Posts Tagged ‘W9DYV’
Yep, Winterfest Got Their Windfall!
The hamfest held each year in the St. Louis suburb of Collinsville, IL is called Winterfest. I blogged earlier about the hamfest getting a windfall this year in adding to their growing set of Forums and other programs on contesting and so forth by welcoming the Wes Schum Symposium. Here’s how the Winterfest 2020 Chair described this past January’s events:
The St. Louis & Suburban Radio Club Winterfest has added some great events from previous years. We have added floor space to include Education Alley, doubled our forums and increased our operating hours to 4pm. In addition to these changes, Winterfest has been selected as the ARRL Midwest Conference for 2020. The weekend starts on Friday January 24th with the W9DYV Radio Symposium during the day and a DX/ARRL banquet that evening. Saturday January 25th Winterfest kicks off at 8 a.m. with the opening of the sales floor, VE testing, all day topical Forums, and Contest College starting at 1 p.m. with 10 plus hours of contesting forums and discussion hosted by top area contesters. We invite all hams to come to Winterfest for a weekend of Amateur Radio fun.
Rebecca Carroll, Winterfest 2020 Committee Chair
Kyle Krieg AA0Z, President of SLSRC, and Rebecca KC9CIJ sent me the numbers from the hamfest. They were up 20 percent from the previous year! Wow! How many local or regional hamfests can report that “windfall” in attendance? I don’t have the numbers for that but I don’t think there’d me too many but it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a national set of numbers on hamfest attendance. Hmm. ARRL, if you’re listening, I hope you find those 30,000 hamfest attendance numbers…too soon, Lol?
Nick Tusa K5FF, who chairs the Wes Schum Symposium each year, sent me a list of pre-registered attendees for that specific part of Winterfest 2020. He said that there were a considerable number of walk-up registrants so his list is an under-estimate of this year’s actual attendance. I’ve prepared a map illustrating the “draw” to the Symposium this year in Collinsville (marked with a + sign). If we ignore the extreme distant pre-registrants, it appears to represent the market potential map I created in my previous blog post about where Winterfest could draw from in the coming years. It’s unfortunate that Winterfest per se does not record the call signs of those paid attendees so we could see where their market draw looks like. Perhaps next year!

The 8th W9DYV’s Amateur Radio Symposium wrap-up with video of the presentations can be found at the Central Electronics website. They are well worth watching! They include (with embedded links to the video):
- A High Performance SDR Receiver for the Ham: Bob Nickels W9RAN
- HF Receiver Performance: Rob Sherwood NC0B
- Understanding of Human Speech Articulation: Dr. Bob Heil K9EID
- Wes Schum (W9DYV) and Central Electronics: Nick Tusa K5EF
- Drake T4XC: Low Power Output and Why: David Assaf W5XU
- AM and the story of the Gates BC-1T: Bob Allison WB1GCM
- Vintage Radio and Homebrewing Adventures: Lynn Fisk K5LYN
Windfall for Winterfest 2020? Yep. A 20 percent bump certainly suggests that. Our public relations contributing to that? Yes, but even though there were a lot of eyes seeing both the AmateurRadio.com syndication and the QRZ.com front page articles, it’s a stretch to make such claims and I do not, at all. But our discussions on what Rebecca and her team had planned as well as what Nick was doing by moving the Symposium to Collinsville, IL certainly did not hurt! The fundamentals are the hard work, ingenuity, and willingness to plan for a hamfest that hams would enjoy should they decide to attend. That’s always the case. But it can help if you wave your arms—or get others to wave theirs on your behalf—and let folks know about what you’re planning. Keep an eye out for the St. Louis & Suburban Radio Club’s website for next year. I hear they’re already at work lining up a terrific banquet speaker!
W9DYV Symposium Line-Up Finalized
The line-up of speakers for the Wes Schum W9DYV Radio Symposium at the St. Louis area Winterfest 2020 has now been finalized. Nick Tusa K5EF, coordinator for the Symposium, was pleased to announce that long-time boat anchor operator and aficionado Lynn Fisk, K5LYN is the final speaker.

