[Boatanchors] Huntsville AL Hamfest Report

[Ben Hall]

Good morning all,

The Shelby NC hamfest photos reminded me that I had yet to share my Huntsville Alabama Hamfest report from several weekends ago.

The morning started out not-so-great - after hitting the ATM for spending cash, the 18 year son and I rolled thru the McDonalds drive thru only for them to mess up our order not once, but TWICE.  We also realized we'd left the backpack at home, so back-tracked to the house to grab it and proceede to the Von Braun Center (VBC).

The VBC is on the "outskirts" of "downtown Huntsville" which is always fun.  Like many other similar age downtown areas, it's had a bit of a "rebirth" in the last ten years, so lots of construction, new buildings, and new traffic patterns.  We usually park in the $10 lot that's a good long walk from the Hamfest...but has wide parking spots and aisles for our full-size "land yacht" truck...but it was full.  Interestingly, the garage under the hamfest was not, so we got in that line, only for it to close about 20 cars before we got to the money collection booth.  U-turned and headed back out.

While parking at the VBC is a bit of a pain, there's LOTS of garages around, so we went around the corner to one of the other garages only to find it's entrance blocked up by construction.  After some fooling around with my maps app, we found the open entrance, paid our $5 (nice!) and headed in.

We'd paid in advance for our tickets, and boy was I glad we did!  At about 0930 when we got there, there were at LEAST 300 people in line for tickets.  The "will call" booth had no line, so picking up our tickets was EASY.  :)

The hamfest used to take up only a portion of the VBC south hall.  But, after the pandemic, they decided to open it up to the full length and widen up the aisles which was NICE.  In the old setup, when it got crowded, getting thru the aisles was HARD.

First impressions:  it was PACKED.  This is the first time we've been in a few years, and I can't remember it EVER being this full of people.  The turn-out in the "retail" section seemed WAY DOWN from the last time.  The battery guy (I forget his name) wasn't there, the folks that sold Arduino-type kits and stuff wasn't there, and a lot of the other usual retail folks I remember were not there.  The retail section might have been half the size I remember it?

The flea market section was totally full with mostly "ham stuff."  Over the years, the influx of non-technical items (XYL jewelry, etc...) had gotten a bit high IMHO, but then again I'd rather the hamfest sell the tables than have them go empty so I'm cool with it.

Taking pictures was IMPOSSIBLE with the amount of people there...else I would have grabbed some cell phone pix to share.

BA selection was interesting.  More old wooden broadcast sets than I've seen in a long time with what I'd consider okay prices.  Even some big-honkin' floor consoles.  Military and commercial gear was in good supply, not great, with prices all over the place.  Examples:  A TCS xmitter for $75 w/0 case, a TCS RX w/o case for $75, and a dusty TCX RX (with case!) for $50 (which came home with me).  Saw a Halli SX-28 in rough shape for $200, several R390's in various condx for $300 to $400, and several Hammarlund HQ's in the $100 to $200 range.  What I really missed were the tube vendors (only a few there) and the military connector vendors (none that I saw).  A good selection of solid-state Tek scopes, other test equipment, etc..., marked anywhere from silly prices to "I was tempted but don't need another".  ;)

I think previous discussion on Shelby applies to HSV as well - people that wanted to clear stuff out were asking reasonable prices and looked like stuff was selling, albeit slowly.  I did see some funny signs:  "XYL has already called the divorce lawyer if I bring anything back with me, make an offer!"  Another:  "It's a hamfest, let's dicker."  People asking too much probably took it home with them...it was so crowded and busy so we didn't stay more than a few hours but I saw no movement on the stuff I thought was priced more towards the "ePay" end of things vice hamfest.

So what did we buy?  My son loves retro electronics, so he bought a Radio Shack portable cassette player from a friend of mine for, I think, $2.  We got it home and realized...WE HAVE NO CASSETTE TAPES to try in it!  (Hahahahaha!)  At the bottom of a drawer we eventually found a "Denise Austin Walk Away the Pounds" exercise tape and after extracting the crusty old batteries (corrosion / leak city, yeech!), it worked, and the son was carrying it around the house playing that exercise tape to show the family his new treasure.  He also bought a programmable LED name badge as he's also into programming.

I bought that TCS, which turned out to be unmodified minus a single front panel hole (why? not sure) and for the first time ever, it came with RX crystals installed.  Following Dave Stinson's posts on TCS check-out, I lubed the band change fingers, ensured they were free, and lubed them up.  I need to build up a power connector for it, just need one of those round tuits.  ;)  It has at least one physically leaky bathtub cap, so it will need a good bit of work to identify and fix that.  (and maybe recap the whole thing, not sure)

Also bought a grab-box of tubes from same friend as the tape player.  Many were in boxes marked "bad" but the TV-7 found at least half of them to be marginal or better.  Go figure.  The rest donated bases for future plug use.  Included was a 3E29 tube and socket, which is a neat looking VHF transmitter tube from what I've read...might make that into something someday.

And that was it for our visit.  Not bad, not great, we had a really good time, got a LOT of walking exercise in, and by the time we got back to the QTH we were both quite tired.

Thanks much and 73,
ben, kd5byb