AmateurRadio.com

Good afternoon everyone and I wanted to post a comment that Eric Guth 4Z1UG the creator of QSO Today Ham Radio Expo left on my blog that is reposted at AmateurRadio.com. Click HERE to visit the post and the many comments.

I wanted to repost Eric’s comment here as I find that those who read the blog sometimes do not go through and read the comments. I felt it important to let my blog readers read his comment he posted.  He mentions Ron who in a comment identified as knowing Eric and who is a blind ham.

Below is Eric’s response:

I appreciate all of the messages above, even the angry one. Nobody feels as bad as me about what happened. All of this I explained in the messages that I have already sent out. I have re-learned my lessons.

Ron is a true friend. Like I did last August, I am building a presentation listing with links to the videos for blind hams. It will be up hopefully by Friday. They will find it easily with a screen reader on the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo website home page: qsotodayhamexpo.com

The Expo will be in on-demand mode with all of the videos until April 16th, then I will put a link to my Vimeo library, so you can watch them forever, even on your Roku box.

Go to qsotoday.vfairs.com to enter the Expo. Just need your email address, no fancy ticket number.

Finally, if you don’t need that $10.00 back, I can sure use it to bring the next Expo in August. This operation is expensive to build and host. I love making it and hope to attend it myself, rather than staying in the kitchen, next time.

73,

Eric, 4Z1UG

There were some other comments about the content of the Expo, infomercials and content of the Expo presentations. Below was Eric’s response to this:

There are over 80 presentations, 20% of them given by Sponsors. Most were the hard work of individuals who put them up. Sponsorship revenue was helpful to start us out, ticket sales pay for the cost of all of the people and services it takes to make the expo. I hope that you will come back today to enjoy the presentations that are hardly infomercials, but the amazing work of our fellow hams.

 I was very much looking forward to the Virtual Ham Expo this past weekend. My wife and I were going to be away at a hotel for the weekend, a mini getaway. I took my Mac laptop along for the ride as I wanted to check in on the Expo in the evenings. When I tried to log in things did not work out as planned apparently I had to generate an "E-ticket". Not a problem so I clicked on the link and then was asked for my callsign, email address and then the problem my "order number"? About a 1/2 hour later I found the order number but I could not get the form to accept my order number. Over the weekend I tried several times but could not get my number accepted.  

I was reading online of other ops who were having issues as well. Below is some of the feedback that was being posted. 

- Issues gaining access to Virtual Ham expo 

- Issues with Airmeet video 

- Lobbies and Exhibition tabs were just blank.

- Live help was just a chatbot and you were forced to email and wait for an answer. 

There are many more issues that are listed in chat forums but this was a huge undertaking and with all things hiccups happen. 

As I was typing this post-Eric Guth 4Z1UG sent out the below via email: 

Dear Mike,

First of all, I would like to apologize for the poor experience that many of you had at the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo.  After our very successful August 2020 Expo, I had a vision of combining what I loved about the vFairs platform (which is what we used last time) with a new technology that would provide a lot more interaction between attendees, speakers, and exhibitors.  

Unfortunately, we had many technical issues with the Airmeet Presentations and the integration of the vFairs and Airmeet platforms.  My brilliant programmer offered his resignation and to return his salary.  Ridiculous, as the failure of this project was mine alone.  I am deeply sorry for letting you down.

Fortunately for all of us, we had all the video presentations pre-recorded in the event of a technical disaster.  Therefore, all of the presentations that were to take place over the weekend are now in the final editing stages and will be available in the Expo Auditorium within 48 hours.  These videos are in glorious 1080P, high resolution, and streaming from Vimeo (a proven and strong video platform).  All of the 80+ speakers gave fantastic presentations.  

Please don’t let the last couple of days get in the way of watching our amazing speakers.  If you are blind or vision impaired, know that we have a solution for you at the qsotodayhamexpo.com website. Give us a day or two to make that preparation. 

To get to the on-demand site, simply click on the following link:  https://qsotoday.vfairs.com.  Use your email address to get in (the one you used to purchase your ticket).  No password is required.  Go into the lobby and click on the Auditorium door, or click Auditorium on the main navigation bar at the top.   If you have any problem with access, and you had a ticket, let us know immediately by sending an email to [email protected] for us to update the attendee list, keeping in mind that we are two hours ahead of UTC.  Again, we will need about 48 hours to get all the videos up and ready.  Note that while the vFairs platform at the above link will be open during the on-demand period through April 12, 2021, the Airmeet Lounge is now closed.

One of the things that we’ve stressed in all of our communications is that the QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo team is committed to constantly learning and improving what we do. Virtual conventions of this magnitude are new territory. We believe that there’s a place for a virtual ham Expo to serve the needs of the very large amateur radio community, especially those that don’t attend in-person national or regional events (or even local events).  We are committed to making that happen.  Our first Expo was a great success, our second one not so much.  Setbacks happen but it’s important to keep moving forward.  As such, we are committed to getting “back on that horse”, learning from our mistakes, and making sure that the next one is back on track.  Please stay patient with us and we’ll prove it to you.  

As always, I can be reached at [email protected].

