Day 1 at the 2022 Dayton (Xenia) Hamvention is winding down, and I just have to blog about it. It’s been so much fun that even if I had to go home today, I’d say that the trip was worth it.
Now, you might be asking, “Doesn’t Hamvention start on Friday?” Yes, it does, but I’m here representing ARDC, so I have an exhibitor badge. That let me get in today. Exhibitor hours on Thursday are from 8 am to 8 pm.
I got there a little after 8 am and went to get my exhibitor badge. That went smoothly enough, and be 8:30 am, I carted the ARDC swag over to our booth (Booth 1302, by the way). At this early hour, it doesn’t look like Hamvention yet. Below is a photo I took at around 9 am showing how empty it was. The Yaesu folks were hard at it, but it looks like the rest of the vendors slept in.
For the next hour and a half or so, I just hung out and schmoozed with other hams that I know, including Jim K8JK and George K9TRV. I was waiting for the weather to clear up a little. I brought my KX3 with me and wanted to do a little operating, but it was foggy and damp, and even though it was forecast to clear up, it was looking like rain to me.
About 10:45 am,, the sun broke through for a bit, so I decided to give it a go. I found the tallest tree in the flea market to throw my 66-ft. doublet up into and set up the rig on one folding chair while I sat on the other.
40 meters was in great shape, and over the course of a couple hours, I made about a dozen contacts, including some SSB contacts with a couple of multiple-operator POTA stations, whose operators were on their way to Xenia. One notable contact was a 30-minute QSO with a station in Columbus. We were both 599. Columbus is about 60 miles from Xenia, so I guess it was some weird short skip.
Just before I decided to pack it in, a passerby suggested that I try 10 meters. I heard a couple of stations on 10, including one DX station whose call I never got, but none of them could hear me. I packed up after a couple of hours, and just in time, too. As I was coiling up my antenna, the folks whose flea market space I was using drove up.
After a bit of lunch, I did a quick turn around the flea market. Not many were set up yet, so I didn’t see anything really exotic. After the flea market, I went schmoozing again. My first stop was the Mississippi Valley Amateur Radio Association’s emergency communications bus. This club got a grant from ARDC, and they done a great job outfitting the bus with both HF and VHF/UHF gear.
My final stop before heading off to dinner was with Russ K5TUX, Cheryl W5MOO, and Bill NE4RD at the Linux in the Ham Shack booth. These people were hard at work setting up their booth, so I didn’t bother them for too long, but I wanted to touch base with them, as there so graciously had ARDC on their podcast.
After that, it was off to dinner with Jeff, KE9V. Jeff is also a ham radio blogger (although I can’t seem to find his blog just now), and we’ve known each other for quite a while. After dinner, Jeff Tweeted, “Just had dinner with @kb6nu — we solved a lot of problems but so much laughter that it couldn’t be recorded and taken seriously. Thanks Dan, enjoyed that a lot!” Well, Jeff, I enjoyed it a lot, too, especially because you paid! Next year, dinner’s on me.
Now, it’s off to bed to get ready for tomorrow’s adventures.
Glad you are having a great time up at Dayton, and thanks for the reporting!
I live in Tampa, only 60 miles away from the Orlando Hamfest. IMHO, it is not even close to Dayton, as far as Ham Fests go, but it a whole lot closer to me than Dayton is.;
Dayton – went down on Wednesday, set up the camper at the KOA, went to Fairborn to pick up my Four Days in May credentials, saw that the seminar facility had been cut down to a 1/3 the normal size (since only about 60 attendees, instead of the over 200), but that meant no real social distancing, so I opted to watch via Zoom on Thursday from the camper.
Went back to Fairborn 8pm Thursday for vendor night, and picked up a QCX-mini kit from QRLlabs, another 5-watt single band CW transceiver kit, but left soon after as the room was filling up, and virtually no one was masked. I guess Ohio thinks there is no pandemic.
It rained all night Thursday and didn’t let up until about 6a Friday morning. I figured the flea market would be rained out, and they were urging folks to use off-site paved parking, but that would mean getting on a shuttle bus with about 100 unmasked folks, so I drove to the grass parking, and managed OK with my 6-wheel 4×4 truck. Friday turned out to be pleasant, and by lunchtime I ventured out into the flea market, and it wasn’t really wet/muddy. I bought a number of items from inside vendors and a couple of flea market items and left about 4pm, about an hour early.
It then rained again that night for a bit, so it turned out that I didn’t get much radio done at the campsite, because I haven’t figured out yet how to get a coax into the interior without creating a hole somewhere. That 5th wheel is pretty well sealed.
I went back Saturday morning, and spent a couple of hours first thing finishing up the flea market. I found my best find then, an Elecraft K2, with all the options for a great price. All in all the flea market was a bit sparse this year, maybe only 65-75% full. I then bought a couple more items from inside vendors (every time I went indoors, I masked up, even though virtually no one else was), hung around the flagpole area for an HFPack get-together that never really materialized, and decided to pack it in early, because it was hot and sunny and I was wearing out. I left about 2pm, and when I was a few miles north of the Hamvention, the clouds opened up and a real downpour happened, so I’m glad I was not in the flea market then.
That evening, when I went to get fuel and food at the next exit down from the KOA off of I-70, the real storm came through with 60 mph winds and torrential downpours. I had to sit in the Arby’s lot for 1/2 hour waiting for it to pass, so I could go through the drive-through without flooding the interior of my vehicle.
I decided that I wouldn’t go back on Sunday, and just packed up and came home. I was out of the KOA by about 10am, and back in Arbor by 130pm. So all in all, a decent trip, in spite of the weather, and so far, I’ve tested negative, so there’s that to be thankful for.
Like your short and to the point editorial. Good job.
My group decided most people wasn’t going to wear masks so stayed home
Maybe next year.
Wayne w9bbb