Lynn Fisk grew up in the Texas Panhandle in the 1950s/early 1960s and enjoyed playing with radios since an early age. Amateur radio has been his life-long passion after earning his General Class ticket at age 15. Lynn was drawn to the early Central Electronics exciters developed and sold by Wes Schum W9DYV that were on the air everywhere in those days. However, he had to grow up, go to college and become a professional in Latin America History first! He eventually moved into the healthcare industry, later retired from the State of Texas in 1997 and resides in Austin, Texas.
Since retirement, Lynn has been a full-time restorer of vintage radio equipment and avid homebrewer. His more recent projects have included the design of transceiver adapters for 9MHz phasing exciters and the construction of medium-power linear amplifiers.
Lynn is extremely active in the vintage radio community while serving as one of the net control stations for both the Boatanchors Unlimited and Vintage Sideband HF nets. His nets are quite lively and often start off with a short description of how the early days of single sideband progressed in the 1950s-70s.
Nick Tusa said, “The Symposium is enhanced significantly by Lynn’s agreement to speak in the final slot on the program. His long background and standing in the ‘boat anchor’ community will supplement what our other fine speakers contribute to this year’s program at Winterfest 2020.”

K5EF also has a lengthy history with Wes Schum’s SSB and Central Electronics equipment. Nick started his adventure into Amateur Radio in 1963 as a novice class attendee at the Jefferson Amateur Radio Club. First licensed as WN5NID and later WA5RMC, Nick’s interest in Ham Radio led to an Electrical Engineering degree from Tulane University and a 40-year career in Radio/Microwave system engineering. K5EF also has a lengthy history with Wes Schum’s SSB and Central Electronics equipment. Nick started his adventure into Amateur Radio in 1963 as a novice class attendee at the Jefferson Amateur Radio Club. First licensed as WN5NID and later WA5RMC, Nick’s interest in Ham Radio led to an Electrical Engineering degree from Tulane University and a 40-year career in Radio/Microwave system engineering.
A life-long resident of the New Orleans area, Tusa Consulting Services – the firm he founded – has developed and implemented numerous public safety conventional and trunked analog and digital voice/paging radio systems throughout the US. Nick’s hobby interests – aside from Triumph sports cars – include antenna system design, homebrewing of HF equipment of all types, and the restoration of vintage radio gear (Collins, Central Electronics and TMC) and mechanical Teletype equipment.
All in all, this year’s W9DYV Symposium could be the best one yet! See videos from last year’s speakers for a flavor of the event held then in Slidell, LA. Make you plans now as this is a growing hamfest sponsored by the St. Louis and Suburban Radio Club.
Windfall for Winterfest 2020!
The opportunity for the St. Louis & Suburban Radio Club Winterfest event to work with the W9DVY Radio Symposium is a fantastic chance for us to help promote vintage radio and the history of the Amateur Radio hobby. We are looking forward to this relationship between the two groups to bring Amateur Radio operators together. We hope to have a strong attendance and we are looking forward to hosting the great Symposium forums. Rebecca Carroll, KC9CIJ – Winterfest 2020 ChairThe Winterfest is located in The Gateway Center, in the shadow of the St. Louis Arch on January 24-25, 2020. No winter weather worries inside the Center! Lots of hotels at various price points nearby. And there are many other activities, such as Contest College with 10+ hours of forums, presentations, Q&A and contesting discussion, as well as the DX & ARRL Banquet and…the ARRL Midwest Conference with CEO Howard Michel and other staffers from Newington. Ward Silver NØAX is the Banquet speaker along with Craig Thompson K9CT on the Pitcairn VP6R DXpedition. Flex Radio Systems will be there as a vendor with their newest SDR technology, among other popular vendors. See the Winterfest website for more details. There is a lot going on, competing with most any regional ham fest in the U.S.




- A High Performance SDR Receiver for the Ham-Bob Nichols W9RAN
- HF Receiver Performance-Rob Sherwood NC0B
- Understanding of Human Speech Articulation-Dr. Bob Heil K9EID
- The Collins S-2 Line History and Evolution-Dave Beckler N0SAP
- Wes Schum (W9DYV) and Central Electronics-Nick Tusa K5EF
- Drake T4XC: Low Power Output and Why-David Assaf W5XU
- ARRL, AM and the story of the Gates BC-1T-Bob Allison WB1GCM
- Another “major homebrewer” presentation is pending

Planning a successful, and growing, hamfest takes vision and the willingness to engage “over the transom” opportunities. You might be surprised at the reticence of some well-known hamfest Chairs and Committees to see beyond last year’s program. Frank Howell K4FMHPlanning a successful, and growing, hamfest takes vision and the willingness to engage “over the transom” opportunities. You might be surprised at the reticence of some well-known hamfest Chairs to see beyond last year’s program. Online sales are eroding the ROI that major manufacturers, their resellers, and the small ham radio business companies get by committing thousands of dollars just to get to a hamfest. Individual sales through boneyards can yield surprise inexpensive purchases but, on the average, hamfests face a similar battle with eBay sales, too. It is programs—the continuing education of hams who spend money to attend a hamfest—that bring’em in, repeatedly over the years. And the Winterfest 2020 team is doing that in spades.




