Earlier this week the FedEx guy dropped off the 100th edition of the ARRL Handbook, the special hardback edition.

We have arrived at a milestone. The 100th edition of The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications is here: Handbook 100. How do you celebrate the most widely used one-stop reference and guide to radio technology principles and practices? By continuing to fill the pages of another edition with the progress and achievement of radio amateurs. Handbook 100 is written for everyone with a desire to advance the pursuit of wireless technology. Here is your guide to radio experimentation, discovery, and innovation.

I ordered it because of it being a special milestone, not because I’m looking for the latest reference information. It’s on my desk still wrapped in the cellophane it was shipped inside. And I’ll tell you a secret, last year I ordered the 2022 edition of the Handbook and it’s still wrapped in cellophane too. I’m not a book hating Luddite, the 2013 and 2018 editions are on my bookshelf and well-worn. I usually buy a new Handbook every four or five years as the core material doesn’t change often enough to warrant it more frequently than that.

Normally I wouldn’t have ordered one at all this year, but being it’s a special edition I wanted it as a collectable. I may never open it. I don’t need to since I also downloaded the electronic version of the same and with a few exception prefer it to the actual printed book.

But I have decided that this will very likely be the last ARRL Handbook I purchase. Unless I survive to see the special 125th edition available in which case I’ll repent and order it too.