[CQ-Contest] Dayton Off Site Forums - A Report (little long)

[Mike Rhodes]

  Well, since I was pretty vocal in my dislike of the off site placement of
the DX and Contest forums at Dayton this year, I figure I had better give my
impression of the realities of the events.
  As much as it pains me to admit, it wasn't that bad. I still prefer the
convenience of having the forums at Hara and the use they made of the old
forum space was a disgrace. A furniture display, a break area, the Red
Cross, and a lot of vacant space. Not to mention whoever that group was
selling (or accepting donations) for pamphlets on stress relief. My relief
would have been to strangle the young man hawking the pamphlets at the top
of his lungs! That same young man approached me in the flea market Friday
morning with the story that he was working his way through college by
accepting donations for some other pamphlet! Didn't see any togas and shaved
heads so guess they weren't Hare Krishna (sp?).
  But, back to the subject. We decided to head over to Meadowdale at about
10AM Saturday. It was almost exactly 10 minutes from the time we climbed on
the bus to the time we pulled up at the High School. And that included a few
minutes of waiting for the bus to leave. There was a second bus behind us at
Hara and when we got to the HS there was a bus there too so guess they were
running 3 buses. The return trip might have been a little longer but not
much.
   The auditorium was actually pretty nice and I think the only bad seats
would have been right behind the projectors. They might need a little more
work there as they had to set the conventional slide projectors on the stage
at about a 30 degree angle to get a good sized picture and you know what
that does to the top vs bottom proportions of the picture. However, a lot of
the presentations were on video and the LCD projector worked fine. The seats
were hard and the auditorium got a little warm but can't say that that is
much different than it would have been at Hara. Also, there was no audio
competition from the speaker on the other side of the curtain as is typical
of the old location.
  Just down the hall, in the school cafeteria, they were holding some
alternate activities and apparently serving a buffet lunch of some sort. We
did not investigate that and instead went to a snack counter set up in the
same place where they had COLD canned pop, salads, and hot and cold
sandwiches at almost reasonable prices. AND, you could set down in the
comfortable cafeteria  and relax while you ate.
  All in all, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. I thought the
attendance for the DX forum was down quite a bit but the Contest forum
seemed to have a pretty good crowd.
  Bottom line? .
        -- I still prefer the convenience of having the forums on site
        -- The 'curtain cleaning' excuse still seems pretty lame
        -- It really wasn't all that inconvenient
        -- I can get used to it.
BUT, please, Hamvention Committee, put the newly gained space to good radio
or even computer related use. After all, it is a Hamvention, not a
Krishnavention.
  Somebody pass the beer, this crow I'm eating is getting awfully dry!

Mike / W8DN




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