Go West, OM, Day Three

Panorama view of the APRS Forum at the 2009 Dayton Hamvention

When I returned to my room last night, I discovered that the hotel’s Internet access was down and was still down when I awoke this morning, so I was not able to write a new blog entry. So I dragged my Mac to the Hamvention and am using a variety of free Internet access points available in the Hara Arena.

Friday was eventful and the weather was excellent.

The forum I moderated (the APRS Forum) had standing room only. There were 15 rows of seats with 20 seats in each row and they were just about full, plus there were probably 50 to 100 people standing, so I estimate 350 to 400 in attendance and very few left during the hour plus of presentations. The only problem was that we ran out of time and had to abandon the question and answer portion of the program.

I spent the rest of the day working the TAPR booth or walking around the convention floor viewing the various exhibit booths. I ran into a lot of old friends and I met some folks in person, who I had only met over the air or over the Internet. There was a lot of interest in the HPSDR project that TAPR is supporting. The booth had two HPSDR transceivers set up at each end of our five-booth spread communicating with each other on 52 MHz and this set up was a big attraction. People could see the “project” in operation.

After our day at the convention, we attended the TAPR-AMSAT annual Dayton banquet. Despite having to drive halfway to tarnation to the site of the dinner, I had an enjoyable time. Dinner was good and I encountered more old friends and acquaintances (some from the packet radio era) and enjoyed the after dinner speaker, Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, a recent tourist astronatut, and son of Owen Garriot, W5LFL, the first astronaut ham. Both father and so were present at the dinner.

I returned from tarnation and found no Internet access at my hotel, so I went to bed about 11:15 PM and fell asleep instantly.