This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit pl -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
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for more information about ICOM radios. Here
we go, welcome to Amtopi Call in, let's talk,
Neil's your guide Amtopi, here we go One from
beautiful Florida, it's HamTalk Live episode
number 313, live from the Orlando hamcation recorded
on Thursday, February 9th, 2023. I'm your host,
Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning into this
episode of HamTalk Live. And a little later we'll
be joined by the chairman of hamcation, Michael
Colley, W4ORL, to let us know what all is. Going
on starting in the morning here at ham occasion
Last episode John Portoon W6 NBC was here to
talk about toroids and balance if you missed
that show you can listen anytime ham talk live
comm or on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube
so great trip down here may May have stopped
at a Bucky's or two or three along the way down
here. But just really excited about everything
going on this weekend. I got everything set up
in the Yoda booth. So I'll be there. So if you're
at hamcation, stop by the Yoda booth and say
hello. We'll be pushing all the youth on the
air camp and activities. this weekend and taking
care of the youth zone which is a youth hangout
area and then on Saturday at noon we're gonna
have a social hour for youth we'll have free
snacks and drinks for the youth and of course
we have our drawstring bags that are for the
youth so we'll have those available and stickers
and all kinds of stuff there next to the Yoda
booth so Hope you could stop by during hamcation.
If you haven't been to hamcation, you need to
go. It's a great trip and the weather is just,
you know, can't be beat in February. So we'll
be back, talk a little more about hamcation with
Michael right after this word from ICOM America
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is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, why
are there locks on the doors? Now, here's Neil
Rapp with more HamTalk Live. All right, we're
here live at the Orlando hamcation. It's Thursday
night, so it's pretty quiet around here. In fact,
set up was supposed to finish about an hour ago,
but we're still here and with me is the chairman
of hamcation, Michael Colley, W4ORL, and the
show's ready to begin. Now, I was driving this
afternoon, running a couple errands, and I heard
guy explaining, you know, this big event, and
said, you know, this is a radio, so you can't
see the dancers. But the show's ready to go on.
It is. Welcome to Hamcation, Neil. Great to have
you here. So we're pretty much set up here on
Thursday. The show opens to the public tomorrow
morning at 9 a .m. All right, and and looks like
weather is gonna cooperate pretty well, maybe
maybe some quick rain But it's kind of that Florida
rain. Yeah here the weather can change within
five minutes It'll be raining five minutes and
next time it'll be sunshine and so typical Florida
weather here and Even gonna cool down a little
bit here. It is I think on Sunday the high is
supposed to be in the 60s the last I saw so a
little bit of that northern weather or our version
of northern weather down here. I didn't bring
that with me, just for the record. But yeah,
it should be a nice time here and just a couple
of pop -up storms here and there, it sounds like.
For those who may still be on the fence here
of getting to Orlando and being here for hamcation,
tell them what all is going on here. Hamcation
is the second largest ham fest in the country.
It is Friday, Saturday, Sunday here in Orlando,
Florida. We still have, you can come out Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, buy your tickets. We do have
some swap tables left in our swap area. We have
a large outdoor RV area. There's still RV spaces
available if you want to bring your RV down and
camp on site. There is also a large tailgate
area, outdoor boneyard area. Right now we're
probably 200 plus tailgaters out there. Okay,
and we're sitting right across from the ARRL
area. They have a lot of booths and they are
doing the app again. So tell everybody about
the app. Correct, this is the ARL events app.
You can actually download it on iOS or Android.
And what this app is, we partnered with ARL and
Dayton Hamvention to bring visitors of both of
our HamFests this app. So you can download it.
