[MRCA] Nearfest AAR

[MilComm Guy]

As with the Weare rally it was about a 12hr round trip for me, weather was
a bit on the cold side and quite breezy Friday, Saturday was warmer.  Like
the fall show, Friday was the big day with a healthy crowd and many sellers
although slightly less than last fall, Saturday was another repeat, 1/4 of
the crowd, fewer sellers ghost town by 1030 and that's when I left.

The usual suspects from the MRCA were there and I'm sure I missed someone
or didn't see them so I apologize if I missed you, Dale, Dean, Eugene,
Pete, Jim, Steve, Glenn, Charlie, Brown, Ken and Ted with his radio
clinic.  Brown had a large trailer with hundreds of pounds of comm gear for
sale, he had the largest collection of gear for sale I saw at the show.

  Other than Brown's gear I will try and describe what I saw for sale
military wise as I'm not very good at remembering all the numbers.
PRC-168(high band)$475, Harris RF-350 w/supply$450, vendor had several WWII
tuning units of various bands, I must have seen 40+ of those small
individual rx/tx units for WWII aircraft, the most I have seen at a show
ranging from new to door stop condition, a minty ART-13 w/dynamotor being
delivered to the new owner, russian receiver, 3 GSB HF radios of different
models one a 900 I think, a few R-390's, GRR-17 ? navy receiver in od green
had a pair of them $700.  I did not see any of the common PRC-77, 524, 442
106 or other commonly seen gear for sale, not even a single H-250 which is
unusual.  My military comm activity was one contact with W2HX on 51 with my
PRC-68A, I did see a person set up with a PRC-74 for operation but never
was able to talk with him, he had it last year as well.

I brought home a pair of Mite tty machines another member was delivering
for me, purchased a handful of connectors I needed for tty connections, a
Harris RF-230, PM-2 power supply(may need the rails for the radio if
someone has them)and 3ea AS-2259 antenna kits.  The man selling the
antennas said he was using them for R&D on a device that would not radiate
rf on the antenna when checking swr, said for a gov't project and was
finished with them, true or not hard to say.  My one non comm purchase was
a WWII vehicle rifle rack.

I had a good time and look forward to the next gathering at the Weare show
in July.  I do not have any information on vendors that had the items I saw
for sale, sorry.

73
Mark
K1HF
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