While it’s really May, April is supposed to be the cruelest month (according to T. S. Eliot), & we suffered through three days of increasingly bad rain up in Ohio, certainly dampening the enthusiasms of the many hams at Dayton Hamvention. The new venue (located at the Creene County fairgrounds over in Xenia, OH) seemed to be workable overall. The most welcome change would have to be the vastly expanded area–everything is/was spread wayyyy out, making access overall much easier. I didn’t get run over once by a scooter. And while the parking areas (all simple grass fields) were all FREE, by Saturday afternoon, vehicles were getting stuck, as the heavy traffic created deep, muddy ruts. W2GD & I had no trouble, getting free trips to the main gate from the numerous golf cart drivers scooting back-and-forth. Wagons were also available, pulled around by farm tractors. Access to the lots was hampered by Xenia folks trying to go to work on Friday morning (delays were as long as two hours to get in), but Saturday everything moved freely.
There were lots of food vendors; there were enough bathrooms. The rooms used for the Forums were larger, but the room lighting could not be lowered, so the screens used for PowerPoint presentations were woefully pale.
But overall, this was an improvement over the old HARA Arena.
The real reason for going (besides the Forums) is, of course, the hospitality suites, held downtown at the Crowne Plaza, & those were as jam-packed as ever. Indeed, they seemed even more popular, in my opinion. K1TTT & N6TV new inductees into the Contest Hall of Fame. The Spurious Emissions musical group was yet again a hit. All-in-all, a good time seemingly had by all.
Jobs for AE8I, W8FU & N4REC all w/o incident afterward. Home to rain, rain, & more rain. So it goes.
stay tuned…
