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The Dayton Hamvention® has been around for a long time. Hard as it may be to believe, the event has been around longer than most of the radio hams who now attend it year after year. It hasn’t always been conducted at Hara Arena though it has been there since 1964. In earlier days the event took place at a time of the year when the weather is not stable in this part of the country and attendees had to prepare for any contingency.

Moving the event into May certainly has helped.

And that was evident this year – the weather was spectacular. Some might complain that it was a little on the “warm” side as the weekend wore on, but I suspect those would also complain about finding a four-leaf clover!

By now the cat’s out of the bag and you’ve no doubt heard all the big announcements – the new Flex-Radio, the Yaesu FTdx3000, the Kenwood TS990S. Of course many other new items were shown and discussed and all of these will undoubtedly be dissected in painstaking detail in ham radio blogs and magazines over the coming weeks and months.

But the most important story is that another Hamvention® has come and gone and it provided us with yet another opportunity to meet new friends and reconnect with a few old one’s. Most of all, it imprinted a few new memories on the gray matter – memories conjured over one magical weekend.

A stroll through the flea-market is like a trip back in time…

On a more practical level, Hamvention® always provides opportunity. Local news outlets reported that this year’s event was expected to generate $6 million dollars in revenue for local businesses. It’s where enterprising hams share their ideas and new wares and as a result many will go on to market success. Having a great product debut at Dayton often guarantees financial success for these entrepreneurs while a big flop can mean disaster.

But Dayton is about so much more than just the bottom line.

Much of the talk about Dayton over the coming months will focus on the new product offerings, the attendance, speculation on the number of inside exhibits and outside booths, and the inevitable endless debates about why the event should be moved to a more modern facility in an entirely different location.

It would be nice if during these conversations that we not forget that Hamvention® has been around since 1952 and has become yet another in a long line of traditions in our century-old hobby. Like the Wouff-Hong and the Rettysnitch, Morse code, the ARRL and DXing.

Dayton is a permanent marker in the sands of ham radio time and its place in radio history is forever secure.

Since I want to be active more with my portable setup this year I took the FT-817 with me in the car today. At lunchbreak I drove to a good DX location which was about 4km from my job in the polder on a dike. I setup the Watson Multiranger 200 antenna on the car and checked the SWR with my MFJ259 analyzer. I found it to be 1:1.1 on 14.200 again like always. First contact was with ID9Z who clearly didn’t like to talk as he called CQ just after giving me a fast report. I tried to call CQ around the QRP frequency and got a reply from EA1FL/P Edu, we had a nice QSO and he explained his equipment was a military radio PRC320 with 30W into a military whip antenna. After a few overs we could give each other 5/8-5/9! I was using the FT817 on 2,5W so actually I could sign PE4BAS/P/QRP, I thought it would be too long but Edu had no problem with it at all. In the mean time I took my mobile phone to record the last over of the contact but something went wrong and at the end I recorded a totally different QSO with…..JX9JKA at Jan Mayen Island. Svein was sometimes a real 5/9 here and I got a signal report of 5/5. Remember I was transmitting only 2,5W in a mobile whip! I’m again really surprised about the little FT-817 and think this is a good start of the portable season. It also interested me in Jan Mayen Island, there is a website on the internet about this Island which has a nice history of Dutch Whaler fisherman searching for new hunting grounds there. The Island is actually named after a Dutchman. If you draw a line from my location to Jan Mayen you will only come across water, so I’m not surprised after all that I could make this QSO. At the link hobbies on that website there is something about the radioamateur station on the island, I don’t know if it is up-to-date as last revision was in 2004. 

The recording:

http://www.divshare.com/download/17797842-aed

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Hello all. Have you read all those wonderful quality articles I wrote for AmateurRadio.com lately? I guess not, because they are all still in my head and you will probably never be able to read them. Utter lack of energy due to the new teaching schedule was the main culprit. By the time work was done, the kids and the house taken care of, I was usually too tired to even switch on the rig, let alone write something worthwhile reading. Not that I totally abandoned radio, but have you ever tried a Morse code QSO when you are tired? It doesn’t work, believe me. I guess we’ve all been there, or will be (again).

My father’s passing away also added some stress and despair, but I know it a phase and that this will pass in time. May 16th would have been his birthday and after I phoned my mother I went to my shack (a.k.a. office, work shop and storage room) and out of habit switched on my TS-440S. Only J-stations in CW, so I went to the RTTY hang-out on 15 meters. That turned out to be a good choice: first of all I am an ex-army telex operator, so RTTY always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Secondly I saw XV2W on the waterfall. He is a rag chew buddy who visits his family in Vietnam every year and I only caught him once up till now. So I called him and we did have a very nice QSO as usual, even though our signal path wasn’t the best.

After talking to my wife on the phone (away on business, again) and putting the kids to bed I returned to the radio, which was still tuned to 15 meters around 21.084 kHz. There were quite a few RTTY signals around which is unusual, because RTTY is not so popular here in East Asia. When I checked one of the signals out I found it to be a ham from the eastern parts of the States. Propagation wise that is weird, because 15 meters in early evening is usually for local Asian or European contacts. But I wasn’t complaining because the eastern USA is usually hard to work, especially with strong and decent signals. For a change I started calling CQ and within an hour I had worked stations from Mississippi, Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas all with good signals. Feels good to do RTTY again and work some real DX. I wonder if it was some sort of ionospheric duct, because after the last US station faded out I heard the usual bunch of Ukrainian and Russian stations coming up. Very interesting.

Yesterday I also took delivery of the Hi-Per-Mite CW filter. It looks very good, especially the PCB: quality stuff. I think I can get it assembled this weekend as it doesn’t look too complicated. The one thing I am still contemplating is whether or not to change the centre frequency of the bandpass from 700 to 800 Hz in order to better match my Kenwood rigs.

Well, in just a few hours we’ll mark the “official” start of the festivities at Hamvention 2012 in Dayton, Ohio. To celebrate, I thought I’d call on our readers to share some special memories of past Hamventions.

So let’s hear them! Tell us about a great (or not-so-great) deal you got. The friends you’ve made. The food you’ve eaten (and the Bratwurst you wish you hadn’t). The portable toilets. And possibly all of those — in that order.

Who wants to start?

While at NAB, George of  AmateurLogic.TV  interviewed me. We had a great time talking about many ham radio topics. It is always fun to meet up with George.

Please watch the entire video at

Randy

K7AGE

And the winner of 500 free full-color QSL cards is…

Jyoti VU3BGI
West Bengal, India

Congratulations to Jyoti and thank you to everyone who entered. Keep a lookout for more great giveaways! As always, thank you to KB3IFH QSL Cards for generously sponsoring this contest. Don’t forget to check out Randy’s website (or visit him at Dayton North Hall #202) the next time you need new QSL cards!

73 Matt W1MST