[CQ-Contest] Hamvention - New Venue, etc.

[Zack Widup]

I guess we could only expect that a new venue would have some bugs to
iron out. Overall, I had a great experience and was impressed. Here
are some comments, not in any particular order or importance:

1) The buildings seemed to accommodate the indoor vendors well. The
only drawback I saw was that they are not air-conditioned. It got
pretty warm on Friday. Saturday was cooler, at least in the morning.
The tent housing the 6000-number vendor spots (including the CWOPS
booth) had a nice breeze through there on Friday.

2) The traffic in on Friday was backed up as much as four miles. It
took me almost three hours to get from the Crowne Plaza into a parking
space at the fairgrounds. It seems they figured out the problem (the
way they were parking people) and there never was much of a line on
Saturday. It took me only 20 minutes from Crowne Plaza to parking
space at the fairgrounds. People told me about similar times on
Saturday.

3) The flea market is on grass and it got muddy. On Saturday after the
downpour in the afternoon it got really muddy. I think quite a few
flea market vendors just left after that downpour.

4) The layout is much more spread out than the Hara Arena and you do a
lot more walking. There's quite a distance between the building that
housed Forums 1 and 2 and the one for Forum 4.

5) The parking area seemed to get fairly muddy, especially on
Saturday, but I think everyone got out OK. I did not see most of the
cars leaving toward the end of the day, but I saw a large tractor
along the road. Does anyone know if any people got stuck in the mud
and, if so, were they pulling them out with the tractor?

6) The Crowne Plaza was the Crowne Plaza. Not a lot of difference
there. The usual contesters' activities. The Spurious Emissions band
was great. For those of you who know Dima, UA3AGW, he was back this
year after missing the hamfest for about six years. He said he'd be
back next year.

7) I'm waiting to hear what the vendors thought about the experience.
I think they are the people who make the whole thing and, if they had
positive experiences as a whole, they will be back next year.

73, Zack W9SZ


On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 7:46 AM, Pete Smith N4ZR <pete.n4zr at gmail.com> wrote:
> As one of those who couldn't go this year but hopes to go next time, I'd
> sure like to see contesters' comments about what was good, bad or ...?
>
>
> --
>
> 73, Pete N4ZR
> Download the new N1MM Logger+ at
> <http://N1MM.hamdocs.com>. Check
> out the Reverse Beacon Network at
> <http://reversebeacon.net>, now
> spotting RTTY activity worldwide.
> For spots, please use your favorite
> "retail" DX cluster.
>
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
<div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br />
<table style="border-top: 1px solid #D3D4DE;">
	<tr>
        <td style="width: 55px; padding-top: 13px;"><a
href="https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=icon"
target="_blank"><img
src="https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif"
width="46" height="29" style="width: 46px; height: 29px;" /></a></td>
		<td style="width: 470px; padding-top: 12px; color: #41424e;
font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
line-height: 18px;">Virus-free. <a
href="https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=link"
target="_blank" style="color: #4453ea;">www.avast.com</a>
		</td>
	</tr>
</table><a href="#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2" width="1"
height="1"></a></div>