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Dayton Hamvention 2026: Day 3, Friday, May 15 – Forums

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Hamvention 2026 logoThe forums at this year’s Hamvention were pretty good—and I’m not just saying this because I was on the schedule. I spent most of Friday morning cruising the vendor booths and schmoozing with people I know. I stopped by the CWops booth, the Amateur Radio Digital Communication (ARDC) booth, and the Youth on the Air (YOTA) booth. In the afternoon, though, I spent most of my time attending the forums.

The first talk I attended was the Long Island CW Club (LICW) presentation, “Our CW Journeys.” I was interested in this talk because I’m in the process of updating my CW book and wanted to learn more about their process.

The presentation consisted of several “testimonials” from members how they learned Morse code by taking LICW classes and participating in LICW activities. The stories were very intriguing, and kudos to LICW for helping people have fun with Morse code.

Next, I stopped by the “Amateur Radio and the Law” forum to say a quick hello to Fred, K1VR, and Bob, K3RF. I didn’t stop to hear the talk, though, as my next stop was the “Hackers in Ham Radio” forum.

This forum was a panel discussion, led by Jeremy, KD8TUO. The discussion was a bit unorganized, but they did talk about how the hacker and ham radio communities intersect. I think that these two communities should intersect even more, and as part of Ham Radio Village, I’m helping to do that. Hackers are the kind of people that we want in ham radio.

The final forum of the day for me was “The Latest from ARDC: Grants and 44Net.” At this forum, folks from ARDC talked a great deal about their latest development, 44Net Connect. It’s taken ARDC a while to get to this point, but it looks to me like they’ve made connecting to 44Net a lot easier than it has been in the past, and I’m looking forward to see what use hams make of it.

There were also short presentations by a couple of their grantees, including the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC) and AMSAT. It’s always great to hear what other grantees are doing. ARDC has made a real difference in amateur radio, and I’m happy to say that it looks like they will continue to do so.

Dayton Hamvention 2026: Day 3, Friday, May 15

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Hamvention 2026 logoI feel a little guilty. I haven’t paid for a Hamvention ticket in several years. When I worked for ARDC, I had a vendor pass. That was nice because I could park in the vendor parking lot directly behind the fairground buildings. Last year, I finagled a media badge as a member of the ICQ Podcast. This year, I was issued a speaker’s badge (more about my talk in an upcoming post).

Not having to pay for a badge is not what makes me feel guilty, though. Aside from perhaps the media badge, I certainly gave back to Hamvention in some way. They got their money’s worth.

A line of people waiting to get into Hamvention.
This is just part of the line waiting to get into Hamvention 2026 on Friday morning. Credit: W2NNN.

What does make me feel a little guilty is not having to wait in line until 9 am to get in. When you have a speaker badge or vendor badge, you can just walk right in.

This year, I arrived at the Greene County Expo Center a little before 8:00 am, parked my car, walked right up to the speaker/vendor window and picked up my badge, then walked right into the fairgrounds. How cool is that?

This worked out really well. A friend of mine wanted me to visit the HRO booth and purchase a radio for him, and since I got in early, I was able to beat the crowds. The guys behind the counter were a little miffed at first as they weren’t quite ready for customers, but they accommodated me, and I was very thankful to them for that.

Next, I stopped by the Linux in the Ham Shack booth. This has become a tradition with me, and I always enjoy saying hello to Cheryl, W5MOO; Bill, NE4RD; and in the past, Russ, K5TUX. Unfortunately, Russ is no longer with us, but it was still nice to check in with Bill and Cheryl.

After visiting with the LHS crew, I tromped around the flea market for a bit. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but I always like to see what people are selling.

I was kind of interested in a device that one guy was selling – a Gonset Model 3022 3-Way Code Oscillator.  I’d never seen one of these before. It’s really a multi-purpose station accessory. It can be used as a code practice oscillator, but also as a CW sidetone generator or an AM phone monitor. The guy was asking $30 for it, though, and it was still pretty early, so despite his heavy sales pitch, I passed on it. I told him that I might be by later to see if he still had it.

I found another guy who was selling ham radio coffee mugs. There were a couple of those that I found amusing, including one that read “FT8” inside the international no symbol. He also had one that read, “Education is important, but ham radio is importanter.” Since I knew that my wife would kill me if I brought home another coffee mug, I passed on those, too.

Other than that, I didn’t really find anything that I wanted to buy in the flea market. Perhaps one reason is that there seemed to be fewer flea market vendors this year. There were big gaps between vendors in some of the aisles. I’m thinking that with such high gas prices this year, many sellers decided to skip Hamvention altogether.

