FLEM MARK II set for March 1st, 2008

[allthatwhichis]

What is hamfest... Cop convention... Harley ralley? Toss up a link, I'm down to check it out. My grandfather was into HAM radios, but he lived in DC and I never really spoke to him about it when he was around. What venue will it be at?

[flecom]

info here:

http://www.hamcation.com/

me and a bunch of friends bought a whole bunch of indoor tables and we will be selling lots of stuff... i will mostly have computers/computer parts and some radio stuff

and yes its a hamradio show

its another money sucking hobby of mine

except i get to play with antennas on top of tall buildings hehe

[buffo]

Oh man... I haven't been to a hamfest in a couple decades at least! Great fun though. I used to have my license (KA9KPG), but I let it lapse. My Dad (K9ERO) and my Grandfather (W8LYS) were both really into ham radio. (General class both) Dad even had a club station (WB9UON) at the school where he used to teach. (Nice station too; 6 element KLM 10 meter beam, 5 element KLM 15 meter beam, 2 element Mosley 40 meter beam, and an 80-meter dipole all mounted on 50 ft towers on top of a 3 story school, fed with a Drake TR-7 and an Alpha linear.)

Aaron, trust me - you'll have a good time at the ham fest. Hams are very cool people. They love to help newbies, and they all have other hobbies that are of interest to geeks like us. (IE: Computers, electronics, physics...)

I wish I had more vacation to burn; I'd love to run down to Orlando and rub elbows with some of the hams down there. Even though I'm not into it anymore, it would still be fun to talk shop for a while. Plus you can always find good deals on electronics stuff at a hamfest!

Flecom, you might run into one of our more esteemed members: Marconi! (Aka Chuck Barber) He's often seen at hamfests in the Florida area, or so I'm told...

Adam

[hologeek]

Adam,

Where are/were you from. Our license prefixes are similar. I did the same thing and let my license KA9ZZJ expire back when the FCC was restructuring licensing. The notice went to my parents house when I was off at college and poof there went my advanced class license. I really didn't notice it until 2 years laser which was past the grace period.

All the Hamfest in the Minneapolis area have slowly been canceled for lack of attendance. Its really too bad, I miss going and finding cool stuff. The last hamfest I went to a few years ago, I scored 5 huge boxes filled with great laser stuff for $40

If anyone doesn't know about hamfest's you should go and look around.

George

[buffo]

George;

Ah, another one from "9" land. Obviously you were Minnesota. I was your neighbor in Wisconsin. (Sheboygan area.)

My Dad and my Grandfather both got their original licenses (General Class) while they were living in Manitowoc, WI. They drove down to Milwaukee to take the theory test and the code test. (This was back when you needed 13 WPM to get a General.) They each passed both tests, so my Grandfather got K9ERN, and my Dad got K9ERO. (We're talking way back in the early 1960's here.)

Many years later, around 1980 or so, my Grandfather moved to the upper peninsula of Michigan. When he did, he had to get a new call sign. (Michigan is in "8" land, remember.) So they gave him W8LYS. He was pleased that it was an older call sign that reflected his many years in ham radio. (This was shortly after I got my KA9KPG call sign, so he was happy to get a 1 by 3 and not a 2 by 3 like I got. They were also rolling out the 2 by 1 calls for the extra class guys around that time. I met one in the Sheboygan club that managed to snag KE9A. Lucky bastard!)

By the time my Grandfather moved to Florida, the FCC had relaxed the license rules, so he didn't have to change his call again. He kept the W8LYS call 'till he died. Same thing for my Father when he moved to Florida. He kept his old K9ERO call sign until the day he died.

I had my license (novice only) for 5 years. It expired while I was in the Navy in the mid 1980's, and at the time I didn't think I'd ever want to get back into ham radio. And it probably isn't such a bad thing, because if I ever did decide to get back into it, it would be *really* easy. (I think they've totally dropped the code requirements for all but the extra class license, haven't they?) Eh - maybe someday I will get back into it, but not anytime soon...

I agree that going to a hamfest is a ton of fun though. Never know what sort of goodies you might find! We've got a couple other hams on PL here. Steve Roberts (Mixed Gas) is probably closest to you (he's in Ohio).

Adam

[hologeek]

Hi Adam,

We are from the same motherland...I grew up in Milwaukee. Interesting history about your family's ham radio days. A family friend was a ham and he gave me the novice test. I eventually worked my way through the licenses to advanced class and stopped there. I tried to pass the test for the extra without studying and well..that didn't work. I was into 20 meter cw, and eventually made the DXCC club by talking to 200 different countries with my little Yaesu FT-101B which I still have. Ahh, the good times they were...
I checked into the new license requirements recently and its easy. Yeah no morse code. Can't believe it, that was the most fun and you had the best range. I still remember the sound of morse code from the russians travelling over the north pole. Sounded like they were using home made radios...well they probably were. LOL!