It will have all the information you need for
the HamFest at your fingertips. You'll know when
the forum schedule is. You will see all the prizes
in there. Every hour when the prizes are drawn,
they will be posted. You can put your profile
in there. You can meet other people. There's
the floor plan. You can go to it if you're looking
for a certain vendor. It will actually show you
exactly where they're at with a pinpoint when
you pick them. There's a lot of stuff you can
do with the app including, just like I said,
meeting up with other attendees. There's a spot
in there where you can say let's meet up and
send them a message if you know somebody and
let them know. So it's a very good app that ARL,
Dayton, and ourselves are using this year. Well
it's really cool and I'm looking at a couple
of ads for it here as we're sitting here in the
Yoda booth and see the ads that will be around
for the app so make sure you download the app
and you can get reminders for your forums and
all kinds of stuff so that's a cool deal. I've
got the the youth on the air booth set up here,
but we've got this massive space to my right
that is the youth zone and We're gonna do some
some stuff on that on Saturday We're gonna have
some snacks and and drinks for all the youth
and of course some some Yoda swag to give away
so we'll be doing that on Saturday and then Friday
and Sunday it's just going to be kind of a youth
hangout area. We've got the youth activities
highlighted on some signs here in the booth.
So for any youth that are coming, you can check
out the youth schedule here in the youth zone.
So thanks for allowing us to kind of change that
up this year instead of the forum and do the
youth zone. Yes, I think this will work out very
well. At least the youth can come and go as they
need to. They don't have to worry about going
to one spot for a forum, like you said. So also,
in the ARL app, there's also a youth area under
there that people can go and find information
about the booth also. Yeah, and so, you know,
young people can meet up here and... and drop
some stuff off if they need to for a while or
whatever. It's just kind of their little hangout
here. So hopefully the youth will be making use
of that and we have the scouts next door to us
here and the leader of that group is one of the
award winners. It is. Ken Lyons is one of two
of the Carol Perry Educator of the Year award
winners this year. He will actually be doing
a Boy Scout merit badge during hamcation. This
is his second year doing this. It was such a
huge success last year. We have partnered with
him to sponsor it again this year. So he has
about 25 kids coming through here to get their
merit badge for communications. Oh, that's great.
And yeah, see all the benches set up here. So
that's a cool deal. What are some of the other
highlights here? If you could just pick a few
of some of the things you've seen set up here.
We've got a hex beam staring us in the face and
all kinds of stuff. So just maybe highlight a
few things here. I can do that. The biggest thing
is this year we got a lot of new vendors. Begali
Key, I'm actually looking at their booth from
here also. They're coming from Italy here for
the first time this year. We also have ADBSD
Exchange, which does the flight tracking. They're
new this year. We have, I believe it's called
Hex. There's a Hex beam company, which is new
this year also. So there's a lot of new vendors
this year coming in. We also have Rabbit Laser.
If everybody's familiar at Dayton, they're the
ones that have the engraving machine that engraves
the cups and stuff like that. They're here for
the first time and you can actually go over there
and get a, like a Yeti Cup style cup engraved
with the hamcation logo and your call sign on
it. That's some cool stuff. We like more swag.
We've kind of doubled up on swag at Yoda this
year, so that's a good thing. So, you know, there's
just so much here to come and see, so we hope
you can join us this weekend at the Central Florida
Fairgrounds in Orlando, Florida. And I'll be
back with Michael right after this word from
one of the vendors here, Tower Electronics, right
here on HamTalk Live. Thanks for choosing Tower
Electronics. How may we help you today? We have
PL259s, we have In Connectors, we have SMA adapters,
we have BNC adapters. What can I show you today?
Where's the tower? Well, we don't actually have
a tower with us. But we have all kinds of things
you can use with the tower. We have power poles,
antennas, soldering irons and meters. Where's
the tower? Ma 'am, that's the name of our company.
