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Hamvention
amateur radio buff writes "The Hamvention is coming up on May 16 - 18, for all you amateur radio people out there. This is the worlds biggest Ham fest held in Dayton, Ohio. With over 2500+ space outdoor vendor, and 500 inside exhibit spaces, find any amateur radio and electronic items there. Also the The 11th Annual Dayton Contest Dinner is held this year too! Dont miss it!"
I wonder....
Do ham radio hobbiests ever run into bandwidth crowding problems at these sorts of events?
Wish I could be there......;) http://www.txwes.edu/~jvortega/
I think a friend of mine said it best; "You can be into ham radios and you can be into computers, but being into both is taking it just a little too far".
His dad "took it too far" by the way.
Slashdotted Does any one know how I would be able to encapsulate IP into RF.????
When I was in scouts in Oz I remembered looking forward to the Jamboree On The Air in October each year.
;-)
http://www.scout.org/wse/jota.shtml
Off topic? No - about 48 or more hours (due to time zones) of talking to other scouts across the world. Pre-internet
Also the The 11th Annual Dayton Contest Dinner is held this year too!
Isn't it held every year?
D'Oh! I clicked "Read More..." before I realized that the article was not about sweet, sweet pork. A Hamvention like that I could really get into. Stupid radios.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
The coolest voice ever.
http://radio.linux.org.au/
And there are many other sites, too. I disagree with what someone stated earlier about being both into computers and amateur radio taking it too far. Believe it or not, there's a lot of overlap between the two. Hams often spend a lot of time tweaking their stations, building stuff, and completely customizing their equipment. Sound familiar to anyone on Slashdot?
73, KG6JBF
IAAL
My dad took me to the good ol' hamvention every year for about 8 years. I went since I was 7 or so. Good times. I remember when it was held in the middle of April and you froze your butt off at your table space trying to sell your old nintendo games. Not that gradually nudging it into May helped that much with the weather.
In any case, this is hardly new so if you're just learning about this for the first time, where have you been?
But seriously, my experience is that this event as with most ham radio things has been dwindling over the years. Anyone else feel that way?
It's a shame too because the community spirit of the ham radio operators rivals that of the early days of the Internet. But the Internet has lost its spark (or at least it's friendliness) far faster than amatuer radio.
But at least we have the memories.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
If you haven't heard about tubgirl, trust me, you don't want to find out. If you click the link you'll think, "Oh, I should have listened to that guy on slashdot who told me not to click the link".
You have been warned.
I spend a great deal of time watching the DX clusters over telnet, playing with digital modes on HF and VHF, and logging. All with my computers, using whatever OS I happen to be playing on at at the time.
N9POA
Check out the 2002 Award Winners "...Amateur of the Year - Larry "Tree" Tyree, N6TR, of Boring, Oregon..."
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Mmmm.... HAMvention. Ahwghkkk. *sound of drool*
M
Even surplus stores are dead. In Silicon Valley, there are few left. Halted Specialties has the same crap it's had for the last decade. Action Computer has obsolete used PCs that cost more than new ones of equivalent power. The surplus store on 101 near San Tomas has rejected power tools from third-world countries. Alan Steel and Supply has tons of rusted-out equipment stored outdoors. (Good place to buy stainless steel; lousy for surplus). Wierd Stuff Warehouse has ancient Sun systems and ISDN networking gear.
Electronic surplus is a victim of Moore's law. The new stuff is better and cheaper than the old stuff. Besides, components are so specialized today that used parts are mostly useless.
But you wouldn't have your cel phones if it wasn't for hams(VHF repeater technologiy) or your 802.xx (packet radio). Satelite phons either for that matter.
O.K., You can mod me to Hell now
I don't like big words..., does that make me anti-semantic?
I realise that most if not all of the people who read and post to this site are computer geeks in one way or another. (I am)
If you are into computers for the pure technical geek aspects, try out amateur radio. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed. There are so many different things you can do in ham that you won't be bored. I've done shortwave, packet radio, satelite, earth-moon-earth bouce, and microwave radio etc. etc. Amateur radio gives you an oppourtunity to delve into physics...
