Once inside the gates, the Hamvention presented navigation obstacles. My sleep deprived mind had created a little list of things to do and an order to do them. First, get rid of that raffle ticket (or prize voucher, or whatever it was) and dump it in the bin. Who knows? I might at long last win a prize! Start the day gambling! So I made a left turn into a line, card in hand. The mumblers in the line seemed eye-rollingly confused when I asked if this was the line to put the prize ticket into a drum. “Drum?” I pointed out that my handwriting, not the best, had been smudged by the dampness in the atmosphere. “They use the number.” Nobody pointed out that I was in the wrong line. The line I was in, it turned out, was the one to get one’s irreplaceable entry pass laminated and put on a lanyard to wear about the neck. OK. And the souvenir patch? Why not? The money spending day was still young. I emerged with my name, call sign (KD9NDJ, remember dummy?) around my neck. So where did the raffle ticket go? I had the map of the event on the handy dandy iPhone app. It had been giving me updates for a week. Now, I needed the map. But you can’t really read a tiny map on an old school iPhone in daylight, even the overcast daylight of this morning, the 17th of May, year of many radios, 2019.
Nowhere on the map was the prize ticket deposit area mentioned in text. This perusal of the map is when I noticed some peculiarities. At first I thought it cute that some of the buildings, the biggest ones mostly, were named after significant radio pioneers. There was Maxim. There Tesla, Marconi, Hertz, Watt, and Volta. But on the map, these were labeled alpha-numerically. There was a legend that paired the letters and numbers up with inventor names. Looking at it now, in a room with indoor lighting, and being all rested up, I can see that there is a legend that points out that the red star is the Prize Booth. I see the red star on the map, way over by E-4, which the legend tells me is Volta. And while on the topic, the forums, which I had pre-investigated in the app, which sent them to my iPhone’s calendar app, were called ‘room 1, 2, etc.’ in the app’s listing and the general schedule. The names and alpha-numeric designations disappear in the diagrams of the buildings showing the exhibitor locations, and they are now called “Building 1, 2, 3, etc.” The tiny squares that delineate the exhibitor locations are give 4 digit numerals, with the 1st digit being the number of the building. Then, to actually determine what exhibitor is where… you consult a very large, and on the iPhone, impossibly small legend.
Needless to say, a funny thing happened on the way to the forums…
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| Stuff I mercifully didn’t buy… |
Eventually… I found my way to the Volta side of things, and the prize booth. I deposited my ticket, and that was the last I heard of it. I hope I didn’t win and there’s not an unclaimed prize with my number on it.
Wandering through the buildings, I found that MFJ was representing themselves and being represented aplenty by other distributors. They have a number of sub-lines, including a kit purveyor called Vectronics. Several of these were on my pre-vention list. (An ounce of pre-vention…) Remember, I’m still buying Part 15 broadcast band transmitters, looking for the holy grail. By that I mean, a kit or pre-made device that beats the Antique Electronic Supply Kit mentioned in an earlier blog post.
But sure enough, I ran across the Heil Sound area, and there, up at the end, surrounded by acolytes, was Bob Heil. The above link takes one to the post on pine board building, that Bob Heil, my late father, and countless others have practices back to … Volta? Nowadays, the ugly (or dead) bug is all the rage, and I like that approach also. Bob’s pine board project led me to his side at the Hamvention. So I had to pay my respects.
Bob is short. He stands up straight, whereas I slouch, and he comes up to my chin, if that. He was nattily attired in a pale blue shirt with like-color embroidered patterns, slacks, a nice thin belt, and decent dress shoes. He’s trim, and he radiates affluence. Not that there’s anything wrong with it! At the Twin Cities Amateur Radio Club meeting last week (!), KD9*** (Not his real call sign!) opined that ‘Heil just wants to sell stuff.’ That’s true; but he’s also a Ham (K9EID … and that’s his real call sign!) and his PBT (’cause we love acronyms) is not a commercial project. He was selling stuff while I waited to talk to him. And he’s the same person to person as he is on Ham Nation, or TWiT. Then, plainly doing some name dropping, he mentioned his friend Joe Walsh. Ex Eagles, Ex James Gang, etc., yes, THAT Joe Walsh. Bob launched into the subject of Joe with, “You know Joe Walsh and I… you know, Joe Walsh? (Acolytes nodding)… We talked just three days ago…” At this first mention of Joe, one of Bob’s acolytes remarked, “was he drunk?” Bob ignored that, and ploughed ahead, doing an impression of Joe’s speaking voice. “He said, ‘Gotta show you what I’ve been doing, man… We’ll go over this new stuff I’ve got that uses some of your ideas about those mics and speakers…'” “But,” Bob continued, “He’s on tour in France… Paris… wherever… and I really don’t know when he’ll get back to me…”
At long last, I got my turn to talk to Bob. He was plainly uncomfortable with me. I was not well-attired. I’d spent a sleepless night in a pickup truck, and had not had the advantage of a shower or a shave. I was wearing a “Drink Naked” baseball cap, and no name tag with call sign. I told him that his pine board project had ‘changed my life,’ laying it on thick. I was, after all, a wanna be acolyte. I told him the story of my Dad, pushing always to get me interested in radio. I told him that after building his pine board AM transmitter, I realized I had to get a license, and had just recently done that. He congratulated me on getting my ticket. (They all do that, I’ve found.) He thanked me, and bowed slightly. Audience clearly over, I cut bait and drifted. I mused about heroes and their clay feet. But I’m not sure why I was taken aback. What had I expected, really? And it must be said that Bob was gracious. He is a man used to ‘selling stuff,’ and he knew I wasn’t there to buy. I didn’t ask him the key question. Which is, ‘has he abandoned the pine board project, and if so, why?’
