Zero Beat 09 2016

September Meeting – we have to be out of the police station

Our September meeting will be an eating meeting at Patrick’s Restaurant at 4972 Park Avenue. All welcome. All and significant others are encourage to attend. See patricksmemphis.com for menu. We will meet at 6 pm.

Pool Cookout

We had a large crowd for the pool cookout and it appeared that all had a good time. We all agreed we should do it again but in a cooler time of the year. Next year we will shoot for October.

Huntsville Hamfest

Saw a lot of folks at the Huntsville hamfest. We sold out nearly all the stuff we brough by noon on Saturday and left around 1:30 pm. We were able to sell a little more of the club stuff and made a $100.

We found some folks interested in the “cats and dogs” we have left at the church. They came over and we made them a package deal on all the GE stuff for $100. This got it out of the church and made a little more money for the club. We also sold one of the old MSR-2000 repeaters for $100.

Dayton/ Xenia 2017

Dayton is in a state of supreme flux. You could say it is fluxed up.They had a booth at Huntsville and tried to answer questions about how they woul handle the hamfest this year. Roger and I hammered them with questions and didn’t accept their ambiguous answers. Unfortunately the more they tried to explained it, the worse it got.

The Xenia facility is considerably smaller than Hara Arena and the methodology they told us about to handle the crowd did not seem to solve the problem. There are 5 buildings for inside vendors that are much less the area of Hara. Plus, 3 of these buildings are not air conditioned. They told us it was cool in Xenia in May and they didn’t need AC. We said it would be fine until it rained (last 3 years) and 20,000 + folks tried to get inside.

They also mentioned putting the flea market inside the infield of the large race track. Per Google Earth the area is not as large as Hara. It could be crowded. They mentioned keeping all vehicles out, eliminating all non-ham vendors, and a possible space lottery. We explained to them that we could not carry tables, tents, and gear in from a remote spot. They also mentioned restricting the number of spots you could have. None of these sounded appealing. We mentioned to them that we heard that Mendolsohn’s would not be coming. They acted surprised and told us they had not heard that from Mendolshon’s. We told them they may not have heard it but Sandy Mendolsohn had told a bunch of other folks. All in all we were not impressed even thought it was fine B.S.

In any case, we plan on going at this point. We have room reservations and will see what happens.