AmateurRadio.com

It's another lonely episode without Pete. We're still not sure if he was eaten by a bear or not, but we hope he's well wherever he might be. In the meantime, we put together what we hope is an enjoyable and informative episode with information on Yaesu System Fusion, bluetooth configuration in Linux, the LXLE distribution, PyQSO and more.

73 de The LHS Guys

(Continued from the previous article)

Where Da Hamfest At?

The AMSAT forum was overflowing with information.  At first I was hesitant to go to a three hour session.  While I could sit through long lectures in high school and college, as an adult I get impatient and restless anytime I’m forced to sit for extended periods of time.  But the AMSAT forum held my interest the whole time and afterwards I found my way to the AMSAT booth and became a member.

Another forum I attended was the Balloon Satellite / High Altitude Balloon (HAB) forum.  Many attendees were from organizations across the country who regularly launch balloons and there were many stories and words of wisdom.  I was a sponge soaking it up and came out of the session with dreams of launching a balloon.

As I mentioned in the first part of this article, I think the forums are a real gem at Dayton and well worth the admission price and travel costs.  They cultivate thought and interest in amateur radio.  The forums definitely recharged my amateur radio mojo.

The theme of the Dayton Hamvention this year was amateur radio operators as Makers.  Makers is a modern day term for those who build or homebrew stuff.  Some very visible Maker initiatives include Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, and 3D printing.

Busy Folks at a Booth Selling Arduinos and Piece Parts

The Maker theme was a good idea, well intended and timely, however the execution of the theme was lacking.  There was only one stand selling Arduino items and another selling Raspberry Pis.  I saw only one 3D printer on display.  I think there should have been an area dedicated to Maker oriented booths, much like the audio area.  A friend commented that a Maker Space would have been a good addition to the hamfest.  The vendor selling Arduino items and parts has their booth swamped with people and most of them were noticeably younger folks.  Overall I think there needed to be more vendors that were identifiably Maker oriented and some bridge drawn between amateur radio and Maker initiatives.

I remember in the late 80s and early 90s when some amateurs scoffed at the invasion of computers into hamfests, as some regional hamfests were combination hamfests and computerfests.  Today you don’t really see this distinction and computers are just an integral part of amateur radio and hamfests.  Online I’ve seen some amateurs criticizing the Maker theme at the Hamvention.  I see a lot of parallels between the PC era and the Maker movement in progress right now.  I think we should embrace Makers in our hamfests.  We’ve already seen Arduinos and Raspberry Pis become useful tools, and 3D printers are probably close behind.  We need to make a bridge between Making and amateur radio.  As we’ve seen with computers and the Internet, communications takes things to new levels.  Radio communications equipment and know how are a valuable asset for aspiring Makers and we can draw new people into the hobby with this.

As far as toys that I acquired, besides various piece parts and cable I bought a new Rigol 100 Mhz digital oscilloscope.  At the Begali booth I fell in love with the Sculpture Mono paddle.  I reached for my credit card and was informed by the salesguy that they only accept cash or checks.  I was really put off by this.  Later that night I ordered the paddle on the web, at a cost $45 more than the hamfest price and some unknown amount of delivery time.  Luckily Begali was shipping recent paddle orders from Ohio so I didn’t wait long.

Dayton Bounty: Rigol Digital Storage Oscilloscope

The BMW of CW Keys

My New Begali Paddle

If I had to do this trip over again, I would have spent much less time in the flea market and would have attended many more forums.  While the flea market was huge and had a lot of interested stuff, after awhile each stand and row began to look like the last one.  Unless you’re looking for some specific rare item, walking the flea market becomes tedious.  I also would have attended the DX dinner and perhaps hit some FDIM events.

Special Entrance for Golf Players

Midway through the hamfest I commented that I wouldn’t attend in 2015 and perhaps might attend again in two or three years.  But towards the end and after taking the whole experience in, I decided I would make the pilgrimage again next year if possible.  Once you accept Hara Arena for what it is and the oddities and annoyances of many of the attendees, it’s truly a phenomenal event for radio artisans everywhere. As one of my friends I met aptly summed it up, you have to come out, it’s the Dayton Experience!

After 30 years of amateur radio, I finally got to attend the Dayton Hamvention this year.  It was quite an experience and I’m glad I made the long trip.

YL Sporting a Tower Hairdo

First off, I have to say that KE9V’s Dayton Survival Guide is spot on.  I experienced most of what he wrote from hams expecting ADA parking spots without a reservation to repeater jerks to body odor in the crowded main arena.  Anyone attending Dayton for the first time should memorize this article prior to going.   The flea market was both impressive and a disappointment.  It’s big, really big, but the quality of wares for sale was in two extreme categories: junk and expensive good stuff.  Junk is junk and it’s what I was accustomed to seeing when going to local hamfests years ago.  The expensive stuff was mainly very nice vintage gear and amplifiers, lots of amplifiers.  There wasn’t much in between these two categories in my opinion.  I was surprised there were very few HF rigs from the past five years for sale.

