle et al, they would be seen (correctly) as superior.

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Mike, the magazine looks interesting but there is so much info and free magazines on the internet I doubt if it tells something new. I'm surprised that the "superb" Elecraft K3 doesn't have general coverage. My humble Icom 706 has it since I purchased it. Probabely it has something to do with preselection/filtering?? 73, Bas

VE9KK said...

Good after noon John, I have a Kindle and I only use it for reading books. It is able to get on the internet and I have tried to check Hotmail with it but it is just a pain to do. I can see the app on a cell being bothersome to even read books on.

VE9KK said...

Bas that is a very good question and I had the same question. What I found out was the K3 has band pass filters for 160/80 40/60 30/20 17/15 and 6 meters. If the receiver is tuned outside these bands the above band pass filters will reduce the sensitivity. The KBPF3 will be switched in automatically when you tune outside the ham bands.

Unknown said...

Exactly. It's just a result of the Elecraft philosophy of making modular radios so the many K3 owners who have no interest in short wave listening (or some other feature like transverter interfacing) don't have to pay for a feature they aren't going to use.

Jspiker said...

Been a subscriber of the electronic edition of this magazine for several years and love it. I can take an entire years worth of the magazine on my Kindle in the PDF format. Works great and love being able to just "Click" on the web links.

I print out only the articles that interest me....saves a lot of paper and ink. hihi

VE9KK said...

I have to get it on the Kindle to see how it looks I know I have tried hotmail and it just did not work out very well viewing wise.

Jspiker said...

Change the viewing screen to "landscape" mode. It makes it tolerable.

VE9KK said...

I will give the landscape mode a go...thanks