Dayton 2016: QRP-ARCI’s Four Days in May (FDIM)

For the past sever years, I’ve been attending the QRP-ARCI‘s Four Days in May (FDIM), which is held in conjunction with the Dayton Hamvention. FDIM includes a number of different events, the biggest being the seminar held on Thursday, the day before the Hamvention.

The seminar features a number of talks, and this year, the lineup included:

• Elecraft – Shrinking the Multi-Mode HF Transceiver, Eric Swartz, WA6HHQ. Elecraft likes to introduce new products at FDIM, and this year was no exception. The introduction of the new KX2 got this year’s FDIM off to a rousing start. I actually got to see it up close and personal, as one of the field testers, Bruce, N7RR, was sitting two rows in front of me, and he passed his unit around for folks to have a look. It’s a pretty cool little radio, at about half the size of a KX3. To make the radio smaller, they did have to make some compromises, though. The KX2 only covers 80m – 10m (no 160m or 6m), and there’s not an IQ output. Even so, lots of folks in the audience were buzzing about it.
• WSPR and the Raspberry Pi, Scott Cowling, WA2DFI and Zoltan Doczi, HA7DCD. To be honest, this talk didn’t do much for me. WSPR is kind of cool, and building an add-on board for the Raspberry Pi to run it is kind of cool, but I still can’t work up a lot of enthusiasm for it.
• 2016 – The Year of the Portable Operator From IOTA to SOTA to NPOTA, Guy Hamblen, N7UN. This was a great talk, and it’s gotten me interested in doing some NPOTA activations this year. Unfortunately, there aren’t many NPOTA sites that I can activate in SE Michigan. It’s pretty much the same for SOTA activations. Michigan is flat, flat, flat.
• Occam’s Scrip – the minimalist measurement mindset, Paul Darlington, M0XPD. Despite the need to explain the title of his talk, and his use of flowery language (well, he is English, after all), I mostly enjoyed Darllington’s talk. His theme was certainly right on. QRP is all about minimalism, and that mindset should translate into how we think about RF measurements as well. I would offer a caveat, though. Einstein is credited with saying, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” I’d paraphrase that, “If something’s too simple, it simply won’t work.”
• Troubleshooting and Repair Techniques, Mike Bryce, WB8VGE. This talk was a chronicle of Mike’s adventures in repairing old equipment. It was a real hoot, and almost the opposite of M0XPD’s talk. Mike used decidedly more down-to-earth language than M0XPD, in a flat midwestern accent. Lots of good tips for fixing various and assorted problems.
• Thermatron Homebrew Ideas and Techniques, Grayson Evans, TA2ZGE/KJ7UM. Aside from a few new wrinkles, TA2ZGE gave this talk about building circuits with tubes (devices that he insists on calling “thermatrons”) at FDIM a couple of years ago. It was fairly interesting, but having heard this talk before, I think that I’d rather have heard something else.

The only other FDIM event that I participated in was Vendor Night on Thursday evening. I didn’t sell as many books as I’d hoped, but I did make contact with several ham radio instructors. I also got to meet several readers, and that was fun.

In addition to those, I had a kid come up and take a look at the General Class study guide. He told me that he was going to take the General Class test the next day and was wondering if he should buy the study guide. I asked him if he was passing the online tests, and when he answered yes, I told him to save his money.

He came back some time later and asked about taking the Extra Class test. He said that he hadn’t really studied for it, but I told him to take it anyway. It wasn’t going to cost him anything, so why not? I heard later that he passed the test.