''Popular Communications'' was a

magazine A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...

with content relating to the radio hobby, including

scanners ''Scanners'' is a 1981 Canadian science fiction horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Stephen Lack, Jennifer O'Neill, Michael Ironside, and Patrick McGoohan. In the film, "scanners" are psychics with unusual telepathic ...

shortwave radio Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 me ...

, CB,

amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...

, AM and FM broadcast band listening, radio history, and vintage radio restoration. The magazine existed between 1982 and 2013. It was based in

Hicksville, New York Hicksville is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York. The population of the CDP was 41,547 at the 2010 census. History Valentine Hicks, son-in-law of abolitionist ...

History and profile

''Popular Communications'' was first published in 1982, succeeding the CB radio oriented magazine ''S9'', published from 1962 to 1982. The magazine was published by CQ Communications, publishers of ''

CQ Amateur Radio ''CQ Amateur Radio'' (also known simply as ''CQ'' or ''CQ magazine'', and formerly as ''CQ: The Radio Amateur's Journal'') is a magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts first published in 1945. The English language edition is read worldwide; Spani ...

'', ''

CQ VHF Magazine ''CQ VHF'' was a magazine that served the ham radio operators whose operational and technical interests lie above 50 MHz. The magazine focused on radio technology, products, and activities that exist on 6 meters, 2 meters, 440 MHz and ...

'', and ''

WorldRadio ''Worldradio'' was a monthly amateur radio enthusiast magazine published in Sacramento, CA, United States from July 1971 to January 2009. The magazine was published in English and drew its subscription base primarily from the America and Canada ...

''. The magazine featured articles covering a broad spectrum of radio topics, regular columns by recognized leaders within the hobby, product reviews, schedules of shortwave stations, and logs of radio communications, including

pirate radio Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially w ...

, AM, and military aviation transmissions. In addition to these traditional aspects of the radio hobby, the magazine also highlighted more modern facets such as

software-defined radio Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that have been traditionally implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by me ...

, scanning software, live station streaming, podcasting, and emerging technologies. In late-December 2013, CQ Communications announced that they would cease publication of the printed version of ''Popular Communications'' along with ''CQ VHF''. These two magazines were combined with WorldRadio in a single digital publication to be called ''CQ Plus'' starting in February 2014.

History and profile

References

Further reading