LVB Tracker 6 days till Dayton Hamvention

A week from now the crowds will be streaming into Hara arena. Cant' Wait!

Am considering cancelling the trip to Dayton for the volunteers meeting. Will make the final decision after talking Joanne Kopas. Johanne is one of the great persons who steps up during times of adversity. I have worked for her before and look forward to working with her this year.

More later. got to clean litter boxes and get ready to take my wife to breakfast.

9:14am

9:29pm Successful trip to Dayton and a good Hamvention volunteers meeting. Got my credentials and am ready to attend as a volunteer. DARA gives a good deal to volunteers. For 6 hours of work you get a hat, free admission which is good for all the prizes and AN ONSITE PARKING PASS. Course you can get that by buying a flea market spot or two and THE FLEA MARKET IS ALMOST SOLD OUT THIS YEAR... 1500 SPOTS SOLD... Now if you spend the entire weekend there add just one day, Thursday... You can get your 6 hours in, get ur free pass and park onsite for the rest of the weekend. I work 5-6 hours Thurs, Fri and Saturday and will probably help some on Sunday. I love working the inside exhibits on Thursday. You get to help folks get set up... not physically but administratively. Possibly get to know the exhibitors... Mayby get a peek at what is new. It's neet walking into a dark empty HARA complex early (7:00am) and watch it come to life. Icom, Kenwood, Yaesu and some of the other big exhibitors start setting up Tues or Wednesday but their booths are so massive it takes them till Thursday afternoon to finish. Then Friday morning getting there early again you have 2 hours to walk around helping with last minute details before the crowds rush in a 9am. From then on it's just a lot of work but remember you can get your 6 hours in on Thursday then just be an attendee for the rest of the weekend. But I also enjoy helping attendees find the bathrooms, payphones, atms and where the heck is WB0W set up at? Hara is a big place with no logical layout... takes me a few moments getting my bearings.

We got home tonite 10 minutes before 9pm.... Course the big dog Rufus (BOO) has to go on his walk (about 5 hours late). And now were burning up the minutes typing this blog... And you know spending 7 hours on the road gives you lotsa time to think. And I'm thinking there is no way I'm gonna get 40 trackers built and tested before leaving for Dayton Wednesday afternoon (2 days till Hamvention). If I had Monday and Tuesday off MAYBE. Tomorrow, Mothers day, I'm gonna loose about 4 hours... and I'm beat... Surprized I didn't have any trouble falling asleep driving today. I have 15 pc boards from the last build ready and also have 14 displays ready. All I need to do is crimp connectors on 15 din cables and I can start assemblying 15 trackers. Better to have 15 trackers than fail building 40 and have none ready. So tonite I think we are gonna try to do that. I hafta build them anyway cause we got to have some for Dayton. I also gave some thought to taking parts to Dayton and do some assembly and testing in the hotel room. Problem with that is the AMSAT folks are a social bunch. There's the pizza party Thursday evening, the banquet Friday evening then we usually get together casually Saturday night too. Course that is part of Dayton. Some of these folks you only see at Dayton.

So I'm gonna stop wasting time on the blog here and get to work... At least until dinner arrives. It will probably be a late night too!

9:53pm OMG that's late... time flies!