Oftentimes amateur radio is seen as an "old man's" game, as many of the newer geeks jump into computers immediately, and choose programming and networking as their fix of choice. I'd like to see more young people on the air! (I'm 25)
Anyway, give it a try, it doesn't cost much to get started.
Can I still attend?
(Homer): Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon? ... ooh ... yeah right, Lisa. A wonderful ... magical animal.
(Lisa): No.
(Homer): Ham?
(Lisa): No!
(Homer): Pork chops?
(Lisa): Dad! Those all come from the same animal!
(Homer): Heh heh heh
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Back when I used to live in Chicago (instead of Seattle), I used to go to these things. This was a great place to talk with other tech nerds - why, my first Linux CDRom came from a hamfest (Slackware, long time ago). Then one year I went to a talk, and had my 2M handie stolen. That kind of put an end to me wanting to go back, ever again. :(
Yes, these things can be fun, but they're also well-known, and well-loved, by all the thieves around. If you must go, lock the car, don't carry anything, use a fanny pack instead of a wallet or purse, and in general treat it like you were vacationing in a hostile country. Not my idea of a fun vacation, but a chaqu'un son gout.
Lemon curry?
"Give up the ham. Powerful words." (?)
I thought this was gonna be about hamsters. You see, the "male" hamster that my wife bought at Petsmart 3 weeks ago just had a litter. We have our own little Hamvention going on in our bedroom (grumble-grumble).
WARNING; CLUELESS WARNING IN PARENT!!
It's TUBGIRL, not GOATSE. Get it right!!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
as I live near Dayton :) WOOHOO!!
Seriously talk about a bunch of extreme geeks... Guys? runnning around with 12' wips attached to their tinfoil covered army helmets talking to their buddies one aisle overwith a handheld while simultaneously talking to their mom on a cell while pecking away at their Palm. It's a real hoot to just walk around and watch some of these people. The have computer stuff there too.
Back in the day I used to go to buy exotic, hard to find stuff like RJ-45 crimpers and cheap, used drives, cpu fans etc. Now you can pickup a pair of crimpers at Lowes and computer parts are so cheap and easy to order off the net the desire to go has dimished for me some.
The variety of aged geek toys at Hamvention is second to none.
but those things are still around here in Ohio. :)
;)
:) I just don't get to go every year. :( And there are plenty of other electronics besides radios at Hamvention each year.
We have Hamvention, of course, every year. We also have a large surplus store called Mendelsons in Dayton (cool place to get any and everything electronic -- well almost). There are some other places to get stuff, too. (In Fairborn, we have a little store called Midwest Electronics Surplus.)
However, you are correct... I love eBay for grabbing cheap stuff. I aquired my beige G3 desktop from eBay
Anyhow, I love Hamvention.
Peace!
~Steve
I'm glad I haven't had an unpleasant experience like that. I've been to quite a few Hamventions here in Dayton, and (knocking on wood) not had anything stolen as of yet. Here's to hoping this year will be cool, too! ;)
I usually go to great pains to make my car look "non-hammish" (hide the radios, stow the whips) when I park in an unfamiliar or urban area. At Dayton, all my mobile antennas don't stick out so much--they kind of get lost in the crowd, so I don't worry quite so much.
--Chuck, KF9FR
If you have an interest in anything remotely electronic, you'll find it at the Hamvention. It's pretty much like local computer show on steroids. I used to go with my dad when I was a kid and had a blast just from the auxilary stuff.
Hell yes im going to dayton.. making a special trip with another ham from virginia.. I wouldnt miss it for the world :)
73 DE KC8TAD
~Robert
You'll never find a place with more people per square mile walking around with anetennae mounted to their heads than the Dayton Hamvention! ;P
I'll be in a vendor booth. There is a lot of cool stuff there. I bought an FM Stereo transmitter there. Now I can listen to my streaming MP3s within a 3 mile radius on my car stereo. BTW, with FM higher is better.
