Finally Happened - "Dayton" Hamvention Moving - UPDATE 8/1/16

[Pete, WA2CWA]

From Dayton Hamvention web site dated 7/29/16:

http://hamvention.org/dayton-hamvention-2017-venue-announcement/

[KL7OF]

somewhere?.....Where??

[WA2SQQ]

No  surprise - the Hara Arena was in dire need of lots of work. It's probably easier to tear it down it start again. The raw sewage backup a few years ago was a bit much. The big question is, will "Dayton" be in Dayton?

[KC4VWU]

The article states that DARA has been studying the situation for several years and have several prospects for a new venue. It will also probably be somewhere in the greater Dayton area; but yes, the question is "where?" I certainly hope not anywhere closer to downtown!

[Pete, WA2CWA]

It's official:

Greene County officials announced today that Hamvention® will be moving to the Green County Fairgrounds in Xenia, Ohio, after 52 years at Hara Arena, news outlets report. That’s about 16 miles east of Dayton center on US Route 35.

http://www.whio.com/news/news/officials-to-announce-big-event-coming-to-greene-c/nr77W/

http://www.greenecountyfairgrounds.com/

[KB2WIG]

And people complained about the Fecal Stream.


http://www.greenecountyfairgrounds.com/photos


klc

[W1ITT]

Having been one-third of the Hosstraders hamfest for 34 years, and operating out of 4 different fairgrounds, I think the Hamvention fellows could have done a lot worse.  This site is set up to get plenty of people and vehicles in and out, and seems to have some fairly good enclosed buildings, most of them built after their year 2000 tornado wiped out the old ones.  They are at ground level, eliminating the slowdowns with loading docks. Parking is generally plentiful.
Fairgrounds managers are generally pretty decent people, although volunteer boards of directors can be a bit capricious at times.  Those who are real farmers are usually the best if you like old fashioned common sense dealing.
As with any change, this will make things 'different' and, of course, some hams will complain about things when they don't see the big picture.  I hope the amateur community will look at this with an open mind and cut the DARA guys some slack.  There may be a bit of cow manure way out back, but I doubt that there will be a manure geyser in the flea market area as happened at HARA Arena.  
I was thinking I'd not go to Hamvention again but, then again, I just might now.  Best of luck to them.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Here's a Google maps overview.
Click on Earth view.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.699814,-83.9387674,764m/data=3m1=1e3

They're need space for attendee parking, flea market parking, and inside vendor parking. They're probably going to have to use the grassy area for some of that. Should be fun when it rains. Other then Route 35, which is two lanes in each direction, it looks like all the other roads in the "near" vicinity are single lane roads. I've driven on Route 35 early in the morning and late afternoon. Bring food and water. Traffic congestion can be brutal even without Hamvention traffic.

[WA2SQQ]

Looks promising.
Last February I attended the Orlando Hamcation. It's held at a county fair grounds. I really think, in time, this will be the new Dayton. Huge affair, with more plans to expand.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

From what I've read, this new location has smaller total square footage then the Hara complex. I would expect that given they stay at this location, it will take them a number of years to smooth out all the indoor/outdoor vendor winkles, forums, attendee/vendor parking, travel in/out logistics, and probably a host of other issues. I wouldn't be surprised that they take an attendee and vendor hit at least for the first few years.

[W1ITT]

As to "indoor" exhibit space, one possibility would be to rent a very big tent, similar to the Mendelson tent at Dayton, but bigger, and use one of the portable air-conditioning units that are made for the purpose. I've seen them at conventions in Las Vegas.  The gear available for large venue events is pretty amazing, though pricey.  I see that the Fairgrounds is partnered with a convention and events group that would know who to talk to about those things.
Sure it'll take a time or two to settle in.  People may be nostalgic over the good times they had at HARA, but few will miss the facility. 

[W3RSW]

Tnx fer info Pete.
Looked at the your map and it seems pretty nice. Looks like the early birds will get nice trailer spots, but not sure of trees and shade. Anyway I agree that fairgrounds can be hokay. Reminds me of all the fun we had at Gathersburg and Howard Co. Fairgrounds.  Of course they were a lot smaller venues than Dayton.

Both smaller grounds or should I say festers had their risks. We're still not sure if the purloined wooden statue was a bear or a pig one year and we got upstaged by a "singing cowboy" group in a couple of other years.  