The QSO Today Virtual Ham Expo will return on August 14th and 15th. 

Humbly yours and 73,

Eric Guth, 4Z1UG

Eric is taking responsibility for this and I for one will cut him some slack, after all, it's a huge undertaking and expectations were high. To me, he sounds very sorry and upset about how the event turned out. We all learn from our mistakes and I for one have made lots of them. 

USS North Carolina

This weekend is both the North and South Carolina QSO parties and my plans are to take part in both contests. It's a nice way to spend a bit of the weekend with the South Carolina QSO party on Saturday and the North Carolina QSO party on Sunday. 

I saw K4SWL was spotted and the call rang a bell so I looked him up and he has I blog that I follow and read regularly.  I followed him around as he moved from band to band but I just could not hear him and if I did he was way down in the noise floor. I did hear other stations calling him and sending their reports. I did not want to try a call if I was not able to really hear him. 

I then went after AI6ZD who was in California on Bolsa Chica State Beach.....it's -18 C here and just to think here is a ham on the beach in sunny California. Sometimes I feel the U.S/Canada border should have run north to south and not east to west! AI6ZD signal was down at the noise floor but now and then he jumped up to about S5. I hung on for a while and his signal slowly crept up and I was able to make contact and get him in the log. 

I then noticed K4SWL was on 80m and I thought that could be my chance to make contact but it was not meant to be for today. 

As a follow-up post from my last post entitled  "What has happened to Elecraft" in that post I wrote how shocked I was when I visited Elecrafts order page and the results, I had found. I was surprised to see the K3S had been retired and the lack of availability of their other products. My post had only been up for a short time until a comment from Eric Swartz WA6HHQ who is the co-founder (Wayne Burdick N6KR being the other founder) of Elecraft was posted. To be honest I was shocked and pleased to see that Eric was a reader of the blog. I emailed Eric asking him if it was ok to repost his response with a new post as some folks do not always read the comments.  I felt it to be very important to highlight Eric's response in a post for all to see.  He emailed me back and agreed without issue and below is Eric's comment. 

Hi Mike,

While the last year has been challenging due to the Covid crisis, the CA wildfires near us and related supply issues, we are not now shut down by CA for COVID and are financially healthy. We are alive and kicking - shipping radios, amplifiers and accessories every week.

You mentioned the backlog on the KX2, KX3, KXPA100 and K2, for which I apologize. All of these are still in production and shipping. Orders for all of our products surprisingly have been much higher than we expected during the Covid crisis, which has contributed to the current backlog on these products. (It looks like hams had more time this past year to enjoy the hobby, which has helped sales!) I just checked our shipping report for the first ten days of this month (through today 2/10) and all of these are shipping along with their accessories, the KPA500, KPA1500 etc.  We certainly have seen intermittent production delays due to parts shortages, but to date, nothing has shut us down. We've gotten pretty good at quickly finding alternate parts when one is delayed.

I see you were disappointed the K3S was no longer in production. We formally discontinued it in May of 2019 when we introduced the K4, after a close to 13 year run for the K3 and K3S. We've also previously discontinued the K1 and KX1, which also had a long run. In general, we discontinue products as sales decrease over time and when new products replace them. Fortunately, we've been able to continue production of the K2 since its first ship in Jan of 1999. No that's a long run :-)

We are also ramping up production and shipments of the K4, which also competes for production resources. I noted in my recent live video Q&A session on the K4 that we had just received 100 full PC board sets for the K4 from our local assembly subcontractor and these are winding their way through production. (See the Elecraft YouTube channel for the Zoom recording.) We received a huge response to the K4 and as a result, have a very large number of backorders that will keep us busy and financially healthy for some time.

Lastly, you mentioned the 'TBD' on K3S option boards and accessories. We recently asked for interest from our customers on a special run of all of these and received a very large response, which makes it economical to build another run of most of these. We've now received the quote updates from our suppliers and we will be contacting everyone starting next week who expressed interest in these items.

We're still in business, healthy and enjoying designing and building exciting products for the amateur radio community, and we hope to continue doing so for some time!

73, Eric - WA6HHQ

 For the first time in a very long time, my radio shack is without an Elecraft product.  I was and still am a big Elecraft fan and had 2 Elecraft K2's that I built, KX1, K3 and finally a KX3. The only rig I had left was the KX3 and a short time ago that rig was sold off. As with most hams sold equipment becomes ham bucks for new things. I may regret selling my KX3 but at this time that has not happened.  I really needed to upgrade my PC and it was the KX3 funds that allowed me to do that. 

My KX1

I was on the internet this afternoon and wanted for old time sake visit the Elecraft website and what I found was shocking! I went to the order/shipping status page as I was feeling the fuzzies for maybe another K2 to build.  I saw the K4 and its ongoing status update link but then I saw "K3S no longer available" I took a double-take! That was the flagship of Elecraft.  It gets better......the K3/K3S add-on kits are for the most part " availability TBD" so much for an upgradable radio. 

Then there were the back orders KX3, KPA100 amp,  KX2 and K2. I am not sure if it's COVID that has put things in a tailspin but as an Elecraft fan, I was shocked to see this.  

One of my K2's