''Popular Communications'' was a

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

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 telep ...

shortwave radio Shortwave radio is radio transmission using radio frequencies in the shortwave bands (SW). There is no official definition of the band range, but it always includes all of the High frequency, high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30& ...

, CB,

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

, 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.

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 dormant magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts first published in 1945. The English language edition is read worldwi ...

'', '' CQ VHF Magazine'', 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 United States and ...

''. 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 is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license, whether an invalid license or no license at all. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are rec ...

, 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 conventionally have been implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/ demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented ...

, 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