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ARRL New England Convention

Definitely a must attend. Excellent show, decent flea market and many good seminars.
 
From past experience, the best day to go for the flea market is Saturday. Most of the individual sellers leave and there's not much left for Sunday. The prize give away on Sunday afternoon has tailed off quite a bit from past shows. I don't see where they are listing a grand prize, at least not yet.
 
it's every 2 yrs so if you miss it you have a 2 yr wait till the next one. it's nice to see the big guys new toys on display. icom/yaesu/kenwood/HRO/MFJ/ARRL etc etc etc. are inside and a huge flea market outside. lots to look at. i missed it 2 yrs ago so it's been 4yrs since the last one for me. in my 25yrs as a ham i been there a bunch. best used deals are on sat. well marked signs to get there, easy access just off the highway, plenty of free parking. ocean of cars with ham plates and antennas. lot's of infomative talks if that's your thing.
 
kartooo said:
it's every 2 yrs so if you miss it you have a 2 yr wait till the next one. it's nice to see the big guys new toys on display. icom/yaesu/kenwood/HRO/MFJ/ARRL etc etc etc. are inside and a huge flea market outside. lots to look at. i missed it 2 yrs ago so it's been 4yrs since the last one for me. in my 25yrs as a ham i been there a bunch. best used deals are on sat. well marked signs to get there, easy access just off the highway, plenty of free parking. ocean of cars with ham plates and antennas. lot's of infomative talks if that's your thing.
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Effective with last year's Boxboro convention, it is now an annual event.
 
Volunteering on Saturday. They need more hams to step up and volunteer to make the show a success.

Go to the website and volunteer!
 
blindfire said:
Volunteering on Saturday. They need more hams to step up and volunteer to make the show a success.

Go to the website and volunteer!
Click to expand...

I'm already running for re-election as VP of NESMC and I'm teaching the NXDN segment of a digital voice forum later that day.
 
Guys, just got the preliminary schedule for volunteers. There are PLENTY of volunteer opportunities still available.

The convention will be more successful with more volunteer coverage. If you are a room proctor, you can see the presentations as well as volunteering!

Please consider helping out.
 
I have a tech-in-a-day bulletin that says they will be running a class there on 9/10. I emailed the guy to register. Waiting to hear back...it is supposedly being given by the Cape Ann Amateur Radio Association out of Gloucester.....
 
robjax said:
I have a tech-in-a-day bulletin that says they will be running a class there on 9/10. I emailed the guy to register. Waiting to hear back...it is supposedly being given by the Cape Ann Amateur Radio Association out of Gloucester.....
Click to expand...
Yup, that's them: www.caara.net

I should have kept track but I believe the number of NESers that got their ticket at a CAARA tech-in-a-day is more than 30 now.

Here's an old NES thread from when about 15 NESers got their tickets. Good info on the course.
 
I'm coming in Friday for the EZNEC course. I've piddled with it for a year or two but this looks like a good opportunity to get down and dirty.

Funny thing - I sell off my unused HAM stuff on eBay pretty regularly but still have holsters for guns I sold 20yr ago, and boxes of 40S&W when I don't have any such barrel anymore...
 
Will be going and getting my Tech and General...been studying. Tech is no problem, I'm finding that the general exam has lots of ham specific questions.
 
I will also be there for the EZNEC course on Friday. I anxiously wait the leaves to fall off so that I can put up some wire..

I also convinced a friend to go for the Tech in a Day course.
 
Passed my tech and general....failed miserably on the extra class, didn't study for it was playing with the houses money (hard test).

Will be doing PSK31 on 40M with an ft-817 when my license is issued. Hung a 131ft long multiband dipole 70ft in the trees this afternoon. Christened a buddies air cannon to launch a PVC projectile with string over 80ft pine trees...pretty cool.
 
GomerPile said:
Passed my tech and general....failed miserably on the extra class, didn't study for it was playing with the houses money (hard test).

