After a two-year pandemic hiatus, yesterday the Vienna (Virginia) Wireless Society's annual "Winterfest" hamfest was back. And the weather was in fact COLD -- it definitely felt like Winterfests of years-gone-by.
Club President Dean KK4DAS kindly invited me to participate in a forum on homebrewing. You can watch the presentation STARTING AT 2:04:06 (hours:minute:seconds) here:
It was especially cool to be able to tell the audience about Pete N6QW and Farhan VU2ESE. We talked about Pete's Simple SSB transceiver, the Michigan Mighty Mite and the BITX rigs.
Some observations on the hamfest scene:
-- There are lots of boatanchor radios out there, and it seems like a buyer's market. These old rigs do not seem to be selling nearly as fast as they did a few years ago.
-- There is a lot of older analog test gear on sale too, and it too seems to no longer be as in demand as it was a few years ago. Perhaps the availability of cheap, small, and very effective digital oscilloscopes is affecting the sale of these once sought-after items.
My purchases:
-- A really old beat-up (crashed?) ARC-5 R-23 receiver. I have already extracted the variable capacitor.
-- A nice box of smaller variable caps.
-- 100 feet of 550 parachute cord.
-- Two nice metal chassis/boxes
-- A bag of shaft adapters/connectors
With Armand WA1UQO (left) and Steve Boles W4SB (center)
With Charles AI4OT
Thanks to Dean KK4DAS and the entire VWS team for a great event.
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Bill - thanks so much for joining me for the homebrew presentations and thank you for bringing the Mythbuster. It was fun to see you surrounded by interested hams after the presentation. I think we may have encouraged a few new homebrewers to consider joining the IBEW! The hamfest was well attended - we had 35 tailgate vendors and 40 vendors in the gym occupying 112 tables. Over 600 hams attended. And there were bargains to be had for sure. One of the best high-end Tek scopes in great condition went for $100 and many of Collins and Hammarlund rigs did found takers by the end of the day. All-in-all a fun day. Here's hoping the trend continues and we can do more in person events like this safely!
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