Tomorrow, I’m driving down to Dayton, or Xenia at any rate, to attend yet another Hamvention. I’ve got a very full schedule:
- Wednesday:
Drive down to Dayton. Meet some friends for dinner. If anyone wants to join us, let me know, and we can figure out how to arrange this. - Thursday:
Attend the QRP-ARCI Four Days in May. This series of seminars runs from 8 am – 4 pm, and most of these are really well done. In the evening, I’ll be displaying my books at the FDIM Vendors Night, and somewhere in there, I have to head over to the Hamvention site to pick up my speaker credentials. - Friday:
At 9:15 am, I’ll be speaking in Forum Room #4 (near the grandstand) on how to teach a one-day Tech class. If you have any interest in teaching ham classes, please consider attending. I’m kind of concerned about the traffic and parking situation at the new venue, so I’ll be heading over there very early.After the talk, I’ll be hawking my wares in booth #6410, the Dayton Mini Maker Faire booth. I’m teaching a one-day Tech class at the Dayton Mini Maker Faire in August, and they’ve graciously offered to share their booth space with me. Stop by and see me.
- Saturday
I’ll be at the booth again, but hopefully, I can sneak away for a while to see some of the flea market and the other vendor exhibits. At the end of the day on Saturday, I’ll be heading home. I expect to be pretty much wasted by then.
I’ve been so busy preparing my presentation and ordering merchandise to sell and arranging booth space that I really haven’t thought much about what I might want to bring home with me. One thing that I do want to buy is some 450 Ω ladder line. A couple of the newly-licensed Techs come over last Saturday to borrow an old 2m radio that I loan out. If I’d had some ladder line, we could have built a roll-up J-pole antenna. Another thing that I want to buy are some new finger pieces for my Begali Magnetic Pro.
I’m also thinking about buying an Icom IC-7300. Yeah, I know that’s last year’s radio, but no one has ever accused me of being on the bleeding edge when it comes to the radios I own. I did get a chance to use one a month ago, and it looks like it would be fun to operate. So, if I sell a lot of books, I may come home with one.
If you were going to Dayton, what kind of stuff would you be looking for? Is there anything that you’d like me to look at for you? I could try to do that and write about it here.
Dave New, N8SBE says
If you are seriously considering the IC-7300, you should check out the recent ARRL product review, in particular the sidebar on the lab report. There are some quirks you should be aware of, but in general there are workarounds for most of them. It seems that Icom just can’t fix their power overshoot problem, which has plagued a number of their other rigs.
Maybe they are just copying that part of the schematic from one rig to another. Otherwise, it’s a pretty impressive rig.