RE: Donna Halper's article...

["Hakim Madjid" <HMadjid@mindspring.com>]

Rod O'Connor writes:

> As a long-time subscriber to PC I find a lot of
>broadcast-related items featured in each issue. Usually they are
>poorly-written and not very informative, but Donna's feature was one of
>the best articles I have read there in a long time.

I too am a long time reader of PC or Pop Comm as they nickname themselves.
I have to agree that over the years, some of the content is very poorly
written and un informative. Donna's article is an example of the exact
opposite. Monitoring Times seems to be for the most part a better written
magazine, all though in the past several years two of my favorite MT
writers, Richard Barnett and Larry Magne left the magazine.

About a decade back a friend of mine humorously dubbed PC *UN*Popular
Communications. What happened was that PC published a reader's letter, along
with a photograph of a small building, with a pair of small Yagi antennas in
a Vee-shaped arrangement pointed skyward. The reader asked if anyone could
identify what this installation was about. Apparently the photo had the Pop
Comm editors stumped - after all, *THEY* are supposed to be *THE*  radio
communications experts. In reply to the letter, PC asked if any reader could
identify the photo.

What the photo depicted, was a transmitter site for an ILS (Instrument
Landing System) marker beacon. I didn't bother to write in telling them so.
Of course one could argue that ILS marker beacons aren't really radio
communication - they provide navigation info to aviators. But still I was
surprised that no one at Pop Comm could figure this out. :-)

73 de Hakim, (N1ZFF)