Yesterday, was the second annual A2 Mini-Maker Faire. It was a blast, but man, was I beat afterwards.
One reason I was so tired, is that I stayed up kind of late Friday night working on my display. The thing I brought was an updated version of the code practice oscillator that I’ve been hauling around for the last couple of years.
Instead of the No-Solder Code Practice Oscillator that I had been using for this demo, I built a touch paddle and connected that to my WinKeyer. Since the sidetone on the WinKeyer is just a wimpy, little piezo transducer, I added an audio output to the keyer and plugged in the amplified speaker that I use with my KX-1. When I was finished with that, I had enough amplitude to compete with pretty much anything at the Faire.
I got there just a little after 8am to set up, but that was way too early. It didn’t open to the public until 10am, and way before 9am, I had my Morse Code demo set up, the literature out, and my QSL cards displayed. Dave, N8SBE, arrived about 10:45 am with his K3 and panadapter and set up a nice display on his half of the table. He ran a coax cable out to the screwdriver antenna on his car, which he parked just outside the door we were next to.
Racking Up Some Points
At one point, I just couldn’t help myself. Dave was tuning through the CW portion of the 20m band and ran across the Alabama QSO Party. This made a good demonstration of the panadapater as there were quite a few signals in a relatively small bandwidth.
I told Dave that he should work some of those stations. Instead, he invited me to sit down and work them, which I proceeded to do. I made about ten contacts before I quit. It was kind of amusing trying to explain to people about contesting, and about the Alabama QSO Party in particular, but hey, that’s what we do. :)
More Than Worthwhile
Overall, I was kind of surprised at the level of interest, to be honest. I wasn’t able to attend last year’s event, so the only point of comparison I have is the folks who come to the Hands-On Museum. At the museum, we occasionally get someone to show some interest, and even more occasionally, someone who’s really interested.
Yesterday, was a completely different experience. Just about everyone who came up to our table yesterday had a real interest, and it was a pleasure to tell them about ham radio, demonstrate the touch keyer and K3, and talk to them about our classes and station at the museum. I’m sure that as a result, we’ll have a couple more folks—including several kids—getting their licenses. I’d been kind of dubious about participating earlier in the day, but I’ve changed my mind completely on this. It was more than worthwhile.
By the time 4pm rolled around, I was pretty tired. So, even thought the Faire was supposed to be open until 5, I packed up and headed home. Dave stuck around, though, and even though the crowd had noticeably thinned, he told me this morning that our booth attracted a fair number of visitors during that last hour.
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