You can't take the sky from me
The Dayton Hamvention is _THE_ electrions show of the year. In the world. It's huge-you can't get through it in one day-I've tried for the past 3 years. This is going to be my fourth year going. If it's even remotely related to being electronic (including computers) someone is selling it there. The prices are great-no shipping (great for those heavy items as opposed to eBay) and you can often get great deals-I've picked up things for as little as 1/4 of what they fetch on eBay-at hamfests, deals are the norm, not the exception. After going to a hamfest, you'll realize how pathetic little computer shows like the Market Pro ones are-this is GIGANTIC!!!! GO!!!!!!!!! You WILL have a blast!
So you WEREN'T talking about the hamster cartoon Hamtaro!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
N2NHU here-
In 1993 I had a VHF amateur radio station. I connected it to a radio-modem (Terminal Node Controller) - like a modem, but works on radio instead of phonelines.
I could send/rcv e-mail, telnet to unix boxes and chat with folks - free - from my car - TEN years ago - all by ham radio!
It was a bit slow - 1200 baud...
Of course, much faster speeds are supported today - beyond 56 K.
The beauty of ham radio is that you can run real antennas, real power and nearly any mode (AM, FM, television, digital data, etc) - and communicate from anywhere, to anywhere, any mode - no cell phone needed.
Try that from, say, the north pole on cell phone...(not that I have, mind you).
I have a computer at my amateur station that is used to look up callsigns/addresses, observer space weather, track orbiting spacecraft and amateur satellites, operate digital modes, computer control of radio, one-click tuning for BBC listening, log contacts, remote operation of station via the internet, etc.
The radio can even be linked via the internet to radios around the world!
If you like to make things work and learn all the time, check it out - ham radio might be for you.
The hobby has changed vastly over the years-
My station can transmit and receive all frequencies from shortwave to UHF - and it will fit in your briefcase - you can talk around the world on it - or, send digital data!.
The radio can also communicate via any of the two dozen or so orbiting amateur communications satellites.
Drive time is nice to round-robin on a repeater.
The gov't gives you 1500 Watts, enough to be heard on any mode around the world!
There are satellites so sensitive now that a handheld radio can access it for world-wide comms!
Jump over to http://www.arrl.org - less than $20 bucks and a very simple test gets you your license, for ten years!
I miss the W6TRW swap living in the east. Best geek stuff around. Hamvention is definitely far better. Wish it was every month *sniff* but it would not be possible. Will be there visiting old friends from high school (kewl place to have reunion). Amateur Radio: We communicate, when no one else can!!
Never went to Dayton, though I grew up in Ohio. Best I can manage now is Hosstrader's, though maybe some time I can schedule a family visit home around Dayton.
As for thieves, at the last Hosstrader's they were looking for someone who stole some power pole transformers (pole pigs) from the fairgrounds at the previous hamfest. Quite a pickpocked job. Odd thing about it... If I saw someone coming up with a truck and loaded those transformers onto it, I'd probably assume that they were supposed to be doing that. I suspect that sometimes large-scale thievery is easier than small-scale, simple because it's so bold that nobody would question it.
Now what do you do with your own pole pig?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Yep, guilty on that count myself; been a licensed HAM since undergraduate.
For people who have never gone to the Dayton Hamvention, you are really missing quite an event. I live close to dayton, and try to go every year. They sell all kinds of radios and such, but they also sell tons of computer equipment, and virtually anything electronic... Need an actual working Cellular base station? There's a guy in the parking lot who will sell you one; put it in your truck and haul it home. You'll find that booth right next to one selling old copies of 2600 magazine. Come to think of it, the Hamvention was the first place I saw the famous Winamp plugin Holiday Dancer... playing on 15 monitors at once. That what I call eye catching...
It's a great place to get extra (insert ANY kind of battery here), diagnostic/test equipment, components, antennas... electronic doodads galore. If you're any kind of hardware hacker (particularly Wifi), I'll bet anything you need can be found there.