We can't haul towers to all the ham fest across
the country that we visit, but we have almost
every connector and adapter you would need to
connect your antenna that's on your tower. I
don't think there's a tower back there. I really
don't. Tower Electronics, visit us at a HamFest
near you or call 920 -435 -2973 or see our whole
catalog at PL -259 .com. Sorry, one thing we
don't have is a tower. And the Tower Electronics
HamFest schedule, of course, this weekend, they're
right here at Hamcation in Orlando, Florida all
weekend long. So make sure you stop by and see
them. And then February 25th, they'll be in Dalton,
Georgia. March 4th, they'll be in Cave City,
Kentucky. And March 19th, they'll be in Maumee,
Ohio. And March 25th, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But
you can visit them any place, any time at PL
-259 .com. Here's the snap, Rapp takes the rig,
he breaks through the pile up, he's on 80, now
40, now 20, 15, 10, 2 meters, touchdown Hamtok
Live! and welcome back to ham talk live live
from orlando florida here uh at the home of the
orlando amateur radio club's annual hamcation
and uh hope to see many of you here this weekend
and like i said if you haven't made it down here
you should do that make sure you and check out
hamcation .com. Well be sure to check out HamTalk
Live on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That's
where we let you know about upcoming events.
And we do have a show next week already scheduled
about HamSci. So we'll be telling you about that
a little bit later. But for now, it's time for
the Ham Radio Joke of the Week within 9GSU. Now
it's time for the HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke
of the Week, the part of the show where Rick
tells us a ham radio joke. The HamTalk Live Ham
Radio Joke of the Week is brought to you by QRM
Labs. Now, here's Rick Garrett in 9GSU with today's
HamTalk Live Joke of the Week. After my last
POTA activation, I went to the Chinese restaurant
for lunch. My fortune cookie didn't have a fortune
in it. That was unfortunate. And there's yet
even more stuff going on. You've got a ton of
cool prizes. We do. Let me first say thank you
to several sponsors that is giving us some very
cool prizes this year. First up would be ICOM,
which is our platinum sponsor. They are sponsoring
our Friday, Saturday, and Sunday grand prizes.
is ID 52 from ICOM with a whole bunch of accessories
to go with it. Saturday is the, I call it the
Yoda, or not Yoda, there I go, Yoda. The Pota
dream it's one of those otas thing. Yeah the
Pota dream for parks on the air guys It is actually
a 705 with the whole setup for everything the
backpack 705 antenna tuner loop antenna everything
to get you out on parks on the air and then Sunday
is our big grand prize, which is our icon 7610
and a whole bunch of accessories to come with
it microphones external speakers software all
that also and then Our next sponsor would be
actually Yezu. Yezu has donated 10 of their FT5D
handhelds, which is their top of line system
fusion handhelds that they have. They have donated
10 of those, so that's another one. DX Engineering
has come on as a bronze sponsor, and they have
donated $10, $100 gift cards to use at their
store or online or here at Amcation. They do
have a booth here also. MFJ has donated over
20 MFJ items to us also this year and a whole
bunch more. Altogether we have over 25 ,000 in
prizes this year. That's pretty impressive and
I got to make sure I buy my ticket because I'm
going to have to get in on this. some really
cool prize packs this year, and I like the idea
of the prize pack you talked about earlier on
our preview show. So let's see, what else? We've
got forums going on, and I finally saw the forums
area a while ago when I was driving, and you've
kind of adjusted that a little bit this year,
but sounds like it's going to work out real well.
We have. Actually, when I was on the show before,
I said we're going to have forums on Friday,
Saturday and Sunday. We're actually able to fit
everything on Friday and Saturday. What we've
done is we've got only two clear span tents this
year, but we were able to set up an area under
the pavilion away from the tents that's called
open air forums, which will sit about 75 people
also. So we'll be running three sets of forums
on Friday and Saturday. We have some great forums
here. Carol Perry's youth forum is here. Actually,
Dara is doing a forum. Yezu is actually doing
a forum. All of this information is also on our
website. It is up to date on the website or the
ARO app. So you can go to any of those and see
our forum schedules. All right, and of course
parking look parking looks pretty pretty good
I haven't seen any any sinkhole so I always have
to joke with Andy Malusi KK4 LWR when I came
down here one time that the Disney PAM radio
club van was halfway down a sinkhole so I haven't
run any sinkholes out here, so we've got plenty
of parking We do. The Fairgrounds actually sits
on 86 acres here, and we have plenty of free
parking. Everything is on site. So you park,
you walk up, you buy everything you want. We
have lots of shuttles this year to take people
to and from the ticket booths. And even if you
buy that big boat anchor, as everybody calls
it, out in our swap or tailgate area, we can
help you get it back to your car. All right.
