Today I got up early made the long drive to Claremore OK for the Green Country Hamfest. I saw a bumpersticker I should have gotten, “a Hamfest is like a SuperGeeks spring break”…
Anyway it was a decently attended hamfest, with a few forums that I wanted to attend. I needed an update to my stormspotter training, just in case… I wanted to attend the ARRL West Gulf Section, we are in the Oklahoma section of that Division, meeting and see what is going on there. The meetings were informative and the ARRL several representatives there. The part about luck…. There were maybe 30 or so attendees in that forum and they had maybe 15 items to give out by drawing. We each got one ticket. With a 1 in 2 chance you would think that I could win something? NOOOOOOOOO they called the ticket number before mine and the one behind mine and a bunch of others and I got zilch… My luck is holding out as usual…
So I left the forums about 11:30 and headed in to see what was being bargained off in the swap area… Mostly it was old junk… I have better old junk that some of the stuff there… but about 12:15 or so… poof, people started packing it up and leaving? I don’t understand that. It is a Saturday, we made the effort to get there and the schedule is for all day but some of the stuff I thought I might want to get back and look at again was gone by the time I got half way around… I mean you go to these things to see the goodies, talk to people you know or would like to meet in person and don’t have time to do much of either? Maybe I am old but I remember the old hamfests that were at least 1.5 days long and we all had plenty of time to visit? no wonder the vendors are not showing up for most of them anymore as well as there is just not much money in it anymore?
Anyway, I picked up a few parts, did get to talk with a few people and that was it. Still some fun involved to associate with all those super geeks… and extraordinary rednecks…
WD0AJG