I'll be there... oh yes.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
--the equipment has gotten much worse to work on, and cheaper to just replace and upgrade. There's not as much incentive. What used to require changing crystals and extensive modding is now just 100 dollars away at the store, already done for you. I'd also say that video games taking over as a hobby was more of a factor in declining interest than just "the internet" and computers. Extremely similar time frame if you think on it some. Another factor was cost of telephony changing, and cell phones becoming available, and actually *working* to some extent. Cell phones with free (more or less) long distance almost eliminated any need for long distance radio, at least for most people. On and on, I don't think any one particular reason lead to the decline, just a combination of factors all happening around the same time. It's also a hobby that requires a lot of study and actual skull sweat, whereas our society is now designed around short attention spans, rote learning and consumerism, programmed almost from birth and emphasized in the public schools. If it's not instant, it's not *real*.
interested in getting started? there are some great Linux-compatible scanners, wideband receivers and transceivers (many supported by tk/tcl apps from bob parnass at http://parnass.com):
- Radio Shack Pro-92 scanner, supported by tk92; big, clunky, but works great
- Yaesu vr-120d, vr-500 wideband receivers, supported by tk120 and tk500; truly amazing long-life on 2 AAs!
- ICOM ic-r2 wideband receiver, supported tk2; a tiny wideband receiver!
- ICOM ic-q7a, a tiny dual-band transceiver the same size at the ic-r2, suppported by tk7...
- Yaesu vx-5r, multi-band handheld transceiver, supported by a simple image-cloning C program for Linux...
- Ten-Tec RX-320, serial-controlled high-frequency receiver, supported by the rx320 command-line program and rx320 xclass-enabled X client...
wish i could make it to the hamvention; maybe next year...
1. Go to convention
2. Stand in middle of antenna complex
3. Scream at top of lungs "Scotty beam me up!"
Oh man...I shouldn't read slashdot first thing in the morning...the first thing I thought when I saw the headline was, "I bet there's tasty sandwhiches at this thing, but how'd that get on the frontpage?"
Need coffee....
How's my typing? Call 1-800-eta-shut
I am in to ham radio.
I am in to computers.
I do both for a living.
I make quite a lot of money.
If this is "taking it too far", then let's floor this puppy!
www.eFax.com are spammers
I once bought some Commodore 64 software at a hamfest from a guy who, through some unfortunate circumstance (veteran, I'd assume, but perhaps he was just unlucky), lacked arms.
This would've been less confusing if I wasn't 14, and thus *short* and unable to see all of him at once, so I assumed I just wasn't on the side with his good arm. My father had to rescue me from the awkward situation and tuck my $5 in his pocket for later retrieval.
And he was pretty skinny.
Last time I was out at Dayton, I bought an external floppy for a Zenith MinisPort from some valium-looking woman who asked me if I'd ever "been with an alien," too.
On the show floor, you'll mostly see the Good Ol' Boys (white males, ages clustered around 50), because they're interested in the new offerings and capable of affording them. (As a kid with my no-code, I'd spend a few minutes in there, comparing HTs, but it's crowded as all get-out, and hard to see up/over half the display stands.) Out in the swap meet, you get everyone else- kids fresh with their licenses looking for fun gear, surplus dealers and geeks who aren't as focused on the 'radio' side, and so forth.
With 'raw' AX.25, you plugged in your callsign and went. You got little *automatic* routing assistance, but didn't need much; standard operating procedure for AX.25 over radio was like tcpdumping a 300 or 1200BPS link, and you could discover 'digipeater' nodes (which anyone's radio+node controller could be) and form your own route through them, sometimes crossing a good chunk of country in the process. (There was a USEngland gateway for a while, supposedly routed over one of CBS's leased circuits on an undersea line, so the rumor had... maybe it was over the 'early' Internet in reality.)
... all IP would've added was automatic routing (which wouldn't work too great, anyway) and protocol encapsulation (not too necessary, either; you can encapsulate just about any protocol that can fly over ASCII in AX.25).
In contrast, IP packet required contacting *someone* for an IP assignment. Figuring out *who* was responsible for your physical area, and hoping to get a response back, could be a pain, and a multi-week snail-mail process at the best of times. Plus, conventional routing, as we all know, doesn't play nice in mesh networks, though amateurs were responsible for some early mesh-routing breakthroughs.
