Hello Ten-Tec friends,
The following is a very long report on Europe's biggest ham fest. Thought
some of you might be interested in a summary of how the European version of
Dayton went this year. (if you're not interested, please delete this now)
Once again I had the privilege of helping out on the Ten-Tec / Appello booth
at Europe's biggest ham fest this year. (Appello is the German distributor
for Ten-Tec amateur radio transceivers and it co-sponsors the booth with
Ten-Tec).
This year we celebrated the 30th anniversary of this European Ham Fest.
First, the ham fest is called "HAM RADIO" and is held in Friedrichshafen,
one of Germany's southern-most cities, which is near the boarders of
Austria, Switzerland, and France. This (previously) central location made
it ideal (in the past) for holding a European ham fest. Italy was also just
a stone's throw away, but Scandinavia and the lower countries (Holland,
Belgium, Luxemburg) and especially England, are a bit farther away. Still,
all of these were always well represented.
That was before the wall fell and the Cold War ended.
Now, (well, since 15 years), Europe also includes many new countries
spanning thousands of miles towards the east, all the way to Russia. And of
course the HAM RADIO really expanded with the falling of "The Wall" here in
Germany and the coming of all of our so called "Eastern European" ham
friends (most of whom actually live in what is now central Europe). Let me
assure you that from the first day these easterners came, they were welcomed
and embraced with open arms. They were happy to be here and we were happy
to have them. The biggest problem was language. That's changed now.
English has established itself as the default language, though the most
common is still German.
Like in Dayton, this year's HAM RADIO had less attendance than last year.
However the reasons may be different. Perhaps there was some lack of
interest, but the single biggest factor here was political. It seems
Germany has suffered a recent major political scandal in which its liberal
visa laws were used by a few to exploit trafficking of prostitution and
illegal workers to the extent that the political backlash has closed its
borders this year to eastern visitors, especially Russian. As a result, I
did not personally see a single Russian (or anyone from former UDSSR) at the
event. In former years they attended by the hundreds, or perhaps thousands.
The biggest impact was the flea market where the lack of Russian Army
hardware was apparent and dearly missed.
Three years ago, the HAM RADIO moved from its original location (the old
Friedrichshafen Congress Center) to the new Congress Center. This brought
lots of advantages, but of course some disadvantages. First, the facility
is very modern and air conditioned. This was great during the show, but the
day we built the booths, all of the garage doors were open allowing access
for trucks directly to the booth location, but the air was OFF and we were
suffering, big time. It was HOT. Once the show was under way, the
advantages of air conditioning, especially this year, were well appreciated.
Unfortunately they raised the price for the cost of the square meter (ca. 10
sq. ft.) of booth floor space substantially and many small vendors simply
stayed away. A few switched their strategy and displayed in the flea market
space, but most simply stayed away.
We had many American visitors on our booth and the consensus was that
Friedrichshafen (abbreviated "FN") compared to Dayton, was better organized,
had a much lower average age level of attendees, had MUCH better food and
1000x better beer.
One of the biggest advantages of FN over Dayton is the size of the [new]
facility. All of the ham fest events, like lectures or meetings (i.e., the
contest forum) took place on-site in modern, air conditioned rooms. There
was no need to relocate to some hotel or other off-site facility.
The Ham Fest Party, held Saturday night, was more like a rock festival than
a ham fest. Several live bands performed music out of the 60's/70's/80's
and all of them consisted of hams. It's American/British music. Just as we
knew it back then. This is now a tradition at the FN HAM RADIO and indeed,
one of the highlights. Perhaps the most surprising thing is the presence of
real American square dancing, which is demonstrated by a group of hams, led
by Volkmar Junge (DF2SS), the owner of one of Germany's largest and best ham
radio dealerships (Wimo - www.wimo.com <http://www.wimo.com/> ).
