Hamvention to hams is like Mecca to Muslims and you should make the trip at least once. Back in 2003, I asked Theresa/KG4TVM if she wanted to honeymoon at Hamvention and she said no, but this year it was a birthday present from Theresa to me.
We stayed at a state park cabin about 30 miles away from Hamvention at a place called Cowan Lake State Park. We arrived a day early and activated the park and nearby wildlife area for POTA. We did not park at Hamvention and instead parked at the high school and rode a school bus to the site. Interestingly, the town cancels school for Hamvention, so there was an abundance of parking and numerous perky high school students.
Hamvention is a huge event and there were 37,924 attendees from over 43 countries and there were over 600 volunteers.
Despite the huge number of people, we ran into a lot of people from the OVH. Jay/NQ4T was part of a group with 4 tailgate spaces and easy-ups for shelter. Jay invited us to sit and it was a nice place to stop and visit. We also ran into Mark/WA4KFZ, Bill/N4SV and Bill/AF4LL. Also, we ran into Jeff/K9VEG as he was manning the CW Ops booth. Rob/KR4EEV was at Hamvention, but we did not run into him.
We understood from Jay that it always rains at Hamvention and true to tradition, it rained on Saturday. However, we did not have a sea of mud that has happened in past years. Theresa stayed at Jay’s booth as I toured the tailgate area while it rained a bit. The most interesting thing we bought was an HT antenna so flexible that you can tie it in a loose knot and it will be fine. Additionally, we bought two of the flexible antennas that glow in the dark.
Theresa and I also spent some time at the POTA tent. There, they had “POTA BINGO” and we played it. It was a bingo card filled with things that can happen during a POTA activation and we found a person that had filled in the squares with their callsign. There is only one callsign per card and when your card is complete, you are eligible to place your name and callsign in for a prize drawing. Neither of us won anything, but it was a fun icebreaker. There are pictures of our Bingo cards in the slide show at the end of this article.
Thanks to Theresa for a very nice birthday present.
Jay/NQ4T at his tailgate spot
