Saturday started (not so) bright and early as I headed out to the Jackson Hamfest. At this hamfest, I wasn’t looking for gear so much as votes. I brought along bunch of cards with my name and call and a message asking people to vote for me.
As I handed out the cards, I stopped and chatted with people. That was fun. Probably the most memorable discussion I had was with a guy who said, “Whadda ya want to do that for? The board’s just an old boys’ club and you’re not going to be able to do anything there.”
Well, after debating this for a bit, I said, “Well, I tell you what. Why don’t you just vote for me, and I’ll give it a shot.” He agreed to that and then went on his way. So, at the very least, I got one guy to vote for me.
One thing I hadn’t really counted on, but probably should have, is the negativity that some feel towards the ARRL. One guy even told me he’d never join the ARRL again because of what they did in 1961! (In 1961, they urged the FCC to adopt incentive licensing.) Yipes, that was 44 years ago! Get over it already! Needless to say, I didn’t spend much time talking to this guy.
Yet another presentation idea
I also met with Tim, WD8PMD, president of the Jackson club. He gave me the idea for yet another club presentation–“The Five or Six Knots No Ham Can Live Without.” It turns out that Tim is affiliated with the fire department in Jackson, and knows quite a bit about tying knots.
I encouraged him to develop this into an hour presentation that he–or others–could give at club meetings. He seemed enthusiastic about doing this, and I promised to help him develop the presentation. This could be something that we put up on a website somewhere and that club presidents or club meeting chairs could pull off and deliver to their clubs.
CQ MD QP
I got home from the hamfest at around 11:30 am, just in time to work the Maryland/DC QSO Party. I had to defend my championship after all! (I was the top scorer from Michigan in this contest last year.)
Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be much of a contest. I don’t know if it was that propagation was lousy, or that they didn’t get much of a turnout, but it was very difficult to find stations to work.
I used my strategy of switching to CW when I had worked all the phone stations, and then switching back to phone when I’d worked all the CW stations. Even so, I quickly ran out of stations to work.
The contest ran from noon to midnight, both Saturday and Sunday, but after dinner Sunday I could find absolutely no one on, so I exported the log and e-mailed it in. Overall, my score was about a quarter what it was in 2004, so I’m not very confident that I defended my title successfully.
Mr Anon says
This one instance where I think the ARRL was a little over zealous, and is not thinking clear. Maybe I am not either, only you know for sure. But this website presents some good points about the ARRL petition to segment the bands by bandwidth. I have expressed this opinion with Mr. Mondro, but got no response.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hteller/changes.htm