I always wanted to go to the big hamfest in Dayton. Well maybe someday...

George

[buffo]

Hey George;

Small world, eh? I took my novice exam at school. My Dad got someone from the local radio club to administer it to me. (He couldn't do it - conflict of interest.) The code was a snap - I was already up to nearly 10 WPM. I should have just practiced a little more and gone straight for the General. (But the theory test would have probably killed me. I was only in 9th grade at the time.)

Never got into the DX thing, but knew plenty of people that were. Part of the reason is that, with the monster station we had at the school, we got out pretty much no matter what shape the ionosphere was in. So there wasn't as much of a challenge there. Plus we couldn't transmit on 20 meters at all (we were all over the school's PA system), so that sorta hurt any DX aspirations. Then too, I was also getting into computers at the time (TRS-80 model II), so that competed with my ham radio interest.

I remember an article in an old issue of QST magazine that talked about the Russian "woodpecker" - the over-the-horizon radar they used back then that transmitted on the ham bands in violation of international treaties. Anyway, the article said if you heard the woodpecker blasting away near where you wanted to talk, train your antenna NNW, tune to the freq where you got the loudest signal, and then send "H 5 H <pause> H 5 H" over and over at exactly 19 WPM. This would confuse the radar and cause it to jump to another frequency, allowing you to continue your QSO.

Well, of course, with that Alpha linear, we could blast out nearly 2.5 KW if we wanted, and with all that power feeding into a big beam mounted high in the air on a hill meant that we were assured of being able to interfere with the woodpecker no matter what. So we did! We spent hours chasing the woodpecker. We had an electronic keyer we would use to get the speed right. After two or three tries, the radar would shift, but always up or down by a set amount (I think it was 150 Khz, but not sure...) So we'd follow it. (Yeah, we went *way* outside of the ham bands, and never sent our call sign either, so we were illegal as hell. Still, I'm sure a lot of hams did the same thing back then.) Eventually someone would intervene at the radar station and it would make a radical frequency shift, and we usually lost it when that happened.

Nice thing about that Drake TR-7 - you could transmit anywhere in the band. (And I mean *anywhere*.) Sure, you didn't have a license for those frequencies, but hell - we were kids goofing off. (Good thing the FCC never found out though.) The hardest part was adjusting the trans-match for the particular frequency as you were jumping around. That took time, and sometimes the radar would jump again before you were tuned up. But it still made for an exciting afternoon of fun pestering the Russians. Sigh... Good times.

To try to pull this thread back on topic, is there any chance of you making a trip to the south east anytime? If so, give me a heads up and we'll see if we can arrange a gathering... Got some really cool people down here. I suppose the meet we've got scheduled for March 1st in Orlando (FLEM Mark II) is a little too short notice (not to mention a very long trip for you), but you might want to think about attending SELEM 2008. It will be held in Newton, NC (which is about 45 min from Charlotte) on August 16th and 17th this year. Give it some thought anyway...

Adam (Formerly KA9KPG)
I always claimed it stood for "Kisses Pretty Girls"... Not that it increased my chances back then though!

[clandestiny]

Lets get a current tally of attendees for this spectacular-
or will there be only a few of us- so we can go apeshit and fully unload on the photons like the landmark flem 1 event-

[allthatwhichis]

Me and probably a guest...

[buffo]

Here's the list I have right now:

Allthatwhichis + g/f
Aseras
Astroguy + wife
Buffo
Clandestiny
Daedal
DZ
Evoldica
Flecom
Hayden EDIT - Hayden will not be able to attend; he'll be out of town.
Imagelight
Marconi (maybe)
Pangolin
Pitts

So that makes 16 of us; 14 members and 2 guests. (Assuming that Marconi can make it.) There is at least 1 more member that is seriously considering attending. Details to follow in a couple days.

Also, we need to nail down our dinner plans for Friday evening. Someone suggested Fishbone's Resteraunt. (The place we had dinner with Bill Benner and his wife before we went to the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular in WinterHaven back in March of 2007.) I'm cool with that if everyone else is. Need to decide on a time though. (6 PM? 7?)

Finally, Pitts was thinking about making the trip out to the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday - the day after FLEM Mark II... NASA's done a great job putting together some unique visitor attractions there. So - anyone else interested in spending the day (or part of the day) at the space coast looking at rockets?

Adam