Well-known ARRL Contributing Editor Ward Silver, N0AX, has debuted a new column for Nuts and Volts magazine — “The Ham’s Wireless Workbench.” Nuts and Volts is written for “the hands-on hobbyist, design engineer, technician, and experimenter,” which describes a lot of radio amateurs. The editor of the print and digital publication is Bryan Bergeron, NU1N.

“The general idea is to open the door to ham radio for electronically inclined folks who either may not be aware of the hobby or who may find some of our technology interesting and/or useful,” Silver said. “This is an excellent opportunity to provide outreach to the active and growing electronic ‘maker’ — or do-it-yourselfer — audience.”

Every other month, Silver will cover a topic that showcases some aspect of Amateur Radio technology that is not typically covered by non-ham media. Such topics, he said, would include such things as antennas, transmission lines, connectors, propagation, transmitters, and modulation — areas not often discussed outside of QST and other ham radio publications. His first column in the January 2015 issue is an introduction to antennas — specifically how to make a VHF/UHF ground plane for listening to NOAA weather stations. First, though, Silver acquainted his readers with ham radio and pointed out that several Nuts and Volts editorial staffers and contributors and many of its readers are radio amateurs.

Silver pointed to a new “Amateur Radio Technology Portal” page that he developed for the ARRL website that offers links to some of the technical facets of Amateur Radio, “without requiring the visitor to be familiar with ham radio terminology or jargon,” he said. He said he’s already received several e-mails through the site.