Will be doing PSK31 on 40M with an ft-817 when my license is issued. Hung a 131ft long multiband dipole 70ft in the trees this afternoon. Christened a buddies air cannon to launch a PVC projectile with string over 80ft pine trees...pretty cool.
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Outstanding!!!![rockon] [party]
Nice job passing both in one sitting. That happens, but not that often. Good job!
I'm a member of the club and heard that 22 of the 24 students passed. I didn't hear any mention of how many passed the General too. Were you the only one?
Also, what was the average age of the people taking the class? (see below)



Now for my trip report:

After being a ham for 6 years this was my first time to a convention.

My first impression was what I expected, as a 58 year old guy in reasonable shape I felt young and incredibly healthy. The average age must have been well over 60 and most were over weight. But that's expected. Unlike 40 years ago, kids aren't into ham radio much. However, the reports I heard from Tech-in-a-day said of the 24 attendees there were 2 "Kids" and the average age was under 40. That's good news for the hobby.

There were a lot of seminars to choose from, and the 3 I attended were quite good.
* Radio Propagation: I came in late to this 2hr presentation but still learned a lot. The presenter had good slides and had a very down to earth way of describing things.

* QRP: the New England QRP club (their web site is down at the moment) gave a moderately informative, but fun talk on QRP. The usual stuff of why, how it compares to 100W, construction methods, different rigs available, etc. The main presenter has build dozens and dozens of rigs and accessories and he passed around some of his home brew stuff. I left inspired to go add to my collection of 5 QRP rigs [laugh]. Later in the evening they held a 3hr build-a-thon where people built a kit transmitter useful in testing receivers or as a CW transmitter. These guys are passionate about their hobby.

* The Enigma Machine: The main guy running the for-profit Enigma Museum (http://enigmamuseum.com/) gave a great presentation on the history of the machine, how it impacted WW-II, how the machines work and some of his adventures being an Indian Jones trying to recover machines from fields, sunken ships and lake bottoms in countries that aren't that excited about him doing it. And yes, he is a former professor. It was a great WWII communications encryption history lesson. One big take-away is that you can throw out every WWII history book you have published before 1975. In what he says is a world first, about 10,000 people doing the secret decoding work at Bletchley Park in England kept the secret of their work until 30 years after the war when they were given permission to talk about it. Until 1975 no one knew we were reading the German's communications! Also, Alan Turing didn't invent the "Bombe" code breaking machine as depicted in the movie Imitation Game. It was 3 Polish geniuses that fled to England after Germany invaded Poland. After WW-I, Germany was split into East and West with Poland between. The Polish government knew Germany would eventually invade them so they maintained a code breaking group so they would know what Germany was up to. When the 3 Poles fled to England with their Eingma and Bombe plans, England gave them zero credit. It wasn't until the 1990s that England erected a monument to them at Bletchley Park.

The convention also had tons of vendors and a big flea market. I managed to buy very little though.[grin]

So, though conventions really aren't my kind of thing, I recommend the ARRL conventions. Give it a try next year.
 
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GomerPile said:
Passed my tech and general....failed miserably on the extra class, didn't study for it was playing with the houses money (hard test).

Will be doing PSK31 on 40M with an ft-817 when my license is issued. Hung a 131ft long multiband dipole 70ft in the trees this afternoon. Christened a buddies air cannon to launch a PVC projectile with string over 80ft pine trees...pretty cool.
Click to expand...

Nice job passing both. You were there Saturday? I hadn't even looked at the general info so I passed the tech and got out of dodge...lol I didn't know another gun guy was in the room.
 
cockpitbob said:
I didn't hear any mention of how many passed the General too. Were you the only one?
Also, what was the average age of the people taking the class? (see below)
Click to expand...

Not sure how many passed tech and general...I was there first thing Sat morning. I used HamStudy.org to study and I *highly* recommend it for anyone wanting to get their ticket. The flash card system they have is really well done. I have an EE background so the electronics was not an issue, but the test contains a lot of very specific ham info. The flash cards helped a ton learning that stuff.

I didn't take the class but I saw a bunch of the guys studying at lunch, they were 20-30's. I actually expected the place to be full of older folks but there were a good number of younger people too.

EDIT: video finally uploaded:

 
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