More about Day 3 in my next blog post.

Dayton Hamvention 2026: Day 2, Thursday, May 14

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QRP-ARCI logo.
Four Days in May is an activity of QRP-ARCI.

Day 2 started out pretty early. The Four Days in May (FDIM) seminar starts at 8 am!

After a short drive from my hotel, I arrived at the DoubleTree Hotel a little after 7:30 am, expecting to sail in and claim a seat. I was, however, was surprised to see a line snaking down one of the hallways. Apparently, they weren’t letting people in yet.

As I walked down the hallway to take my place at the end of the line, I came across my friend Tom, W8TJB, who graciously let me take cuts. As it turned out, there were plenty of seats, though, so that was not a big deal. Here’s a short description of the talks I heard:

  • A Homebrewer’s Journey: How I got to where I am. Harold Smith, KE6TI, gave the first presentation of the day. He detailed his journey, from his high school days in the early 1960s to today. Harold’s talk included a lot of useful tips, but my big takeaway was, “When you’re homebrewing, you’re building for yourself.” With that in mind, Harold advised to not worry so much about how a project looks, or even how well it works. Focus on the enjoyment you had building something and what you learned from working on it.
  • Life is NOT Too Short for QRP if You Know a Few Tricks. Anthony Luscre, K8ZT, was responsible for this talk. He provided many, many tips for successfully operating QRP including how to select equipment, what antenna to use, what bands top operate, what modes to operate, and what times to operate. He also gave quite a few tips on operating technique. One tip that I plan to follow up on is his tip to use the 4X4XM Propagation Tools to better understand propagation.
  • The CFT1: the design philosophy and lessons in good user interface. Jonathan Kayne, KM4CFT, a young ham who recently graduated from Virginia Tech, told us the story of how he came to design the CFT1, a five-band, QRP transceiver. In this very interesting talk, he detailed his reason for designing the radio (a very noisy QTH which drove him to operate portable) and the entire design process. I enjoyed this talk so much that I thought that I might even buy one of his radios, but the kit cost $320, and since I still haven’t finished building my QMX, I decided not to.
  • Post-Hurricane Helene: The Role of Practical Preparedness and Community in Emergency Communications. Well-known QRPer, Thomas Witherspoon, K4SWL, lives in the mountains in western North Carolina, right in the path of Hurricane Helene. He spoke about how the hurricane affected him and his family, but perhaps more importantly, how the people of his community bonded to get through the crisis. As he was talking to an audence made up of hams, he talked quite a bit about the importance of communications in keeping that community together. “In a disaster,” he said, “communications is not just about passing information. It’s about holding a community together when everything else falls apart.”
  • Learn CW Like a Boss. In this talk, Jerry Weisskohl, AC4BT, gave us some tips on how to improve our ability to send and receive Morse code. He strongly recommended the use of Morse Runner and detailed  how he used the program to get better at receiving.
  • Vibe (AI) Coding for Radio Amateurs. AI is all the rage these days, and Dr. Stewart Bryant, G3YSX, showed us how we might use it for developing software for amateur radio projects. After introducing some of the concepts behind the current AI chatbots, he gave some examples of its use, including coding a VFO using an AD9851 and developing a GNU Radio script to display the spectrum of an audio input. Bryant is very big on the technology and urged us all to try it. I may just do that.

I say this every year, but FDIM really inspires me to be more of a builder/homebrewer/hacker. Maybe if I get more serious about it, I could even give a talk next year.

Let’s hit the park!

After sitting through these six talks, I was getting a little antsy, and seeing that the last two talks didn’t really interest me all that much, I decided to escape and activate a park. The park that looked the most promising was the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park (US-0732). At first I was a bit confused about the actual location of the park. The park actually consists of a couple of different locations, including the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center and the Huffman Prairie Flying Field. The POTA map shows the location of the Huffman Prairie Flying Field, which is out near Fairborn. Fortunately, I chose to go to the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center, which is in the Germantown section of Dayton. There is a nice, little park there next to the museum, which is perfect for POTA.

Man sitting in front of a radio on a picnic table.
It was a beautiful day for a POTA activation at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.

As I pulled into the small parking lot, I noticed a ham (whose call I don’t remember, unfortunately) there already. I got out of the car and walked over. He was trying to make some contacts with an Elecraft KH1 and and AX-1 antenna. He said that he wasn’t having much success but encouraged me to set up and give it a try, so I went back to my car and got my stuff. We chatted a bit more while I was setting up, and he seemed interested in my doublet antenna. After I got on the air and made a couple of contacts, he left.