Assorted Crap

Smell My Junk

Merchandise or Canopy Anchor?

One Dayton ritual I avoided totally was using the outhouses.  The bathrooms within Hara Arena were malodorous enough and the lines and foot traffic within them resembled a rare DX phone pileup.

 Next Stop: 80 Meters

Inside the arena, of the major HF equipment companies, Kenwood had the most impressive booth, which was spacious and carpeted, though lacking anything new that I could see.  Everyone crowded around the rig they can’t afford, the TS-990.  Icom and Yaesu had nice booths as well, but not nearly as spacious.  I eagerly went into the Yaesu booth searching for the rig that will replace the venerable but long in the tooth FT-817.  But disappointingly they had the 817 on display along side the FT-857 and FT-897.  The Elecraft booth was abuzz and continually crowded with a table of order takers on the side.  Elecraft could load up vending machines dispensing K3s or just deploy drones to deliver them to peoples’ vehicles outside.

Walking in to the Main Arena

I was somewhat afraid to attend the Hamvention due to all the stories I heard about Hara Arena.  Initially the condition of the place was a bit depressing, however after awhile you come to accept it as part of the Dayton experience.  Every ceiling tile has water stains.  The ballroom area is a wormhole back into the 70s.  The bathrooms smell.  The parking lot pavement is crumbling to dust.  It’s Hara Arena.  Get used it.

Hara

Let’s talk about the rental scooters.  {Warning: Politically incorrect material}  They were everywhere, and they were a big annoyance.  Now, if you are really handicapped and need a scooter to get around, I’m fine with that.  But I think many of the scooter users aren’t really handicapped.  Arguably many of them are just overweight due to their own bad health choices and could benefit from the exercise and less trips to the concession area.  Scooter jams were a frequent occurrence and everywhere you went you were either stuck behind one, had one at your heals, or had to yield to them so they could maneuver.  Several scooter operators were like drunk drivers, especially out in the flea market area.  If I never saw a scooter again, I would be a happy man.

The food was better than what I was expecting.  Both days I ate pizza and actually enjoyed it, which is surprising as I’m a northeastern pizza snob.  Out in the flea market there were vendors grilling beef, hot dogs, and chicken and across from the Hamvention there was a cool little barbeque stand run by a rather friendly dude.  (Next time I’m getting a smoked salmon dinner from this stand.)

Yum Yum: Rib-N-It Bar-B-Q

The indoor exhibits were well worth the trip.  The major equipment manufacturers and organizations were all there, with one notable exception being AES.  I was told AES wasn’t there last year either.  It’s really disappointing that such a major vendor doesn’t support this event, the largest hamfest in North America.  This may make me reconsider using AES in the future and perhaps switch to HRO or DX Engineering.

I found the real crown jewel of Dayton to be the forums.  I attended two forums, but I wanted to attend several more and plan to on the next pilgrimage to Dayton.

Standing Room Only in the AMSAT Forum

(To be continued….)

Well, actually it’s red…

A top o’ the callsign cap to Wey Walker K8EAB from the NoGa QRP group for pointing me towards this video by K7AGE:

Even if you don’t care for the subject matter, the music’s pretty catchy!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

by Joe K0NEB, editor of the monthly kitbuilding column in CQ:

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

the traffic on the e-mail reflectors goes down to practically nil.

But the advent of social media, especially Twitter means that we get news and views of new equipment all that much faster.

Jeff KE9V and others have been tweeting great photos of various things all day. TJ, W0EA has been putting video log reports on YouTube.

If you can’t be there, this is almost as good, thanks to the efforts of these fine gentlemen.

So far, I’ve seen great photos of TenTec’s new Rebel, which is a dual band rig featuring open source firmware for experimentation. For comprehensive details, visit “The QRPer” – the link is to the right.

Jeff KE9V also posted images of TenTec’s new auto tuner and some images of the new CrankIR portable antennas.  Jeff also tweeted a mouthwatering photo of a lineup of Bengali keys.

With all the goodies available, maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t make it out to Dayton. I probably would have come home a much poorer man.

I am going to get up early and take a ride to the OMARC hamfest in Wall Township, NJ tomorrow morning. It’s definitely not Hamvention, but it will be fun, anyway. There’s not anything that I have a real pressing need for, but it’s always good to stock up on PL-259s, power connectors, and things like that. Who knows? There’s always the chance to find a hidden treasure.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!