Poptronics Is Gone???

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greg123
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by greg123 »

Dean i agree. The loosleaf format is great 'cause i can place the articles as i see fit and dont have to leaf through many ads to see them.<p>Too bad there isn't an easier way to do the mag. Maybe an internet mag? With easy to print HTML pages? Maybe a free hosting site?<p>I dont know. I can write some articles, but my day job prevents me from any editorial aspects.<p>Greg
Dean Huster
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Dean Huster »

Now it appears that the original Gernsback forums ("Electronic Bench" and "Resource Bin" have now been taken off the line. What a danged shame. There was a wealth of information on those boards. They had come out with the "new" versions of those boards, which they closed down first after the demise of Gernsback, but they weren't as easy to use as the old ones, although they were very easy to use to post .bmp and .jpg files.<p>I've had to send back about 8 subscriptions to the kind folks who were so supportive about the magazine venture. But, I wasn't about to burn them by getting started and then failing. Just today, I got a message from another person who was willing to advertise in the "magazine". With enough advertisers, I could give the venture another try, because it's advertising that would make it financially feasible. To run it on subscriptions alone was going to be a lost cause.<p>I'm apprehensive about scraping everything together again and getting the advertising going so that it would work out. I hate the idea of starting, stopping, starting, stopping, etc. Doesn't instill much confidence in folks.<p>Dean
Dean Huster, Electronics Curmudgeon
Contributing Editor emeritus, "Q & A", of the former "Poptronics" magazine (formerly "Popular Electronics" and "Electronics Now" magazines).

R.I.P.
Timothy Rasch
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Timothy Rasch »

What happens to my subscription to Poptronics ? It was good till June 2003. Will it be added to Nuts And Volts to extend my subscription? Tim Rasch Please send Email to [email protected] or to the bulletin board here.
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jollyrgr
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by jollyrgr »

It is sad to see all of these magazines dissappear. I recall as a young kid the neighbor next door cleaned out his garage. He gave me stacks of old Popular Electronics magazines. These were the ones from the 1950's and 1960's. Can anyone else remember Carl and Jerry from this magazine? It was so much fun to read the stories about things to come; such as color TV, solar batteries etc. These were things I already had. I recall one such story about how some of the first color TVs were built from kits. This was at a time when you could actually FIX a TV set. Now sets are fixed by "board level" repair at most shops. One article I recall talked about using a TV to detect tornados. The scheme was to tune your set to channel 2 or 3 (which ever was not in your area) and monitor the screen. If the static started to shrink and leave black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, a tornado was near. There were numerous things I would have liked to build from the circuits covered in these magazines but most of the circuits contained tubes or transistors that were no longer available. <p>Does anyone remember a magazine called Elementary Electronics? This was a product review/construction/DIY magazine that I loved. I can still recall one article about how to convert an FM radio to receive the AM aircraft band. (Quick synopsis: detune the FM discriminator and spread the coils for the FM oscillator to change the LO frequency.) I performed this mod on an old "all in one" stereo and used it to monitor airplanes going into and out of ORD. This magazine even provided construction projects that were quite easy for even most novice to build. Does anyone know what became of that magazine? I do recall they did review CBs and antennas quite often. Did the decline of CB kill this magazine?
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bodgy
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by bodgy »

On your note about Tornado tracking with your television, it wasn't that long ago (70's?) when in the UK you could check that your radio was slap bang on Radio 4 Long Wave as the LEDS in the early calculators refreshed at 200KHz or 1500metres if you prefer, and would drown out the transmission. <p>Remember the nixie type leds displays those calculators used to have?<p>colin
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Dean Huster
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Dean Huster »