Not long after, a group of four hams—N3AIR, N3VQH, K3MET, and KC3RMC—exited the museum and walked over. They had driven in from Pennsylvania and were taking in the sights. They were a fun bunch. We did the HT thing, and I got a park-to-park QSO with all of them on both 2 meters and 70 cm. Then, one of them took the picture above. I wish I’d gotten a selfie with them all.

We were joined by another ham—a W6—and they chatted while I operated. Like the first fellow, I didn’t have a whole lot of luck on 20 meters, but when I switched to 40 meters, I started making quite a few contacts. That’s one advantage of having a full-size antenna like my doublet.

After the Pennsylvania contingent took off, I operated a while longer by myself. All in all, I managed to make 45 contacts in about an hour and a half. Not a bad afternoon’s work.

Meeting the CWops

Two older men and a woman smiling at the camera.
At the CWops Dinner, I met, Howard, W1HRB, and his wife, Barbara.

My next stop was the CWops dinner. I met a lot of great operators there, many of whom I’ve worked on the air and/or swapped email with. Just before dinner was served, I found a seat between Steve, KJ5T, and Howard, W1HRB. Howard, and his wife, Barbara are shown in the photo above.

Howard, as it turns out, lives not very far from me, and I tried to recruit him to operate at one of our Field Day stations. He was unsure of his availability for Field Day, but said that he’d try to come to one of our club meetings. I think he’d make a great ARROW member, so I really do hope he comes to a meeting.

The dinner broke up about 9:30, and I head back to the hotel to get some rest for Hamvention the following day.

Dayton Hamvention 2026: Day 1, Wednesday, May 13

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Last Wednesday, I began my annual trek to the Dayton Hamvention. I live pretty close (three and a half hours driving), but I like to attend QRP-ARCI‘s Four Days in May on Thursday, so I head down early. I used to actually leave verrrry early on Thursday morning to get there by 8 am (and not have to pay for a night in a hotel), but I gave that up several years ago.

A couple of years ago, I started doing Parks on the Air (POTA), so I take the opportunity to stop at a couple of parks on the way. My first stop is Van Buren State Park, which is just north of Findlay. It’s right off the freeway (I-75) and very accessible. I arrived about 11:30 am.

Picnic shelter
This is the picnic shelter I use when I activate Van Buren State Park.

I set up in the picnic shelter (shown above) that’s near the entrance to the park. This was my third activation, and there’s never been anyone else using the shelter when I’ve operated from there. I set up my 66-ft. doublet at the far end of the shelter, by the trees.

That was my first mistake. I was in a bit of a hurry, since I wanted to get set up quickly, so that I could eat lunch while i was operating. In my haste, however, I didn’t anchor the mast very well, and it was very windy that morning. So, of course, the antenna blew over. Not only that, one leg of the antenna got caught in one of the trees that you can see in the picture. This particular tree sported some big thorns, which made disentangling the wire a bit of a challenge.

I did manage to get the antenna back in the air—and eat my lunch—but it was very chilly with the wind and all. I squeezed out 12 contacts in about 45 minutes, then decided to tear down and hit the road.

In 2024 and 2025, my next stop was Grand Lake St. Mary’s State Park near Celina, Ohio. It’s a lovely park, which oddly enough, has a small lighthouse on it. It’s more than 20 miles east of I-75, though, so I thought I’d try a different park this year for my second activation. That honor fell to Kiser Lake State Park.

Beautiful view of a lake.
It was kind of cloudy at Kiser Lake State Park when I got there.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure. Like many people, I use Google Maps for navigation. After leaving Van Buren State Park, I got back on I-75 for about 20 miles, at which point Google decided to direct me to the back roads. The closer I got to Kiser Lake State Park, the narrower the roads became. At one point, the road was so narrow that there wasn’t even a center line. The directions were true, though, and I arrived in good time.

It was still windy and chilly, though. I set up in a picnic shelter near the park entrance, making sure this time to securely anchor the mast. I was able to make 14 contacts in about 45 minutes, and then decided to call it quits.

The nice thing about operating from Kiser Lake State Park is that the route from there to Fairborn, where I was staying is short and takes the back roads, avoiding I-75. I got to the hotel in about 45 minutes. I headed over to the FDIM hotel, picked up my badge and then headed out to dinner. Overall, this was a great start to my Dayton 2026 adventure.

How to help others help you

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Cartoon panda exclaiming, "Help Me"
We all need help now and then.

Even though I am now retired, I am still a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and subscribe to their Career Alert newsletter. The latest issue features a short article from Rahul Pandey, founder of Taro, a platform for helping software engineers manage their careers. The article is about asking better questions to get the help you need in order to do your job better.

