hamfests

[nyazzip]

i have never been to a swap/hamfest.....nor do i know of any, nor how to find out about any. does anyone know of any events (150 mile radius from chicago) where i could browse around and look at junker tube audio related stuff some afternoon...?

[EWBrown]

I dunno about Chicagoland, but there is a big hamfest (NEAR-fest) in Deerfield NH this weehend, Friday May 2 and Saturday May3, the weather is supposed to be good, but then this is the northeast, and forecasts extending beyond 24 hours are merely a guess at best. THe show goes on, regardless of weather conditions...

http://near-fest.com/index.php

/ed B

[ecir38]

Check this site out.

http://www.arrl.org/hamfests.html

[EWBrown]

There is one, May 4th listed in DeKalb, Illinois:

http://www.kish-club.org/

FOr some reason, the Deerfield NH hamfest has almost never been listed in the ARRL or QST. Too bad, it is the biggest one in New England, held in May and October.

/ed B in NH

[nyazzip]

sweet guys, thanks. NH is a lil outta range but i can certainly do dekalb. the AARL database looks like a good resource. cheers

[WA4SWJ]

I've been to this one a number of times when I lived in Chicagoland:

http://www.chicagofmclub.org/radioexpo2008.html

It's a pretty good sized gathering. There is also one in Peoria, IL that Shannon should know about.

Regards,

[nyazzip]

thats cool, seems like there is a big ham radio community still thriving by the looks of it. i figured telephones, television, and certainly internet would have killed it completely. i still notice the towers in some peoples yards in the older communities around chicago, and wonder about regulations etc...
kind of a neato world. i wonder how much a decent receiver would cost. my father still has a '50s Saba console (with original telefunkens! but weird ones...)that has a short wave band, but it never seemed to tune in much. i still remember dad in the '70s setting his watch to the pulsed time signature on some distant scratchy station, reminded me of a deepspace mission(every minute some poor guy would have to announce it, and i don't think it was automated then!); today we use cheapo weather stations that receive radioupdates daily, plus we all have computers and cell phones which are always right on.....but bang-on time was not so accessible even just 15 years ago
i digress.