I hate to say this, but I learned absolutely nothing at the Dayton forums this year. The reason for this is that I didn’t attend a single one.
Normally, I try to make some of the forums at Dayton, and in the past, I’ve even spoken at one. Not this year. Aside from perhaps the TAPR forum, the Antennas forum, and maybe the ATV forum, none of them really called to me. (A complete schedule can be found in the online Hamvention program.)
I do regret missing the TAPR forum. They had a couple of talks on mesh networking and updates from Chris Tests, KD2BMH on the Whitebox Project and Mike Ossman on the HackRF project. I missed it because I didn’t think about the forums until about 10am Friday morning, and by that time, the forum was half over. Rather than try to shoehorn myself into what was probably a very packed room, I decided just to forgo it.
I did attend the QRP-ARCI Four Days in May (FDIM) seminar on Thursday, and this year, they had another great lineup. George Dobbs, G3RJV, gave a very nice talk that not only talked about circuits, but also the people he’s met over the years and the places he’s been. Paul, M0XPD, gave an interesting talk on crystal filters and using an Arduino to control a QRP rig. The final talk, by Glen, KW5GP, was also about using an Arduino to control a QRP rig. Other talks covered transmission lines and SWR and adventures in PCB making. I learned something in every single one.
How about 2016?
As I was perusing the Hamvention program, it hit me that there was no CW forum. This despite there being numerous vendors selling keys and paddles, and booths for FISTS, NAQCC, SKCC, and CWOps.
So, I’m going to suggest to the Dayton Hamvention folks that next year we have a CW forum. I’m not sure exactly sure what we’ll talk about, but I bet that I could easily fill a panel whether we talk about how to choose the best key or what CW club to join. I’m guessing that I’d get a good turnout of folks interested in learning more about CW. If you have a particular topic that you think might make a good forum, please let me know.
Dan, I’d like to volunteer to be on your CW forum panel…if you are seeking volunteers. I can speak to the points I make in a chapter in my book, RIDING THE SHORTWAVES: EXPLORING THE MAGIC OF AMATEUR RADIO. It is titled: “Why You Should Learn Dah di dah dit Di dah dah.
See the chapter here: http://www.donkeith.com/n4kc/article.php?p=17
Good luck getting on the agenda!
73,
Don Keith N4KC
http://www.n4kc.com
http://www.donkeith.com
Thanks for the offer, Don. While I’m not sure yet if they’ll agree to my proposal, I did e-mail David, N8HSO, the forum chair, and he sent me a very encouraging reply. Stay tuned!
I attended FDIM, the TAPR/AMSAT banquet, where Mike Ossman spoke on the HackRF project, and also two Hamvention forums, the SDR forum and the Digital forum. They were very conveniently scheduled at the end of Friday and Saturday, from about 3pm to 5pm, when I was about ready to sit down for awhile, anyway, after walking all over the flea market and Hamvention floor all day.
There was a paper presented on CESSB, which is promoted as a cleaner and more efficiently means of SSB modulation (already implemented in the latest Flex radios), and FreeDV’s codec2, which is also already implemented in the Flex radio, a nice surprise. There was also an update on the White Box project, and a panel discussion on the future of digital modes on ham radio.
After finding out that Flex had already beat Elecraft to the punch in implementing these two new modulation modes, I hot-footed it over to the Elecraft booth, where I asked Wayne when they might have them implemented. The answer I got was not very encouraging. It was along the line of “It doesn’t seem very popular right now, so we’ll wait and see.”
Someone I related this to, said, “Well, what will happen is when it gets popular, the only users will be Flex users.”
I suppose an email campaign to ask Elecraft to implement might do some good, but disappointing to say the least.
I *did* order a few upgrade items from Elecraft to get my K3 to perform almost as good as a K3s, without the expense of buying a new K3s. Once I get those installed, I’ll only lack the upgraded auto-tuner with ‘true bypass’ mode, and the 4-layer main board, which is said to improve the noise floor on transmit and receive by 3-6 dB.
Also, the new transmit sensor for the P3, so I can now see my modulation envelope on transmit. This should make adjusting the K3 for clean digital transmissions much easier.