Thursday evening, I had a remarkable couple of contacts.
For some reason, it occurred to be to tune around the phone bands, and I came across someone calling CQ. Before I could tune up, though, someone else had called him. They were having trouble making contact, though, as they were both QRP stations.
One of the stations trying to make contact was Ivan, NO2CW, who just happens to be the father of Tommy, N1SPY, the boy I met in Dayton. When the two stations gave up trying to make contact, despite the help of at least one relay station, I jumped in and started talking to Ivan.
As it turns out, Ivan and his family were visiting some family here in Ann Arbor, and they were operating a KX2 in their relative’s backyard. After a short chat, he turned the microphone over to Tommy and we had a nice chat about his visit to Ann Arbor.
Shortly after that, I heard another station calling CQ – KM4TUB! I called Chuck, and he came right back to me. We also had a nice chat. One of the cool things about both of these contacts is that they are both all-time new ones (ATNOs) for me. Tommy is the first “SPY” that I’ve ever worked and Chuck is the first “TUB” that I’ve ever worked.
Lansing Hamfest was a wet affair
The forecast was for rain yesterday morning, so Thom, W8TAM, and I decided to go to the Lansing Hamfest instead of operating portable yesterday morning. We even took some stuff to sell.
Of course it was wet up there, too. It rained from about 8:30 am until about 11:00 am, and at times, it was coming down pretty hard. Fortunately, Thom brought his EZ-UP canopy, which kept us dry. The same could not be said for most of our customers, who were walking around in the rain. Actually, I’m kind of surprised that anyone showed up at all.
It was Thom’s first time on the seller side of the table, and he quite enjoyed the experience. He sold one of his Matchboxes and a bunch of double-sided adhesives that he picked up at a thrift shop. He also had a Lafayette CB test set and an amusing little tube tester that he found at the thrift shops. Neither of those sold, though.
I sold some books, but none of the keys I brought. One guy offered me $40 for the Kent single-lever paddle, but that offer was just too low.
All told, the swap wasn’t a complete washout (pun intended). We had fun, and besides, what else could we have done on a rainy Saturday morning?
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