And some new food vendors, too. Yes, a lot of
new food this year is coming in. I did see one
that come in already that I definitely want to
try. There's a ice cream truck out there. Oh,
there we go. Yeah, so definitely have to try
that here in Florida. There's a new barbecue
vendor. There's kettle corn this year. So they
have a lot of new vendors this year for the food.
All right, very good. Yeah, the ice cream is
always a hit. And, you know, when you're used
to being in 30 -degree weather down here, the
ice cream's sounding pretty good. So, okay, well,
I think we've pretty well covered it. Anything
else to talk about here? Talk -in, anything like
that? We do have talk -in. It is on 146 .76.
So check it out. It starts at 8 .30 in the morning
and runs until 5. People in there, if you have
any questions, that's where you actually go.
If there's any issues with parking, if we start
getting full in any areas, they'll tell you the
easiest way to get into fairgrounds. If you run
into any construction on the way in, they can
tell you ways around that. So definitely an area
to listen to. Any announcements will be put out
across that also. And also, going back to the
ARL app, if you do have it, we can push announcements
to that also. So if anything comes up for certain
announcements, we can push it to that app also.
Very good. It's always nice to have that because,
you know, it's just hard to get the word out
quickly. And so that's a great way to do that.
Well, Michael, thank you so much for taking some
time here after hours to... to talk to everybody
about hamcation and thanks for all your help
in getting the Yoda booth squared away in the
youth zone and all the stuff and for helping
me out here, getting everything set up and I've
just got my fingers crossed no food poisoning
this time. That is true, definitely no food poisoning
for you. Just like I said before, thank you for
coming to Hamacation. Welcome and let me say
welcome to everybody that's been here. Everybody
that's been here before, thank you for coming
back. For all the new people that's first time
visitors, thank you for coming. For the first
time visitors or even the other ones, we do something
new we have done this year. We do have a Orlando
Amateur Radio Club booth set up. So you can go
over there, check out. Orlando amateur radio
club, which is the sponsor of hamcation for our
international visitors this year We actually
have the internationals Relations team booth
set up also so you can go sign the guestbook
Talk to our international relations team where
you're from. Let them know sign our guestbook
That's a great idea. I like that very very much.
So Alright, well, thank you so much and we'll
be back here tomorrow I'll be here in the Yoda
booth and Michael will be here there and everywhere
answering phone calls answering the radio and
and and about rated to to drop from exhaustion
so That's definitely that Neil. Thank you for
having me on the show And we'll get together
afterwards with a wrap -up on him kitchen. There
we go All right, well that is a wrap for this
edition of ham talk live I'd like to thank my
guest Michael Colley W4ORL and everybody out
there in cyberspace for listening and also a
big thank you to The hamcation staff and all
the hospitality here. It's been great. Just just
during set up day It's been great so far and
looking forward to a fun weekend down here in
the sun in Orlando and getting to see everybody
and talk a little bit about Yoda and maybe even
HamTalk Live a little bit if we get a chance.
So thanks to them and we'll invite you back next
time when Dr. Nathaniel Frisell, W2NAF and Gary
Mitikin, AF8A will be here to talk about the
upcoming HamSci conference. So for a list of
all of our upcoming guests, just go to HamTalkLive
.com. So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG,
saying 7 -3, 7 -5, and may the good DX be yours.