National Hamfest–Planning

As you are no no doubt aware, I have visited the National Hamfest every year without fail since being licenced, this usually takes place at the end of September, and I got the dates this far in advance from the latest RadCom.

My plan for this year is to stop overnight so I can be there both days for a change, I have already got the form to arrange this and this just leaves me to take holiday from work on the Thursday and Friday of that week.

I downloaded a form from the website but obviously need to print this to fill it in, then I can mail this to the Hamfest organisers in good time along with sending payment to them.

As I intend to stop overnight I intend to do some radio activities on site as well, this is where my recently purchased drive-on mast stand will come into it’s own, as I will be able to put up antennas for 2-metres and 70cm at the very least, I probably won’t do any 10-meter operation unless I can get hold of or build a portable antenna for that band in the interim.

Another issue I will have is powering rigs, the FTM-400XDE requires the car be running in order to run it at full power (which as I’ll have a 2E0 by then I should be able to do), though I’d be sat in the car when operating this radio anyway from the magmount on the roof (and I should be able to hit the Lincoln repeater from the Newark showground no problem), for analogue 2-metre operation I can use one of my HTs, as the 10-metre rig is also quite power hungry with the power turned up I would normally run this off my jump starter but I may not have a means to power the jump starter when it needs to be charged again, so I am looking into the possibility of obtaining a generator if possible as the Hamfest doesn’t allow the use of the site’s electricity hookups.

So, I have a lot to plan and 5 months to plan it in, time to get to work.

 

73 de M6RSQ