[NJARC] Fwd: [AWA] My comments on AWA Conference 2015

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From: "kd4hsh at carolina.rr.com [antiquewirelessassociation]" <antiquewirelessassociation at yahoogroups.com>
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Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2015 11:57:36 AM
Subject: [AWA] My comments on AWA Conference 2015

OK kiddies, here are my comments on the AWA Conference 2015 for what its worth..

 AWA Convention 2015
  
 Reflections on a 4 ½ day event.
  
 Weather was great… In the low 80s and low humidity.
  
 Tuesday was the official opening of the museum Phase 2.  The museum was under a deadline to have the VOA transmitter bay and control room elements on display.  A deadline dictated by the terms of the agreement that would allow federal handover to a 501C3 entity.  I realized last year this would be a truly daunting task for the available manpower and budget.  I found myself a little disappointed in the build-out of this part of the museum.  The VOA hardware and some support documentation and artifacts are indeed on exhibit but construction around it has a long way to go.  I was told that a contract construction crew is due in next week to build walls for the theater, install finished flooring and other internal dividers needed for the space.
  
 Wednesday was a day for the Book Fair.  The vendors bring huge quantities of rare and desirable documentation on ALL aspects of the electrical arts.  I know of no other scheduled event for the vintage communications enthusiast that brings such a quantity of this specific material to the retail market.  During the day, the first of the forums are under way.  The first relate to amateur repeater operations then on to trends in contemporary commercial broadcasting.  After lunch a presentation on how the military is having to rethink its strategies for communications in the modern world… The afternoon ended in a brief history of recording… (In that presentation, I had expected that the narrative would have carried through into electrical recording on disc and magnetic tape; but to my surprise, pretty much stops with the Poulsen Telegraphone wire dictation machine of 1903!)
  
 During the early afternoon, people are starting to set up in the flea market and there is a LOT of dealing going on even though the flea market is not scheduled to begin until 6 AM the next day (Thursday).  Obviously I am in the minority in thinking that there is much more excitement and an increased sense of having a fair chance of finding new goodies for my collection when the flea market has a definite start time.
  
 Thursday morning saw the usual ‘dribble start’ of recent years at 5:30 AM with all not open for business till after 9:30 AM.  I think Gary Alley said that there were 40 vendors doing business at 10 AM.  Certainly a discouragingly small turn-out to such a large parking lot under great weather conditions.  There were indeed some exotic and desirable items changing hands (probably mostly on Wednesday afternoon). Sigh….
  
 The Thursday daytime forum slots were filled ‘chockablock’ with high quality presentations both in the demeanor of the presenters and the quality of their screen content.  It just about does not get any better than this!  
  
 Special thanks goes to a first-time presenter for this conference, Brian Harrison, for his Amelia Earhart saga…. A presentation that continued on (with authorization of course) significantly longer than the usual allocated time slot.  But his program content and delivery kept the audience fully engaged throughout and many remarked that it was a very good presentation indeed.
  
 With my interest in radios made outside of the USA, I was delighted to see Anders Widell’s presentation on the radically different broadcast receivers built by Horace Hurm in France during the early 1920s.   (Just Google for Horace Hurm images and you will see what I mean.)  And Dan Bedford from ‘Down Under’ gave a delightful talk on crystal sets, and later, a talk during the Midnight Restoration Forum.
  
 Each one of the presentations seemed to attract between 60 and 100 people.  (I don’t know the official head count for conference registration.)
  
 In the evening I was busy setting up my contest entries.  This set up time kept me from seeing most of the Midnight Restoration forum.  I did pop in long enough to give a PowerPoint presentation on how I am making museum grade battery replicas.
  
 Friday morning the flea market continued but I’m told that many left by after lunch.  With such a small group of vendors, there was just not enough action to hold folks over till the Saturday morning auction…  The net result was the smallest auction I can remember.  If it was not for the Peckham family bringing in estate items, Rich Estes would have been done in much less than an hour…  The Peckham items were just a tiny part of his estate.  The nicest items I noted were a Zenith 4R (cracked panel) but otherwise refinished to the N’th degree.  A scarce Operadio portable (wish I could have scanned the operator’s manual) and a really fine looking Airway Model F (I think).  I expected the Airway to be above my pay grade and my travel partner, Mike DeHaan, had decided that he had hit his purchase limit for the rest of the year, so we were on the road headed for the Carolinas at about 10 AM Saturday.
  
 Back to Friday…  I missed the AGM at 9 AM because I had been asked to participate in judging the contest.  I hope it was recorded and will be on the AWA You-Tube channel at some point.  The contest participation was significantly smaller than past years…. Great stuff was there but just not the quantity we have known to appear over the years.  My four entries netted 4 blue ribbons AND (ta-dah!) Best of Show for my circa 1927 SRA Radiola M55 (Sweden) exhibit.
  
 After Tom Perera’s great emcee/presenter duties at the always good Key & Telegraph forum segment of Thursday, he returned to tell us the real story associated with Alan Turing and the recent movie, The Imitation Game.
  
 John Dilks was not able to attend and make his presentation on Ed Raser so Bart Lee’s presentation on the recent efforts to make archeological surveys/digs of sites significant to the history of technological development was moved up.  It is always enjoyable to see how enthusiastically Bart delivers his material…
  
 The cap to the 2 ½ days of forums has been the pre 1912 Seminar hosted for many years by Lauren Peckham and more recently co-hosted by Felecia Kreuzer.  Felecia has proven to be more than up to the task of carrying on the tradition of this program.  We have been fortunate to see many 19th century artifacts at this forum that simply do not get shown in any other event I am aware of.  Roger (Rain) Buttignol has stepped up in recent years to bring in artifacts from the 1840s and 50s !
  
 Add three dinners, a special ladies luncheon, a few after dinner presentations, visits to a near-by radio museum; I know of no other opportunity in the USA to experience such an extended conference (not just good swap meet and auction).  We would all like to arrive in the parking lot of our antique radio meets and see a time machine portal that would zip us back to 1999 or transport us to glory days of first person contact with old timers that actually helped contribute to development and build-out of the technology at meet venues like Canandaigua.  From what I understand, that’s not likely….  So in the mean time, maybe with some necessary tweaking of the format, I hope that I’ll be able to attend the AWA 2016 conference for the 43rd. time in 44 years.
  
 Robert Lozier – KD4HSH