Now the GOOD part: Ten-Tec:
Perhaps most Americans do not realized that Ten-Tec had a healthy presence
in Western Europe for a good 20 years, but pulled out entirely 8 years ago
when the brand new European Community passed new European laws requiring all
companies selling goods into Europe to certify its goods as being compliant
with the European standards (i.e., for electrical goods, it's called "CE"
certification or compliance.) It seems the cost of obtaining this
certification scared many non-European vendors away, including Ten-Tec.
In 2003, Ten-Tec returned to Europe, beginning with the U.K., through its
partner AOR. Later that year it entered the German market through its
partner Appello. 2004 was the year the return became apparent to most hams
and also the first year Ten-Tec returned to FN (HAM RADIO). I was
privileged to work the Ten-Tec / Appello booth in FN in 2004 and for most
visitors the Orion was the only known Ten-Tec product. Of course the
old-timers hugged us and kissed us in the European style and thanked us for
returning.
2005 changed. This year there was also great interest in other Ten-Tec
products. The Argonaut V had high visibility and the Jupiter was also well
known. This can be attributed to good reviews both radios received in local
publications in recent months. Even the 6n2 was known and requested, though
it is currently not sold in Europe.
By far and away the most popular product was Ten-Tec's new Acro-Bat. We sold
about 40 of them but I guess we could have sold a hundred of them, or more
if we had had them. It seemed people came to gather information and buy an
Acro-Bat.
Since our booth was not a pure Ten-Tec booth, we also showed other products
which Appello resells in Germany, including great antennas from the Swedish
company, Lannado and the Italian "Big Boy" rotators from ProSysTel. In
light of this heterogeneous representation, I took it upon myself to show
Carl's N4PY radio control software. We were not selling it on the booth,
but just showing it. After all, it does help sell Ten-Tecs! Few came
looking specifically for the software and only about 1/3 of those looking
for the Orion were also interested in the software. I assume the first
interest is still the radio and after the fact, after one owns such a SDR
device, one begins to think "What else can I do with this?" and the interest
in radio control S.W. evolves.
As a result of having this multitude of products represented on the booth,
our official team consisted of 2 Germans, 2 Swedes, 3 Italians, and 2
Americans (Scott, W4PA, and myself). In addition, we had another two
Americans and one German who helped out a bit (especially after hours
cleaning up while drinking 807s).
The theme of our presentation this year was "Contesting". Indeed, Scott is
one of contesting's all-time grearts, but Carsten, DL6LAU, the German
reseller (Appello) also has a very impressive contesting record. Indeed,
this year, Europe's top DX contest, "Worked All Europe" (WAE) celebrated its
50th anniversary with a "Super Bowl" drawing (lottery) with the Grand Prize
being a Ten-Tec Jupiter. The Jupiter was co-sponsored by Ten-Tec U.S. and
Appello (Germany). During the contest forum, we were on stage to present
the Jupiter to the winner but alas, the winner resides in America ::: K5SF
(Richard Detweiler - one of this Ten-Tec reflector members). Just minutes
before we were on stage to present the award, Carsten (DL6LAU) had also been
on stage to receive his plaque for first place South America (his contest
DX-pedition) in the WAE contest, re-enforcing the message that Ten-Tec is a
contesting company!!!
Throughout the weekend's events, in each and every session, Ten-Tec got
mention. Hey, often they made jokes about Ten-Tec. In the serious moments,
they mentioned Ten-Tec. In the past 8 years, nobody ever said "peep" about
Ten-Tec. The bottom line is, Ten-Tec has successfully returned to Europe in
just 18 months. As if they had never been gone for 8 years. Welcome back!
Finally, a word about Scott: I guess "Murphy" is his middle name. He
missed every connecting flight he had, arriving 7 hours late. I was asking
people on each flight ("did you see a guy with a long pony tail?"). Well
Scott cut the pony tail (without telling me) and arrived looking "almost"
normal (hi). I didn't even recognize him when he came through the gate
without any luggage. Of course his luggage flew to Timbuktu (or somewhere).
It finally arrived the next day.
As the saying goes, "A good time was had by all".
That was HAM RADIO 2005, Dayton European Style!
73
Rick
DJ0IP (NJ0IP)
Munich, Germany
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