Hamvention 2023 was a blast again (Part 1)

Writing about an event like Hamvention is a daunting task, which is why I put off doing it. What I’ve decided to do is to cover it in several post instead of one big post. Here goes…

Driving to Dayton

I’m really fortunate in that it takes less than three and a half hours for me to drive to Dayton. I have even left very early in the morning some years to avoid having to pay for an extra night in a hotel room.

This year’s drive was very pleasant. The weather was great (as it would be for the entire Hamvention), and there was very little construction along the way to delay me. I left about 9:00 am and arrived at the Greene County Expo Center about 12:30 pm.

Along the way, I listened to podcasts. My listening habits are quite eclectic. The podcasts that I had downloaded for the trip included:

• Linux in the Ham Shack
• Foundations of Amateur Radio
• BirdNote
• Radio Slovakia International English Service
• Pivot
• The Allusionist

By the way, I use the AntennaPod podcast app on my Android tablet to manage my podcast subscriptions. It’s a great open source app. I’ve even donated to the developers to encourage them to continue developing and improving the app.

Poor band conditions :(

In recent years, I’ve had either an exhibitor badge or a forum presenter badge, which gives me access to the fairgrounds before the general public. I really enjoy wandering around the fairgrounds and watching Hamvention take shape. One of the stops I always make is the Linux in the Ham Shack booth to kibitz with Russ K5TUX, Sheryl W5MOO, and Bill NE4RD.

After I’d harassed them enough, I decided to set up my KX-3 out in the flea market and try my luck on the bands. There’s a great spot underneath a couple of trees there. Last year, I had great success operating from that spot. This year, not so much. The bands were just terrible, and I gave  up after scratching out just two contacts.

After wandering around a bit more, I decided to head over to the hotel, check in, and have some dinner. I also caught a short nap before heading over to the QRP-ARCI Four Days in May Vendor Night.

Two new radios at Vendor Night

There were two radios that people seemed to be excited about there. The first was QRP Labs QMX 5-band digital transceiver. The QMX features include:

• 80-meter, 60-meter, 40-meter, 30-meter, and 20-meter bands
• 5W output
• embedded SDR receiver,
• 24-bit 48 ksps USB sound card
• CAT control
• synthesized VFO with TCXO reference

The QMX can only run CW and single-tone FSK modes currently,  including everything in WSJT-X, JS8Call, some fldigi modes e.g. RTTY, Olivia and more. On CW, the QMX has click-reducing RF envelope shaping. It is not suitable for phase shift keyed modes such as PSK31 or modes involving multiple concurrent tones such as WinLink.

The price is only $95! It’s kind of amazing that QRP Labs can offer these kits for that price.

The second radio was the sBitx v2 from HF Signals, home of the μBitx. This radio costs $500, but it is completely assembled and outputs 40 W. Other features include:

• Modes: FT8, SSB, CW, RTTY, PSK31 and others out of the box (no computer required)
• Compact 10″x 6″x 2″ size, slips into the backpack
• Raspberry Pi inside, all preconfigured software & source code on-board
• Hackable, tinkerable, scriptable
• Integrates logging, logbook, spotting in one compact box
• High Performance Hybrid SDR with passive front-end
• Brick wall crystal filter 8 crystals
• Fully electronic T/R and band switching
• Open source, documented
• Can be powered from an external 11.1v LiPo batteries for field ops

This looks like it could be a fun radio to play with. I like the 40W output capability and the open source software. I may have to buy one of each. :)

That was about all I could handle for one day. After vendor night, it was back to the hotel to crash and get ready for Friday at Dayton.