Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
Howdy folks! I’m sharing this week’s edition of Expired Ham a little later in the day because I spent the first part of the day at the Vienna Wireless Society’s WINTERFEST hamfest, both as a shopper in the morning and as a volunteer in the afternoon. I scored two great deals as soon as I walked into the building and had a lot of fun helping the club sell some old ham equipment. The Virginia State Convention was also held during the event and I attended to see what that was about. It was nice to hear directly from our ARRL Section head (and incoming new Section manager) as well as the Roanoke Division leadership.
The hamfest was my first, both in terms of attending one and also volunteering to help operate one. It was a pleasing experience in both regards, if I must say so. If you aren’t a member of a club in your area, you should definitely check out what is available to you. If there are hamfests in your area hosted by those clubs, you should definitely volunteer to help out. Anyway, I have put calendar reminders in for the rest of the year’s regional hamfests and plan to attend more this year. I can see how this may end up being expensive though.
About those two deals? Oh fine. If you insist. So a CW op walks into a hamfest… I walked through the tailgate sale area first after arriving a couple hours after the hamfest began. I didn’t have high hopes that the “good stuff” was still going to be around, but I didn’t expect to buy a whole lot anyway. In fact, I had only considered buying a J-38 straight key if I found one that was in excellent condition (I didn’t). After finding nothing that caught my attention out in the parking lot, I headed inside. At the very first table inside the door, guess what I found. An N3ZN ZN-9ZX paddle and a Bencher “Elecraft” Hex paddle! They were listed with a decently discounted price followed by “OBO”. I offered my best and got both. A ham friend of mine has been looking for the Hex paddle and it’s a really odd coincidence that one turns up for one of us to purchase. So I’ll be reimbursed for that one, but the N3ZN paddle is all mine! 🙂 I’ve heard great things about Tony, N3ZN, and his high quality morse key devices and this is my first one. I considered buying the ZN-QRP instead of getting the Begali Simplex Pro a while back, but ended up going for the latter. I’m anxious to spend some time with the new ZN-9ZX paddle.
I also find a few things that can be used once I get around to piddling with some Arduino projects that I want to do this year. Instead of buying a pair of Fluke alligator clip leads for an ungodly price, I found a pair of slip-on clips that should fit on the leads I have already, and get this, they were free! I also got a miniature breadboard and jumper wire with clips on both ends. All of it was free and impulsive grabs, but I figured they might be useful someday for some reason.
So, what’s your take on hamfests? Are you lucky enough to be able to attend any in your area? What’s the biggest deal you’ve found? Let me know in the comments.
73,
Matthew, K2MAS
K2MAS.net 