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 Previous: QRP Community: The QRP World Above 50 MHz |  Next: The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
March 28, 2003
This week, find out how easy (or not) it is to get an equipment manual on-line from your favorite manufacturer.
One of my jobs in the real world is as an e-librarian. I am responsible for building and maintaining an intranet web site for our technical documentation. This Web site permits my fellow employees to have easy on-line access to everything we write.
Currently, there is a debate about how to put this same information on a publicly accessible Internet web site. Do we password protect it or just let the public have free access to all our technical documentation? That is a decision for the higher-ups, not me.
Curious ham that I am, I wondered how accessible are manuals produced for Amateur Radio equipment. To find out, I got on the Internet and began hitting the web sites of various ham radio equipment manufacturers.
 You can find manuals produced by the U.S. government on-line at the National Technical Information Service web site, but you will have to look elsewhere for Amateur Radio equipment manuals. |
All but one (whose name I will not mention) had manuals on line. All the manuals I found on line are in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (pdf), however, all manuals are not on line. Some web sites had a long list of accessible manuals, while others had shorter lists with some obvious missing equipment manuals. Here are my findings, site-by-site in alphabetical order.
Alinco gets high marks for its on-line manual accessibility. Simply go to the Alinco Welcome Page, click on the On-Line Manuals link, and voila, a long list of the on-line manuals appears.
ICOM's on-line manual access is unique. Go to the ICOM America web page, click on the Support link, then click on the Documents link. At that point, a legal document called "Terms & Conditions" conditions appears. If you agree to the terms and conditions regarding the on-line documents (by clicking on the 'I Agree' button), then a list of the on-line manuals appears. If you click on the 'I Decline' button, then bupkus, nada, void, nil, zilch.
Kenwood manuals are easy to get. Go to the Kenwood USA web page, click on the Downloads link, then click on the Instruction Manuals link to access what is available on-line.
MFJ, like Alinco, offers quick and simple on-line manual accessibility. Go to the MFJEnterprises.Com web page, click on the Manuals link and you are there.
Drake is easy. Go to the R.L. Drake Company Home page, click on the Technical Support link, then click on the Manuals link.
Access to manuals on the SGC site requires the manual hunter to enter a name, address and other info before going on to the documents. Click on the Publications link from the home page to get started.
Yaesu on-line manual access is the most difficult of all the manufacturers I tested. Instead of putting all the on-line manuals in one place, the manuals, if any, are located on individual equipment pages. Go to the Yaesu web page, click on the Yaesu Amateur link by clicking on the photo of the ham in his shack (the far right photo), then click on text and/or image links to find the equipment of your choice. If a manual is available on-line, there will be a Manual link at the bottom of the equipment information page.
And for those companies long out of business, eg Knight-Kit, Lafayette, Eico, Swan and a gaggle of other kit and/or boat anchor manufacturers, there's still a smashing Web resource for old manuals: Ken Grimm's "K4XL Boat Anchor Manual Archive," or BAMA.
Until next time, keep on surfin'.
Editor's note:
Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, resides in downtown Wolcott, Connecticut, and is a member
of the QQCC (QST quarter century club), i.e., he has been a QST writer for 25
years. Since getting his ticket in 1969, Stan has sampled nearly every entrée
in the Amateur Radio menu (including a stint as Connecticut Section Manager),
but he keeps coming back to his favorite preoccupations: VHF and packet radio.
As a result, he runs a 2-meter APRS digipeater and weather station (WA1LOU-15)
from his mountaintop location in central Connecticut. Stan has been a long time
advocate of using computers with Amateur Radio and wrote programs to dupe
contests and calculate antenna bearings way back in 1978. Today, he is on the
board of directors of the Tucson Amateur Packet Radio (TAPR) and uses his Mac
to surf the Internet searching for that perfect ham radio web page. To contact
Stan, send e-mail to wa1lou@arrl.net.
| Previous: QRP Community: The QRP World Above 50 MHz | Next: The Amateur Radio Crossword Puzzler |