While the article is geared towards software engineers, I think it also has some good advice for radio amateurs asking for help with their stations or their projects.

The #1 rule about asking questions

As engineers, continuous learning is a fundamental part of the job. A huge part of learning comes from trying something, getting stuck, and then asking a question to your teammates.

Here’s what is often overlooked in that process: The quality of your question determines the quality of the answer. So it’s worth thinking about how you can level up your question-asking skills.

The guiding principle when it comes to asking a question is simple: Make it easy for others to help you. Let’s break down what that means.

Include the necessary information. In the software engineering world, for instance, asking something like “Can you explain why the app is crashing?” puts an enormous burden on the question recipient to collect more info before they can help you. They’ll need to know:

  • What action caused the app to crash?
  • Does the issue reproduce?
  • What do the logs reveal?

It’s usually not hard to anticipate what follow-up questions you may receive after you ask a question. Include those details in your question!

Show your work. One of the most common replies to a question is “What have you tried?” This is critical information to include in order to (1) improve the chances that the recipient can help you and (2) prove that you did the necessary homework.

Common details to include are: prior team discussions, code snippets, and relevant data. But be careful not to overdo it. Including too much code in your question will overwhelm anyone who’s trying to help you. You should spend time identifying the snippet that captures the essence of your issue. Remember, the golden rule is to make it easy for others to help you, which requires your judgment on the right level of backstory to include.

Explain your goal. The backstory is deceptively important in any question, especially for technical topics. For example, you may think it’s obvious why you’re trying to add a parameter to a function, but it’s probably not clear to your teammates. An error I’ve seen frequently is that the question is asked at the wrong “altitude”—the asker made some incorrect assumptions that led them to ask the wrong question.

To get the best answers, include a brief explanation of your goals at the beginning of your question to set the context.

Address the right audience: A personal pet peeve of mine from when I worked at Facebook was when an engineer would ping me individually with a generic question that others could have benefited from. Instead of messaging me directly, I wish they had posted in a group forum. By posting to a broader audience, others could have learned from the answer, and there may have been fruitful follow-up discussions. Moreover, asking the group will lead to faster resolution; it removes a single person (me) as the bottleneck.

The question of the 1:1 vs. group forum is just one element to consider. Is your question best handled verbally or in writing? Could your question be answered by a junior colleague, or do you need feedback from your team lead or manager?

By considering the above criteria, the quality of your questions will improve significantly, leading to more effective interactions and learning.

ARDC looking for volunteers

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It’s that time of year again – ARDC is now accepting applications for the next cohort of volunteers. They are looking for qualified individuals to serve on their existing committees, including:
Additionally, there are two new volunteer opportunities for 2026:

For more information about these opportunities, visit the ARDC website. I served on the Grant Evaluation Team this year and it was a very good experience.

Zero Retries Digital Conference to be held on Saturday, September 13, 2025 in Everett, WA

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I should have posted this sooner. My bad. If you’re in the Northwest and are interested in digital communications, please consider attending this conference in person. If you’re not, you can still sign up to attend the sessions virtually. There’s even an option for your club to attend virtually….Dan

We are pleased to invite you to the Zero Retries Digital Conference (ZRDC) that will be on Saturday, September 13, 2025 at the Edward Hansen Conference Center in Everett, WA. Due to the pandemic and other reasons, there has not been an in-person Amateur Radio digital conference for several years or any known plans for upcoming conferences. With GNU Radio hosting their conference at the same venue the week prior to ZRDC, Zero Retries seized the opportunity to bring back the in-person Amateur Radio Digital Conference to the Pacific Northwest. However, if people are unable to travel, there are alternative means to participate on the conference page link below and on the registration form.

About Zero Retries

Zero Retries is a unique independent newsletter that promotes technological innovations in Amateur Radio. The Editor, Steve Stroh N8GNJ, writes the majority of the newsletter with an occasional submission by one of his readers. Steve refers to Amateur Radio as, literally, a license to experiment with and learn about radio technology. He often jokes, but is serious, that radios are now computers… with antennas.

About the ZRDC

Planned presentations and demonstrations will be designed to enhance the skills and knowledge of the participants with topics such as but not limited to the IP400 Networking Project, M17 Digital Voice/Data system, MMDVM-TNC data system, ARDC’s 44Net VPN, software defined radio (SDR) and AREDN, HamWAN and other Amateur Radio microwave networking.  Attendees will have the opportunity to connect with peers, and discover innovative technologies that are shaping the future of Amateur Radio. A call for papers has been sent, which will provide the opportunity to learn from leading experts. The ZRDC 2025 will highlight the resilience and adaptability of the Amateur Radio community in the Pacific Northwest by embracing new platforms and technology that continue to foster the passion for radio communication.

