[Towertalk] First day at Dayton - Attendance continues to slide

[Chris BONDE]

Is there not a natural waxing and waning of these things?
The next upswing may not be exactly the same, as technology, people etc 
change.  However, there will be something that will move in to take Daton 
Hamventions place.  I always wanted to go.  BUT  $$$.  To me it seemed that 
the $s went up every year it was successful, the more successful, the more 
dollars next year.  Then the cycle dies as the spenders are without dollars.

Maybe the next swing will be in small hamventions in various areas.  The 
government goes through cycles of centralization and decentralazation for 
political reasons, I think the sales and promotions do likewise for dollar 
reasons.

Just a thought, by, Chris opr VE7HCB


At 06:18 AM 2002-05-18 -0700, Jim Shaw wrote:
>Steve
>Thanks for the update.  A thought re your comment that
>
>"The bad news is that the Hamvention continues its attendance slide."
>
>This is a trend, particularly since 9/11, seen in conventions/conferences in
>the business world as well.  Many articles in the business press have
>addressed the substantial downturn in the travel and convention/conference
>industries which actually started several years ago.  Speculation is that
>part of the downturn is due to the growing effectiveness of the INTERNET at
>facilitating information exchange (TowerTalk is an example).  Even more
>powerful, real time approaches exist via WebEx and competitors to it.  You
>could give your 'tower mistakes' talk for free on PlaceWare
>(http://www.placeware.com/ a WebEx competitor) and perhaps attract a larger
>audience.  Webinars (a contraction of the words 'Web' and 'Seminars') are
>offered free by PlaceWare.com to the business world by as a way to introduce
>their service to prospective customers.
>
>While I suspect there are many other reasons contributing to the Dayton
>attendance slide that are related the overall drop in active hams, I just
>wanted to observe that the emergence of Internet forums may better meet some
>of our needs because they are lower in cost, consume less time, and are more
>readily accessible (e.g. I can get year round access to expert
>advice/information via TowerTalk) vs. the once per year "drink from a fire
>hose" approach of Dayton.
>
>Of course, the Internet is not yet a substitute for physically seeing new
>product offerings up close at discounted prices or for attending the flea
>market.
>
>73 de Jim WA6PXU@ARRL.net
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: towertalk-admin@contesting.com
>[mailto:towertalk-admin@contesting.com]On Behalf Of K7LXC@aol.com
>Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 7:00 PM
>To: towertalk@contesting.com
>Subject: [Towertalk] First day at Dayton
>
>
>Howdy, TowerTalkians --
>
>     It was nice running into some of you today at the Hamvention. First the
>good news.
>
>     Interesting new stuff including seeing the new AN tower at the Array
>Solutions booth. It's a commercial grade self-supporter. Pretty brute stuff
>and should take any kind of load like a 10' microwave dish which it looks
>like it was designed for.
>
>     The owner of Pro-Sistel was also at the A/S booth. Very nice and sincere
>guy so his relationship with Array Solutions may be successful for everyone.
>
>     Also in the A/S booth was the designer and a version of the OptiBeam. It
>sounded interesting. It'd be nice if someone were to test one of them and
>publish the results.
>
>     Rich, K0XG, was there with his rotating tower products and he pointed
>out
>that he has a beam boom mount that'll fit on a 45G or 55G tower leg. It also
>has a strut that prevents any beam movement so the torque on the leg is
>minimized but the strut allows fine tuning so you can get the antenna
>pointed
>in the desired direction accurately and easily.
>
>     The K3LR Antenna Forum had REALLY interesting programs by K1ZM on his
>new
>VY2/Prince Edward Island station that has his dream 160M vertical set-up.
>Mike, W9RE, had the story of his 2L 80M beam. It's big, it's heavy, and they
>designed/homebrewed the whole thing. They even assembled it on the tower
>since the soil was too wet for a crane. VERY impressive.
>
>     The bad news is that the Hamvention continues its attendance slide. You
>can get a room anywhere in town right now including the Crown Plaza which is
>a first. The Hertz rental place at the airport said rentals were down 40%
>and
>you could walk right into the Spaghetti Warehouse across the street from the
>CP on Friday night and get seated immediately - that's NEVER happened
>before.
>
>     The wx is also crappy - rain and 50 degrees.
>
>     More news tomorrow. I'll hit the flea market (2-1/2 acres!) then but
>will
>have to buy an umbrella first.
>
>Cheers,
>Steve     K7LXC
>TOWER TECH
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