Recovering from Dayton….
I’ve finally caught back up from my trip to Dayton this year, I was gone nearly a week since I flew out on Wednesday to help with setup before the show. It was fun helping with the booth setup. It is crazy wondering around Hara hall on Thursday, since half of the stuff is still in boxes or otherwise empty. It is amazing how much happens between noon on Thursday and 9am on Friday.
General comments about Dayton.
- It still seems to me that the event is slowing dieing. Crowds are still down from just five years ago when I started going. There was a health crowd Friday morning, but by 4pm the whole place was empty. Saturday was actually a little less and Sunday morning was slow. (I always leave early on Sunday, but I know that in the afternoon everybody crowds into the main hall for the raffle)
- The number of vendors is still really healthy, even with the number of people showing up going down. I still always see new stuff I’ve never seen wondering around inside. I’m getting to know more people as well, so it is nice to stop and say hi.
- The actual venue is gross, I honestly can’t believe the event is still there. I know it is tradition and been going on for decades, but the place is falling apart. When it started raining on Wednesday and Thursday, the roof starting leaking. They finally had to move garage buckets under the STREAMS of water running inside. There are move rumors this year of it getting shifted to another site, I hope they are true.
- This show continues to believe that everybody in ham radio is only interested in chasing DX. That is the one thing which really annoys me, because it is just one subset of the hobby. There are pockets of other things going on, like the d-star digital and a little bit of satellite stuff, but mainly it is about big HF antennas to work DX. I actually suggested to Icom that next year they try doing some alternative show-n-tells, since even the DXpeditions talks are no longer drawing big crowds.
- I really hate to say it, but most hams are clueless. The second most asked question of the weekend was why the new IC-9100 didn’t have a color display. Why did they feel a color display was so important, because it looks nice. I honestly believe that having a color display was more important to most of the people asking questions then whether it could receive a signal. I know this is horrible, but I believe the technical reach the point that most hams don’t understand what the different features do, so they space it out and focus on what they do understand. Color displays they understand, roofing filters and DSP’s in the 1st IF stage they don’t get.
So now on to the important things, what goodies did I buy? It is funny, I generally don’t end up buying a much when I go to Dayton. Generally I come home with most of my mad crazy spending money, but this year was different. I pretty much spent all of my mad money.
- Full 50ohm coax prep kit from DX Engineering – I had heard about these and for the most part ignored it as a waste of money. But after watching a demo, I was 100% sold. This takes all the guess work out of prepping the end of coax for putting PL259 or N-connectors on. I have done this 100’s of times now and almost never screw up it up now, but it still takes me quite a while to-do it. With these bad boys you can do it perfectly in about 2 minutes.
- 200w Slug for 2Mhz to 30Mhz for my Bird watt meter – This was actually the only item I ‘knew’ I was going to buy before leaving. I discovered my old slug was no longer working so well last year and haven’t been able to find a replacement at a decent price. I found a brand new one for the average going price and am happy with it.
- DV-AP D-STAR hotspot – I honestly don’t have any idea what I’m going to-do with this, since I don’t even own a D-STAR HT, which is the primary reason for having one. (So you can run around your house and still access the D-Star reflectors) But I didn’t know what I was going to-do with the DVDongle a couple years ago when I got it and I’ve enjoyed playing with it. Current crazy idea is to mount it, a small atom based PC and really big antenna on the tower for my own D-Star hotspot. I’m thinking I’d probably have decent coverage with my location.
- Copy of Up the Tower by Steve Morris, K7LXC– I have been meaning to get a copy for a while and snagged one before the show open on Friday morning. It is a good read, something I wished I’d had about five years ago when I put my tower up. I would recommend the book, since there is so little printed information out there on the subject, but it still leaves you scratching your head sometimes. It was full of statements which are almost explained, but not.
- Solar charger / USB charger – I got this for Rosie mainly, it is a small flexible solar panel which will charge four AA batteries in about 4 hours with good sun light. Which you can then plug your USB cable into and charge your iPhone. (Or what every USB device you have) The panels are really well made and Rosie confirmed it will re-charge her iPhone after about 4 hours of sun light. (She tested it on the window sill at work) Should work great for this summer hiking and camping trips. She is going to tie the panel to the back of her pack and let it charge the AA’s and then use it to top off her iPhone.
So one of the gotchas with going to Dayton on Icom’s dime is that your stuck following their schedule. Typically come about Saturday evening, I’m tired of people and doing stuff and just want to have a nice quiet dinner. This year the hotel was within walking distance of a bunch of food options and I declared myself off duty when we wrapped things up Saturday. I mentioned I was going to skip the parties and just get something to eat close. So Scott and Dan both were in pretty much same boat, so the three of us walked to some horrible Texas steak place.
We had a good time talking about a bunch of different things. Dan is a hoot to be around, the two of us spent the entire evening poking fun at each other. Scott later said he was having trouble keeping track of when we were serious and when we kidding. (For the record, so did I. :-)