our ham fests are now beginning to show true arosion.
We usually have at least 1 or 2 tables of ham fest sponsors such as our
local investors group, selling books, offering door prizes of an hour of
free financial councelling....and a free self help book on investing....they
even go so far as to bring in non hams to work the tables? an abomanation if
you ask me.
Also, our ham fest has the unseemly habit of allowing all the table buyers
to have first grabs on any of the stuff before the doors open...so if you
buy a table, you can have first shot at all the goodies before the masses
come in...this means all the guys who are selling their worthless junk and
computer garbage get to snap up the good radios and ham equipment or trade
it for their computer stuff...so by the time we poor peaons get to come in,
everything is pretty much crap and there are no good deals or good
radios/antennas, power supplies or anything of that nature left. and if
there are, they are way over priced.
I tend to  find that the ham fests around here have old farts who think
their garbage is worth its weight in gold and would rather pack it all back
home then deal on the selling price...so we end up seeing the same stuff
year after year after year cuz they refuse to sell it for reasonable prices.
I have only been going for 3 years, but i have heard from other hams, that
they have seen the same tables, with nearly the exact same equipment, over
priced, on them for ten years in some cases.
when you want $300 for a table top short wave radio, or $150 for a mag mount
5.8's wave that you can buy for $69 at the ham store, you aren't gonna sell
much.
73
Colin, V A6BKX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Fiorello" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 3:38 PM
Subject: not off topic


> Hi;
> Can't resist after a day at work.  Have you gone to any recent ham fests
and
> taken a look whether there are many decent radios or piles of software and
> pc products?  I'm afraid the pc wins hands down based on my unscientific
> observations.
> As for the program to run your radio, I guess it depends upon the radio
and
> what run means.  Apparently you can download software from Kenwood but
never
> tried it or seen any list of key strokes.  Ham radio deluxe has gotten a
lot
> of interest and a list of keystrokes, some scripts or even a set file or
two
> might be nice.
> I will never be Mr. computer and I'm a bit reluctant to jump into
relatively
> uncharted waters.
> Richard
>