Atlanta Hamfest 2014 haul

Had another great time at the Atlanta Hamfest this past weekend. Was very pleased to see a lot more people outside in the flea market/bone yard area. The hamfest seemed a little more crowded than last year too, which was nice. The inside flea market and commercial area seemed less full than last year though. Maybe everybody was outside this time.

There were a lot of things to see, and I ended up spending most of my time wandering around the bone yard. Came back with a pretty good collection of things this year and could easily have come back with a lot more.

One of the more interesting items, and the first one we bought was this funny toilet mug. We figured it would be a good gag gift for the club’s Christmas party gift exchange.

One of the sellers out in the bone yard had a bin of “free stuff” which had a few interesting items in it. I pulled out a Hall effect transducer kit and a 200 μA meter out of the bin. Not sure if the meter is working, but if it is, it will be nice to put to work in something. The Hall effect transducer kit looks like it will be neat for learning about what kinds of things can be done with them.

I also bought a parts bin of various power transistors from the same person. He also had boxes filled with bags of resistors, capacitors and various other random components that I was very tempted to pick up, but I already have a pretty decent stock (actually, probably not) and moved on.

My next purchase was a trio of air variable capacitors. As I was checking them out, the seller said “$3 and they’re yours”. Too good to turn down. One of them is already geared up with a dial and everything for a VFO tuner.

We had been talking about getting a desk mic for the shack, and found a very knowledgeable lady who’s been a licensed ham for over 50 years. Picked up this Astatic 877L mic from her that looked in pretty good shape. One of the rubber feet has fallen off and I’ll have to wire up a cable to plug into the radio, but that’s no big deal.

The last stop (for purchases) was a table full of a fairly random assortment of items from kits to components to enclosures and more. I think this is where I picked up the bulk of my purchases. Enclosures, a bag of grommets and containers of screws and standoffs, couple pieces of copper clad PCB. One of the enclosures even had some protoboard and resistors in it. This was another one of those tables where I could have picked up a lot more things than I did. He gave me a pretty good price for all the items I took off his table too.

Wrapped up the hamfest with a purchase of some Dacron rope, some ceramic insulators and a 25 foot length of coax that will eventually feed a 2m antenna.

Pretty pleased with all the things I was able to pick up at the hamfest. And naturally, after we left I was thinking about all those other things that maybe I should have bought too. I guess it wouldn’t have been a good hamfest if that didn’t happen, would it.