In closing, I have created various ticket prices and multiple ways to participate. Please share this information as you see fit with others that might be interested. I have included the links below for registration and the conference. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Thank you for your time and consideration and hope to see you at the conference.

Sincerely,
Tina Stroh KD7WSF
Business / Conference Manager
[email protected]

Zero Retries Newsletter
https://www.zeroretries.org

Zero Retries Digital Conference 2025
https://www.zeroretries.org/p/conference

Registration for ZRDC 2025
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/7852x9m

Does amateur radio need a DEFCON?

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DEFCON logo.Last week, I taught my fourth one-day Tech class at DEFCON. DEFCON, as some of you may know, is one of the premiere hacker/cybersecurity conferences.

This year, I had 32 students in the class, and 30 passed the test that day, while the remaining two passed the next day after a little more study. 100% Yay!! The purpose of this post is, however, not to brag about my teaching prowess (well, okay, it is at least a little). Instead, I’m going to describe how DEFCON is organized and explore how we might adopt and adapt this model to amateur radio. And, in doing so, I’m going to compare and contrast DEFCON with the Dayton Hamvention.

The first comparison I’ll make is the number of attendees. Both events claim attendance somewhat north of 30,000. Hamvention is claiming an all-time high attendance of 36,814!

The second comparison I’ll make is the cost of admission. Hamvention costs between $25 and $30 to attend. DEFCON, on the other hand, cost $500 this year!

How does DEFCON get away with this? Well, first of all, DEFCON is more akin to a professional conference than a hobby gathering. While there are talks and activities that one would consider to be “hobby-oriented”—such as the Tech class I taught and the hidden transmitter hunts put on by the Ham Radio Village—the majority are geared towards the professional hacker and cybersecurity community. Overall, there were hundreds of talks and activities, wayyyyy more than you find at Dayton.

One of the reasons they are able to do this is they hold DEFCON at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), not a county fairground.  I don’t mean to criticize the Dayton Amateur Radio Association or the Greene County Expo Center, but just to compare the two venues. The LVCC is set up to handle the kind of event that DEFCON is. The Greene County Expo Center just doesn’t have the facilities to host more than four talks at a time.

The other interesting thing about DEFCON is its organization around “villages.” These villages are special-interest groups that focus on a particular activity. I already mentioned the Ham Radio Village (HRV). I haven’t counted how many other villages there were at DEFCON this year, but I’d say that there were at least a couple dozen. These included groups such as the Red Team and Blue Team villages, the Aerospace Village, the Automotive Village, the Social Engineering Village, the Biohacking Village, and many more.

Each of these villages is given the space to conduct their activities, which usually includes talks about the village’s subject matter. For example, the Ham Radio Village had talks about Meshtastic, AREDN, and how amateur radio might play a part in resisting a fascist government. To help ensure that the village had enough people to conduct all these activities, the DEFCON organizers give each village a number of free admissions to pass on to volunteers.

A DEFCON for ham radio

DEFCON is an incredibly cool experience. I’ve really only touched on a small part of it. Think how cool it would be if we had something similar for ham radio. Our villages could include a Digital Communications Village, some kind of Hardware Hacking Village (was there even a soldering skills workshop at Dayton this year?), a Software Hacking Village, an Antenna Hacking Village, and because I enjoy CW, a CW Village.

One thing that comes to mind—and this is just a partly-baked idea—is expanding the scope of QRP-ARCI’s Four Days in May. That might be asking too much of QRP-ARCI, though. Perhaps we could get groups like LICW or CWops to ramp up their activities at Dayton to form the CW Village.

One might think that the ARRL would be the perfect group to organize such an event. Unfortunately, they’re too busy alienating their members and playing silly political games to even consider doing such a thing. Instead of coming up with some original ideas of their own, I heard that they tried to take over Hamvention from DARA. That would have been a real disaster. Kudos to DARA for resisting that effort.

At any rate, I’d love to figure out how to do this. If you have any thoughts and would like to discuss this further, comment below or contact me directly.

 

 

I need a new sticker

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For years, I’ve given out this sticker:

Oval sticker with the text, "Hams Obey Ohm's Law"

To be honest, this sticker was never as popular as I thought it would be. Maybe the message is too corny. I don’t know.

At any rate, I am running out of these stickers and need to buy some more. I’d like to come up with a new, more popular design. I’d love to hear your thoughts.