It\’s not a tumor, it\’s a blog

Most hamfests are pretty much the same. Of course, some have more events, some are larger and some are smaller. This is the first year that I have attended the Charlotte hamfest, so I can’t really compare it to previous year’s hamfests. However, I can tell you although it was one of the physically larger hamfests, it wasn’t all that great.

The hamfest occupied two large rooms at the Charlotte Merchandise Mart. The first of the rooms was the dealer room. Icom, MFJ, and TenTec were all them, but also were the smaller dealers. Surprisingly, so were the Girls Scout and theCivil Air Partrol; two groups that I hadn’t seen at a hamfest before.
The other room was for the folks who normally sell used equipment, electronics parts and tailgaters. The room had more computer and general electronics equipment than radio. Of course, that’s almost par for the course with many hamfests.
In my opinion, many of the best deals that one finds at hamfests come from the tailgaters, and Charlotte’s hamfest had none of those. This was a surprise to me and a but of a downer. Personally, I was looking for a single band transmitter or tranceiver for HF SSB, and since I can’t afford the prices of a new rig, I hoped to find something used like a tube based boatanchor. The pickings were certainly slim for that kind of thing.

What I did end up buying was some breadboard for an upcoming project as well as a $2 external CW filter and an older MFJ 144/220 SWR meter for $10.

The last thing that I was able to pick was a General class license. I passed my test, and I will be on HF shortly.

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