There's a hamfest near Indianapolis today and I was going to go -- but there's also flu and worse circulating, and I kinda didn't want to give my fellow hams a chance to disappoint me, either.
At an outdoor flea market, there's more space to avoid germs and more chances to overlook the politics that were starting to infect hamfests even before the pandemic. It used to be just looking askance at CBers* and griping about the FCC and the ARRL (and whatever feuds were infesting the local repeaters), but people started drawing partisan lines. Me, I just want to look at interesting old junk in person, and swap signal and weather reports over the air.
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* And refusing to sell them linear amps. 4 Watts is plenty, guys. If you want more, study up for a ham ticket.
Update
2 months ago
2 comments:
There will be more ham fleas... I'm looking forward to the outdoor ones.
Eck!
I hear you. Already more than enough places to talk politics that it's nice to get away from it. It doesn't have to be everywhere all the time. (I just wish I could block 7200kHZ from my HF rigs)
In addition to signal and weather reports, I like discussing our shack setups, mainly because I get a kick out of how I'm getting good reports with my 100W and hexbeam at 35' from guys running kilowatts into multi-element beams at over 100".
Maybe someday you'll come to Dayton and we can do an eyeball QSO.
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