Elementary Electronics was by the same publishing firm as Radio-TV Experimenter and often an article in one appeared in another at a later date. EE wasn't very advanced in its projects as it's title would indicate while RTVE was a little higher on the chart in that area. RTVE was interesting in that each issue had 1/3 of a section of "White's Radio Log" in the back. If you collected three issues in succession, you had a complete "White's" that provided AM, FM and TV station locations, frequency, call letters, power, etc. for the U.S., Canada and Mexico. That U.S. information is available on the FCC site now.<p>"Carl & Jerry" were regulars in Popular Electronics. So were several authors in the various magazines such as Lou Garner, Tom Kneitel, etc. Don Lancaster and Forrest Mims were introduced to us through those magazines. So were all the various MITS and SWTP kits as they hit the market, starting out as projects in the magazines. It seems like every six months, Southwest Technical Products (Ft. Worth) was coming out with a new audio power amplifier project/kit. I think that the fall of CB just changed the subject matter of the magazines a little. CB provided for a lot of cute projects since most CB transceivers were limited in features and back in the early 1960's, the band was relatively new.<p>Dean
Dean Huster, Electronics Curmudgeon
Contributing Editor emeritus, "Q & A", of the former "Poptronics" magazine (formerly "Popular Electronics" and "Electronics Now" magazines).

R.I.P.
greg123
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by greg123 »

Well, i'd like to say thanks to Nuts & Volts for continuing the poptronics subscriptions. Although i just renewed both my nuts and poptronics subscription in December, the extra issues are great. It's really good to see nuts taking over the old mailing list so lots of people are not left out of touch with the electroncis world.<p>Greg
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Dean Huster »

ARE they? I'd only heard that the Poptronics/N&V was being proposed. I'd not heard that it had happened. If so, what did the message from whoever it was have to say?<p>Dean
Dean Huster, Electronics Curmudgeon
Contributing Editor emeritus, "Q & A", of the former "Poptronics" magazine (formerly "Popular Electronics" and "Electronics Now" magazines).

R.I.P.
greg123
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by greg123 »

Dean, and for everyone else, the link to the info in my last post is here:<p>Poptronic's Info<p>Dean, I will email the link to you as well.<p>Greg
jalbers
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by jalbers »

Check out http://www.epemag.wimborne.co.uk/<p>You can subsribe to this magazine and download it in .pdf format each month. It is just as good as Poptronics.
Dean Huster
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Dean Huster »

Larry Steckler just sent me an e-mail stating that the website is back up again. I checked it out, but it doesn't seem to be working quite right. The "old" forums just produce server errors and the "new" forums, although they pop up, don't seem to be working as far as posting goes. I haven't checked out the rest of the site yet.<p>Dean
Dean Huster, Electronics Curmudgeon
Contributing Editor emeritus, "Q & A", of the former "Poptronics" magazine (formerly "Popular Electronics" and "Electronics Now" magazines).

R.I.P.
chessman
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by chessman »

Dean,<p>If you're still considering starting your magazine, I'd be more than happy to create the layout and put it all together. I've gotten so much from the electronics community that I'd love to give back as much as possible.<p>~Kyle
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Edd
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Edd »

As per Larry Steckler..........the Poptronics web site forum is now functional and responding to posts.
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Dean Huster
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by Dean Huster »

Edd, that's "sort of responding to posts". I wasn't able to edit my post on "A NEW MAGAZINE" or even reply to it, but had to initiate a new topic to deal with the subject. So, something's not 100% there yet.<p>Dean
Dean Huster, Electronics Curmudgeon
Contributing Editor emeritus, "Q & A", of the former "Poptronics" magazine (formerly "Popular Electronics" and "Electronics Now" magazines).

R.I.P.
dmine45
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Re: Poptronics Is Gone???

Post by dmine45 »

I too am saddened to see the demise of Radio-Electronics->Electronics Now->Poptronics and Gernsback publications.<p>I started subscribing to R-E in 1986 when I saw the cover of the Oct. 1986 issue on how to make a satellite TV descrambler. I was hooked from there!<p>I'm sure with the Internet, and the downturn of the economy, and less people who are "tinkers" in electronics - I can see the demise of that and other fine publications. I'm sure I saw it coming with the combination of Popular Electronics and Electronics Now into one publication in 2000. However, I wish that they had a "final" issue to close loose ends and such.<p>RIP to Gernsback and their fine publications. I just received my Nuts and Volts today (wondering why I haven't received Poptronics - and why I got N&V instead). Reading the postings in this forum - I now know why. I hope that N&V is a fine publication as the former Gernsback ones were.<p>Dave P.
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