The hairiness of IP assignment was, in part, legally motivated; amateurs are required to provide station identification every 15 minutes or so while operating. The idea was to have a callsignIP registry, such that your source IP (in every packet) could be considered as an identifying transmission. (The other problem- if you ran DHCP, which didn't exist in the earliest days, the DHCP servers would still need to know about all others to avoid IP conflicts. Subnetting based on location could've helped; I have no idea what IP packeteers do today. Anyhow, with DHCP, you'd either want DDNS to allow end-stations to set their callsigns, as in 'regular' AX.25, or some sort of identifyd to send a broadcast packet with the callsign in ASCII every X minutes, which AX.25 digipeater/packet BBS nodes would have to do.)
---
Point is, as such, AX.25 was/is Good Enough for 90% of amateur activity, and much more Plug'n'Play. It handles error detection/retransmission, and manual/static routing (um, gah... there *was* a way to specify automatic 'wildcard' routes and try to get digipeaters to do path-discovery for you, wasn't there? My last use was in 1997 or so.)
His dad "took it too far" by the way.
My first exposure to computers was through my father's interest in Amature "Ham" Radio. Effectively early computers were considered in the broad range of things "Electronic", i.e. you built your own power supplies, you bought your 2102 memory in plastic sticks (remember those?), you overclocked (yes, even in those days!) your 6502 or z80 with a capacitor here a crystal there and maybe a resistor. So Hamfests, where piles of electronics parts and salvaged industrial goodies where a great place to acquire such stuff. My dad built a couple HeathKit powersupplies (5v & 12v adjustable) and we ran Ohio Scientific (OSI) boards without cabinets and bundles of wire or ribbon cable hanging out, plugged into a modified black and white TV (those with transformers and often available at Penney's or Sears, though for some strange reason selling at a premium at swap and shops.)
The interest persisted in computers and until this year I have made most Findlay, OH swap and shops for the past 30+ years. My dad's feeling too old to make one more trip so looks like last year was the end of the run. I live in California and don't mind the trip, as Findlay in early September has always been a magical time for me and I'll remember it fondly. I highly recommend visiting the swap and shop, first weekend after Labor Day Weekend, held at the fairgrounds (used to be held in the park where The Old Millstream can be found and the Hancock Ice Arena.) When it was in the park was the best of all, but hey, it's still a great Hamfest.
I made it to Dayton, once, ages ago and was awed by the size, give yourself a couple days to see it all and pore through all the junk boxes. :-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Hamvention" sounds to me like an event where a vegetarian's friends confront them about their dietary practices and try to force-feed them a sandwich.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
"If you could just dial up a country on radio and know that someone there will respond, would you really want to...?"
It's called a wireless telephone set in your house.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Yeah, "Legacy" was a poor choice of words. In addition to the advantages you mention, CW transceivers are easy to build from extremely primitive parts. Maybe not an issue in this era of cheap integrated circuitry. But you never know...
AUUUDIOOOO! AUUUDDDDIIIOOO!
The REAL MEN are on CB ch 6 (27.025). The superbowl where country negro tech rules the band. Even on days when 10 and 12 meters are dead and the old white hammies are shuffling around the nursing home in pajammies, ch 6 is blasting WORLDWIDE DX with mobiles blasting 5k+ watts pure AM goodness.
ANONYMOUS COWARD SAID THAT! I DONE GOT DOWN AND I'M BACK QUIET!
Jeeziz dude...
You can even read part numbers on smt components wihtout a strong magnifying glass. I suppose the modern ham's junkbox is an altoid box filled with hundreds of old smt parts..
As an "outsider" ham, I've never understood the hostility a lot of right-winger type hams have towards the arrl either..
If you're a ham and haven't played with Echolink (www.echolink.org) yet check it out, it's becoming quite a popular way of linking hams all over the world on VHF/UHF bands using VoIP (H.323) technology. I'll be at the Hamvention see you all there. 73s -KC0OJA
...Who's the hobbiest of them all?
It's "hobbyist".
Have a nice day.
Today, the over-clockers and the case modders probably continue on the idea that whatever is sold commercially can be improved upon.
Kudos to the Dayton Hamvention and amateur radio operators everywhere.
73,
Dave KQ3T
hi, I live in the dayton area, amd this may be the last year of the hamvention either in dayon or all together
Any sites that have instructions for building one?
survive.html If you plan to go, this is worth reading.