8 February 2012
Radio amateurs seem to like getting together on a grand scale: the more crowded it is, jostling and shoving, and the harder it is to get there, the more they can complain and the more they enjoy it.
Some countries seem to do ham events well and really can organise and execute ham conventions - hamventions - on a scale that we in the UK aspire to but seldom match. Closer to home we have Friedrichshafen but across the Atlantic is the world's biggest, Dayton Hamvention.
In Newark in 2009 the UK held its National Hamfest at the Newark Showground, beginning (we hope!) the transition to a genuine Hamvention in the British Isles. The event was sponsored and supported by RSGB and was genuinely a step towards a real hamvention. What we have had in the UK is the Rally and it has been the rallies that have almost killed off amateur radio events in this country.
We call them rallies because they used to be Mobile Rallies, except that these days no-one cares what vehicle you arrive in or what equipment you have installed therein. The component fairs of years gone by have disappeared but now rallies do have loads of stalls selling laptops rescued from corporate skips, any old IT equipment that hasn't been properly disposed of and old television sets. We get to see a lot of Standard and Trio branded equipment too, alongside an inexhaustible supply of Eddystone receivers.
Dayton Hamfest, 2009
