05/19/2018

As with most Dayton Hamventions, Saturday was the big day. The crowds were large with streams of people moving from building to building. The rain showers persisted, accompanied by an afternoon thunderstorm, but the wet episodes were relatively brief. Most attendees had come prepared with everything from umbrellas to rain ponchos.


Hamvention's attempts to mitigate last year's mud issues in the flea market area seemed to help, although the relentless rain proved to be a challenge. As a result, the indoor exhibits appeared to receive the lion's share of the traffic.


Perhaps because of the continued rain, the forums were also well attended. The RTTY contesting forum, for example, was almost standing room only for the presentation by ARRL Southwestern Division Vice Director Ned Stearns, AA7A, about FT8 as a possible replacement for RTTY in contest applications.


The ARRL membership forum also drew a substantial crowd. After comments by president Rick Roderick, K5UR, Great Lakes Division Director Dale Williams, WA8EFK, presented a detailed discussion of potential changes to the ARRL ARES program.


All of the "big three" Japanese manufacturers debuted their newest transceivers at Hamvention 2018: Icom's IC-7610, Kenwood's TS-890S, and the Yaesu FTdx-101D. Not to be outdone, Flexradio showed off its new Flex 6400M and Flex-6600M transceivers. CommRadio presented its CTX-10, a compact SDR-based QRP transceiver. Look for more information about these new products and others in the August issue of QST magazine.


For interviews and more, listen to the Saturday edition of the ARRL Audio News Extra podcast. Subscribers will receive the podcast automatically while others and listen online at https://www.blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/[1].

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[1] https://www.blubrry.com/arrlaudionews/

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