The QSO Today Virtual Ham Radio Expo starts tonight (with a keynote speech by Dr. Scott Wright, K0MD, COVID-19: Amateur Radio’s Impact On Problem Solving To Create A Global Response To The Pandemic) and runs through Sunday. At first, I wasn’t too excited about this, but the closer we get to it, the more I’m liking it.
There really is a great lineup of speakers, on just about any ham radio topic, that you can think of, including contesting, CW, satellites, Heathkit, portable operation, and more. Here are some of the talks that I’m interested in seeing:
Saturday, 8/8 | 1600 Z | The History of Heath Company, the G.I. Bill, and Economics of Restoration – Paul Topolski, W1SEX |
1815Z | FlexRadio: An Introduction To Remote HF Operating – Michael Walker, VA3MW | |
Sunday, 8/9 | 1530Z | Youth Forum, including 5 Fun Things for Youth to Do with Ham Radio |
2245 Z | Getting Started with Amateur Radio Satellites – Tom Schuessler N5HYP |
I was given a chance to propose a talk, but silly me, I never got back to Eric, 4Z1UG, the main organizer. This looks like a great lineup, and I would have been honored to be a part of it.
In addition to the talks, there will also be “virtual” vendor booths. There’s quite a nice list of exhibitors, including Begali, Elecraft, Gigaparts, a bunch of podcasters, and more. It should be interesting to see how these work out. For example, the lure of the Begali booth at Dayton is actually being able to play with one I2RTF’s fantastic creations. The virtual booth doesn’t offer that experience.
Anyway, it all sounds like fun, and that’s what amateur radio is all about, no?
Dave New, N8SBE says
The Begali booth had a large collection of 30-second videos of their keys, all being spun around slowly on a turntable, so you could get a good look at the goodies. The lighting was well-done, as well.
I tried my darnedest to get in the top 20 leader board, but I never could figure out how the top guys had over 6000 points. I put together a spreadsheet of what I though was all the possible points, and couldn’t account for more than 5100 points, myself.
They still haven’t announced the winners and reset the leaderboard for the next 30 day period, but supposedly they will give out a duplicate set of prizes for that period. With a more leisurely time frame, I’ll actually be able to watch the presentations all the way through, instead of skipping every 15 minutes to the next one, so I could get the points for watching each one, in the two days allotted.
I know that Eric says that having a leaderboard increases engagement, but the way it was designed, it really forced folks that wanted to focus on earning the top prizes, to actually skip all over the platform, and not spend any real time anywhere.
Hopefully, Eric et al will take a good look at how things worked out and tweak a few thing s before the planned March 2021 redo.
As far as you doing a talk, I noticed that couple of tracks were short and could have used a couple more talks to make them all round out even in length. I’m sure that Eric would have welcomed your talk. Maybe in March…
Chris KC9AD says
I attended the Expo non-stop from about 0800 to 1400 PDT both days. I thought the virtual conference platform was amazing and very powerful in terms of my engagement. The talks I attended were excellent, and the live Q&A sessions were outstanding. I recently moved to Arizona and I am determined to finally get into CW. But I’m gonna need a lot of help. I have read your two CW excellent books and that got me partway bitten. Then I discovered many new additional resources this weekend.
For example, after the CW Ops talk, I asked why paddles are so expensive. The answer was, don’t worry about it; for entry-level, just pick up any random used paddle to start with. After you have some experience, you can better discern what is best for you.
So I started shopping on eBay and eHam and stumbled across this: https://cwmorse.us/product/blue-double-paddle-morse-code-key-with-base/
So then I watched a review of this paddle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2clxuZ21DR0 where the reviewer mentioned that most of the parts were 3D-printed.
So then I went to Thingiverse and found this:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2054230
Since my wife is an expert with her 3D printer, I “ordered” the parts from her.
Stay tuned. 73.
Chris KC9AD
Dan KB6NU says
Cool! Let me know how the 3D printed paddles work out for you. They usually get mixed reviews, but I agree that to get started, they’re probably just fine.
Steve O'Shaughnessy says
I’ve been playing around with Expo site for a week now. I’ve managed to accumulate a little over 4,000 points. I don’t know how though. I, too, put everything in a spreadsheet and only found less than 3,000 possible points. There must be some hidden list of links somewhere. I don’t know how I got 4k and certainly can’t figure out how others got 5710. The top 3 all have this score, so it must be the limit.
Loved the Expo though. Because of family commitments I don’t make it very many Ham events. Now with the pandemic … I think this is the wave of the future.
Jason says
I just want to know how the gamers did it. I’ve been all over that dang site in the last few days and I can’t even get ON the leaderboard, and it now has 200 positions.