RSGB Books - A Bad Case of Deja Vu.

Regulars will know that I gave up my membership of the RSGB during 2015.  This was a result of very many aspects of the society, not least its apparent domination by 'big guns' in the contesting world, its failure to support the Cornish in their bid for a secondary regional locator, and their inability to properly promote the hobby in the mainstream, lay media.

I feel I know every brick in that bloody chimney by now...  Image: Amazon UK

I've a friend who is a new ham, who has joined the RSGB recently.  So we swap society magazines.  He gets my old QSTs for a while, and I get his RadComs.  I can quite confidently say that I am the one drawing the short straw in terms of what is worth reading!

We also swap books.  This week, I received the loan of 'Backyard Antennas', notionally by Peter Dodd, recently deceased.

Once again, the RSGB has produced a book firstly by a bread-and-butter author and, secondly, one that is as near as one can get to a reprint of the same old rope contained in very many other RSGB books.  It's so bad now that one comes to think that putting a new cover on old material is not far off a blatant rip-off of those buying them.

There is a considerable incentive for the RSGB to keep issuing and promoting its own books, because it obtains a very considerable fraction of its income from those sales.  Recent statements about the position of the society are quite clear that books were going to be pushed - and pushed hard - to maximise income in the face of a dwindling membership.  In the same breath, the society admitted it had difficulty finding new authors for both books and RadCom articles.

True, there is only so much you can write about antennas.  It's not likely some fundamentally-new wire antenna will suddenly be thought up by someone after a century of thought and practice.  But there is an awful lot of repeat-issue material by the RSGB, and it really will need to change tack on this, before the rip-off becomes embarrassing.  I think it's pretty close to that point, to be honest.

And if you're interested, the only two books I've found to be long-term, good investments are the ARRL Antenna Book, and the International Antenna Collection volumes.

Unsurprisingly, I haven't found any reason in the past year to consider my leaving the RSGB a mistake, and plenty of good experiences with the ARRL to consider it to have been long overdue.