[SFDXA] Dayton Hamvention - Last Blush

[William Marx]

It's Sunday morning and I'm waiting my to board my flight to Atlanta. 

If Friday was one extreme Saturday was the other. It was as cold. I had a light jacket but it was barely adequate at 56 degrees. I survived. Cool air for a Floridian I walked all the paved area of the flea market adjacent to the buildings and then ventured into the center of the race track. 

Well the late day rains Friday sure made a mess of things for the flea market. The grass where the cars drive an hams walk was in most sections a mud path. You could still walk the edges and that worked. Some dressed for the apocalypse traipsed right down the middle of course. 

I bumped into lots of SFDXA members notably I stopped at a the booth or trunk of K4DLX and AI4CJ(sort of). I must have been tired, cold lack of coffee or both because my facial recognition wasn't  working. I failed to recognize the calls or faces. Sorry John... but I did recognize the rotator.

So I walked the flea market avoiding the mud and thoroughly enjoyed it. Some areas were fine and others not. While walking one side if I saw something on the other side that item became geographically undesirable. Too bad for him but my white sneakers were still clean. Mostly.  Lots of pictures Cypress in my camera. 

I bought a HP i7 11" laptop with Windows 7 Pro for $100. I couldn't pass it up. New battery, charger, wifi etc works like a charm. 

I though I'll go to a food truck for something BBQ, and then inside for a while, when lightning cracked over head and got just got inside when the rains came in a deluge. It didn't last long, but then knew I wasn't going back to the racetrack infield hi.

Met lots of old friends and more SFDXA members. I also ran into Dr. Tamitha Skov, the "Space Weather Girl" on YouTube whose reports I've sent to you. I met her the night before after her presentation the night before at Top Band. We talked about that, sunspots and weather, gamma rays and clouds, when Dan K1TO came by and joined our conversation. She is so knowledgeable about her craft. Support her YouTube videos they are fascinating. 

Dan K1TO offered to help me get a ticket to the Contest Dinner that night. Dan and I had a great time at the dinner. We both won Door prizes and this is was the 25th anniversary so there were 500+ attending. Huge! More than the 450 at the DX dinner, and I won a Door prize there too

So watch the weather and plan your day, get there early and remember where you parked your car... and what car your driving. This is really important when it's a rental. I got my cattle cart ride to the right area, walked into a sea of cars and said "what the devil am I driving"?  So continually hitting the alarm button and it didn't take too long to find out what I was driving. 

If you've never been?...GO!
73,
Bill W2CQ