Home
Ham Radio
Cool Stuff
Networking
K5NA
W5KFT
Photos
Contest results

Dayton 2004

We have survived our trip to Dayton for the annual HamVention!  Tony, KM5JH and myself left Wednesday morning at 6:00am, and stopped overnight in Memphis, TN.  We drove through Graceland and saw Elvis!   Thursday morning we continued our journey and arrived in Dayton late Thursday afternoon.

With 2 miles to go, I received a call from Paul, K9PG, who was riding with Scott KA9FOX - they had a minor accident with Scott's suburban and needed a lift to the hotel.  We checked into our hotel and then headed off for Hooters.   What's amazing was standing 1200 miles away from home, having a conversation with 2 guys from Hawaii and one from Japan about CC&R's!

Friday morning we got up and headed for the hamfest.  It was warm and muggy, and no rain was expected that day.  We spent most of the morning wandering the outside lot, and headed inside for the vendors during the afternoon.  We met a group of CTDXCC'ers for lunch behind the prize booth, and Tony was officially voted in.   Tony got to meet Coy Day N5OK (West Gulf section manager).

While wandering around inside I ran into Dave Patton, NN1N.  Dave invited us to come with him for dinner at a mexican place in Centerville. Here we met Dave K7CCC, Dean N6BV, Masa JA1DM, and Gulli TF8GX.  We had a wonderful time, and it became interesting when we realized that Masa and Gulli had never had Mexican food before.   After trying to explain "FAJITAS" and "drinking the Worm", we ordered a round of Margaritas.  We all enjoyed Toasting to Masa and Gulli (to make sure they finished the Margaritas), and by the end of the evening we were adorning them with traditional Mexican clothing (that was hanging on the wall) and posing for photos.  Of course the Kitchen staff at the restaurant all came out to see what the commotion was about, and we had to explain that they were from Iceland and Japan, and this was very new to them.  Everyone had a great time (plus, nobody got arrested).

Saturday was all RAIN and cold!  Overnight the coldfront moved through and the rain started (What's Dayton without rain?)  I spent the morning attending some forums inside, including a nice one surrounding receiver performance.  I did try a short stint outside in the rain, and found the guy selling a mount for my HUMVEE antenna, but most of the folks had wrapped up and gone inside.  I also picked up some batteries, a mount for my IC-706, a Vox earpiece for my VX-2r, and a few other nick-nacks.

Saturday evening was the annual Contesting Banquet (where AGAIN I didn't win anything) but sat with a couple of local Austin folks along with 2 guys from the West Coast and a NYC contester.  The theme this year was a tribute to K4OJ and W4AN.  The Ham community collected $20,000 for W4AN's kids through raffle, donations and an auction of PL-259s to the highest bidders.  It was also funny to see K9PG in a Sportcoat!

After the Banquet, it's back to the Suites, where you NEVER know who you'll bump into.  John NA9D's old callsign was KE9NA, and my old callsign was KE9NB.  We used to jab each other about being neighbors.  It was great to bump into him and share a brewski.  Also, Peter G3RZP was in true form and one of our new WWYC'ers Cedrick K9YO sporting the fake "DO" (sp?)  Cedrick is deceptively quiet at first but is amazingly funny and a master of Wit.  I missed attending the CW Pileup competition in the KCDXA suite, but congrats to K3ZO!

We retired early (by 11pm) as we got on the road Sunday morning by 3am (CDT) for a marathon drive back.  We left from Dayton and headed South through Kentucky, while W5EMC and KC5WLF left from the OH/IN border, and trekked through Indiana and Southern Illinois.  By the time we reached Memphis, we were about 30 miles behind them, and it took until Texarkana when we finally linked up.  While going through Kentucky we decided to try the KY state Parkway instead of coming through Nashville, TN.  The drive was pretty but there was NO cell phone coverage.  Not to fear, as we had 40m linked up to W5EMC and the folks in Austin pretty much the whole trip.  The IC-706MkIIg worked great throughout our trip, and got us good signal reports from Wisconsin down to Florida and into Austin on 40m.   We arrived in Austin about 9:30pm Sunday night, for a total of about 18.5 hours on the road.