Bikes and Power tours… with music

By wd0ajg, on June 7th, 2012

It has been a few days because I have been busy… two days of tripping to Enid took up most of my week… but today… I stayed in to do some things I wanted to..

Today started slow and ended that way too. I got around check email did my limited amount of keeping up with the work stuff then had a friend come over so we could see if we could get some small things worked out on his Kenwood D700. It is mounted in a Harley Trike and he intends to make a long road trip in a month or so that will take him all the way to Maine then down the eastern states, through Florida and back home… long trip? Anyway he wanted to get his D700 working on APRS so his family could track them and see where they are on a daily or even less basis… I had never worked with a D700 but had done a little reading to get prepared. We did get it where it could receive my signals and understand those packets. That was a pretty big accomplishment. I should of gotten pictures but, alas, was too busy involved in the problem at hand to think of pictures. The transmit side was not working as his GPS gave out and was not sending data to the radio? Actually it would not turn on so that is a project for him to work on and get fixed but with the radio in the proper modes and hearing APRS data and displaying it properly the transmit part should be easy now? WE hope.

I was then off to lunch. I had been informed that the 2012 HotRod Power tour was coming though town… The original plans had been for it to go through the Kicker facility but from what I saw in the university parking lost… it would never had fit… something like 4000 participants signed for the whole thing and there is not telling how many locally joined in. I met several that were only local participants so I would guess we had maybe 12000 people on the campus in the parking lots taking part in a great day…

The Power Tour is great for those that like to see vintage cars, hotrods, power toys, etc. all in one spot… I saw more 67 – 70 Chevelle’s, late 60’s GTO’s and Chevy Nova’s than I had seen in years… What a treat… once I let the wife off after lunch I spent the whole afternoon walking the show, looking and getting pictures… and it didn’t end there… when she got off work we took a small walk around before they started packing up and then came home… took a few minutes then went back to the Union for the music of Jack and Dave… a pair of “vintage” guys that play pretty good 60’s through 80’s type music… had a burger at the new venue in the union and then started our way home… but decided to cruise the motel parking lots as there were lots and lots of the tour participants at the motels… We even took a chance and talked to one of the guys out polishing down his car before the last leg to Dallas… What an enjoyable evening…