Atlanta Hamfest fun

This year’s trip to Atlanta Hamfest marks a bit of an anniversary for me. Last year at Hamfest, I got to meet up with Connie, and got my General class ham radio license.

Had a great time at this year’s Hamfest again. We met up with Jim (N4BFR) and Newt (N4EWT) again, who I met at Hamfest last year. Had dinner with Jim and his wife Tammy, got a tour of their new house and the new shack. Connie and I both served as VEs at the testing session (my first time as a VE). I helped proctor the test and even got to sign off on some CSCEs for people who passed their test. Attended an early morning forum titled Linux in the Shack. Learned about the Shackbox linux distro which I might have to check out.

Both the outside swap area/boneyard and the inside vendor area were pretty well populated again this year, although it seemed like there weren’t quite as many people selling in the boneyard this year as last year. The Hamfest crowd also seemed a bit smaller this year too. A big chunk of my Hamfest time was spent in the test session though, so I might have missed seeing the bulk of the crowd.

Out in the boneyard I managed to score a pretty sweet deal on an MFJ 259B antenna analyzer in excellent condition. Picked it up for $150 with far less haggling than I expected. Used up all of my Hamfest spending money, plus two months worth of our ham radio budget, but it was too good of a deal to pass up. I’ll just have to wait until later to pick up the connectors, adapters and other antenna stuff I was originally planning on getting.

Another great trip to another great Hamfest. Not sure if we’ll be back next year but we’ll see.