So I went back to Marconi and bought some stuff. At MFJ, I picked up:
– a catalog (free)
– a coffee mug ($3)
– another AM transmitter kit (Vectronics … I tried to order this kit and its case on the web b4 Hamvention, and was told that most of the stock was already packed for the Hamvention… It was the first I’d heard of this event, so… thanks for the tip!
– metal case for above
– a memory CW keyer kit… well, this was the big one at $75.
– metal case for above
– an FM transmitter kit
– … out of stock on cases for above … must’ve left it back in MN. I’ll maybe order it online. Or build a damned box.
So my grand total was about $200. They threw in the coffee mug for free. (Whoopie!)
And now I had an MFJ bag (plastic) and was carrying stuff. I headed for the entrance and my truck. At the entrance, I decided, “why walk, when you can get a ride on the golf cart shuttle out to the parking hinterlands?” The driver of the cart was a grungy looking, overweight, longhaired ex-hippie type. Notice how quickly the judgement, which is surely going in both directions, snaps! Look at yourself, KD9NDJ, you too are a grungy, overweight, longhaired ex-hippie type! So I started up a conversation with this guy, the driver. It was just the two of us on the cart, and he was required to drive in a huge circle around the entire multi-acre parking spread rather than make a bee line for my truck. I told him about Bob Heil and Joe Walsh.
“God, I can’t stand Joe Walsh,” he muttered.*
“Why not?”
“He thinks everyone should learn Morse Code.”
“You don’t agree?”
He shrugged. I was carrying a CW keyer kit, unbeknownst…
“I can see the utility,” I volunteer. “Very narrow bandwidth, lots of power can be beamed, very simple radio concept. Great for DX (distance).”
Silence. I laughed nervously.
“It’s a musician thing,” I opine. “The rhythm of it. The dots and dashes, the Farnsworth timing…”
(I don’t know the damned Morse Code, can’t do a single letter from memory, and am not a natural when it comes to rhythm. Not to mention, I couldn’t tell Farnsworth timing if it bit me in the leg.)
Now it was time to talk about the location of my truck.
* The link takes you to a great edition of Ham Nation (141) in which Bob Heil and Joe Walsh co-host. Many topics, some reminiscing, and nothing much that proves (or disproves) the cart driver’s point.
I walked back to the entrance for the kit building forum. Might as well start with something already know something about.
The kit building forum was led by Joe Eisenburg, KONEB. Joe is the kit building editor of CQ magazine. And BTW, “CQ” is one of those “Q” codes that have been with radio since the beginning, and came over from telegraphy. The CQ (seek you) call is a general call… the Ham version of ‘anybody out there?’ He introduced several guest speakers, one of which was the affable and knowledgeable David Krip, NM0S, an engineer at Rockwell Collins in Cedar rapids, and who is a designer associated with the Four State QRP Group. The Q code ‘QRP’ indicates ‘reduced (or reduce) power. It has become the term of art for radio work with only a handful of watts. DX work in QRP is challenging, and Hams love challenges.
Rick passed around a few constructed kits, including the one pictured below, held in my hot little hands, which, as of this writing is not yet for sale. But it will be by the end of June, 2019.
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| It’s cute! It does phone! |
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| Specs for the Nouveau, pictured above… |
While Joe had the floor, he offered some excellent kit building tips. Even though I’ve been building kits for 50 years (!), I still learned some very valuable tips. Most valuable of all was a discussion of solder types. I’ve been using rosin core 60/40 solder for my entire career. That’s 60% tin and 40% lead, with a flux core of rosin. Joe recommended using 63/37, which is more tin and less lead. He said it flowed better and had a significant plastic region between 183 degrees Celsius and 188 ºC, where it melts. 63/47 solder goes from solid to liquid, without a plastic region, at 183 ºC. This makes it flow more quickly and smoothly, so there’s less waiting. When I got back home and started in again on kit building, I discovered that I had a pretty good sized stash of 63/37 on hand. Thanks Dad. He copped it from IBM.
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| Here’s a screen shot from the forum… ‘Vention’s over, but the contacts can be explored on the web… |
So kit building is alive and well. It ain’t cheap. Robots have taken over the labor that humans used to do, and they do it faster and more accurately. Electronics have shrunk, becoming more robot friendly and less human friendly. But some of us humans just love making things, and we like having somebody else collect the parts and make the printed circuit boards.
Lunch. The lines for the allegedly delicious food were too long for the likes of me. So I found a short line for a pulled pork sandwich, and hiked back to the truck for some soda.
After lunch, I hit the “Antenna Forum.” This was a big one, in a bigger building than kit building, and very well attended. It was not aimed at the novice. Most (75%) of what was said was acronym and jargon intensive and went right over my head. The joy of learning means that I will savor for a time longer my ignorance and innocence. It will be gone all too soon, and I will be a jaded, eye-rolling mumbler.
I took some notes, but only when the theoretical discussions of the presenters turned to practical matters. What kind of cable is least lossy at VHF? What kind of connectors should one use? Waterproofing? But I ain’t building a tower right off the bat, and I don’t think I’m going to be building or buying a Yagi.
What blew my mind was the talk about solar activity and its effect on radio propagation by Tamitha Skov, the “Space Weather Woman.” You can hear and see her here. Save me a ton of typing.
Another person that I am a huge fan of is “Lady Ada” of Adafruit Industries. Limor Fried, AC2SN, apparently got an award from the ARRL. She got the ‘women in open source’ award, and, despite the obvious fact that it’s a very specific set of conditions that are represented by the accolade, (being a woman, and promoting open source), she’s certainly worth celebrating. I don’t think she was at the Hamvention. Had she been, and I missed her, I will be forever kicking myself.
The morning and afternoon of the First Day was now over, and I headed back to camp.
Stay tuned for INTERLUDE with Ed and David…