Roaring trains on the Washinton run or continuous interstate noise helped modulate our transmission , ruin our reception.  

I put a case of Fosters in the middle of the camp for everyone one night, fell asleep and it was still there next morning.  I asked why it wasn't drunk and they said 'cause we didn't want to wake you up and ask you.'  Now I ask, Have you ever heard of such an honest tribe?  

I brought a box of cigars a couple of years but got upstaged by I think real Cubans provided by our very own JN, a man of few words back from a secret mission.
Wish I had comparable Dayton adventures; bet a lot of you do.

Congrats to DARA for soldiering on. As for declining attendance, yeah they'll take a hit but what fester hasn't lately? Hey, the race track infield would be a good place to set up the big -top mentioned.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

As to "indoor" exhibit space, one possibility would be to rent a very big tent, similar to the Mendelson tent at Dayton, but bigger, and use one of the portable air-conditioning units that are made for the purpose. I've seen them at conventions in Las Vegas.  The gear available for large venue events is pretty amazing, though pricey.  I see that the Fairgrounds is partnered with a convention and events group that would know who to talk to about those things.
Sure it'll take a time or two to settle in.  People may be nostalgic over the good times they had at HARA, but few will miss the facility. 

There's probably a lot of things they all can do to make this work to some degree. I guess it might depend on how much reserve funds Hamvention has available. A lot depends on what the indoor vendors want/will tolerate. Obviously, high security is imperative, especially for the indoor vendors with lots of high value items, tents or otherwise. I believe the smaller buildings there are also not air conditioned. With tents and even inside buildings, there's the issue of providing of adequate electricity and internet access(for credit card sales and internet -related displays), and bottom sealing of the tents to prevent water flow in event of rain (which there is not uncommon). Not too many years ago, that whole area was ravaged by a large tornado.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Tnx fer info Pete.
Looked at the your map and it seems pretty nice. Looks like the early birds will get nice trailer spots, but not sure of trees and shade. Anyway I agree that fairgrounds can be hokay. Reminds me of all the fun we had at Gathersburg and Howard Co. Fairgrounds.  Of course they were a lot smaller venues than Dayton.
....
Congrats to DARA for soldiering on. As for declining attendance, yeah they'll take a hit but what fester hasn't lately? Hey, the race track infield would be a good place to set up the big -top mentioned.

The Hara had approximately 2200 spaces for outside vendors. Each space was $70. Corner spaces were $100 each. So if they use the grassy area for some vendors, which seems likely, they are going to have partition and mark each space off carefully to insure maximum usable capacity.  Given the sometimes violent weather out there, I'm not sure parking under a tree is a great idea. If the weather is great, grassy area is fine. If you get a soaking rain, vendors could destroy much of the grassy area.

I remember going to a flea market many years ago. It had rained several days prior and then got cold. On the day of the flea market, the vendors were parked on the somewhat hard grassy area. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the ground warmed up and a good part of the grassy area then turned into a wet swamp. The legs on my tables sunk about 6 or  8 inches into the ground (heavy boatanchors will do that). The guy next to me had a large pickup truck. Rear wheels sunk into the swampy  stuff up to the hub caps. That was a fun day. On the positive side, that's where I bought my Heathkit Mohawk receiver for $70.

[Sam KS2AM]

From what I've read, this new location has smaller total square footage then the Hara complex. I would expect that given they stay at this location, it will take them a number of years to smooth out all the indoor/outdoor vendor winkles, forums, attendee/vendor parking, travel in/out logistics, and probably a host of other issues. I wouldn't be surprised that they take an attendee and vendor hit at least for the first few years.

I think that the Hara arena whiners are going to miss the old facility.  They apparently spent most of their Hamvention time in the bathrooms or roaming around checking for dust and grime or hoping that the plumbing would fail so that they might be the first person on qrz.com to announce the problem to the world. 

Hara was easy to get to, had more than enough space inside and out and had plenty of hotels and shopping within a reasonable distance.  It also had free on-street parking on the next block.

   

[Pete, WA2CWA]

I can recall in past years where some employees of inside vendors could not attend Hamvention due to allergies or other respiratory ailments. I've been in the building on Thursday(the day before official opening) where certain areas had unusual odors especially if the day was hot and humid or rainy. Good air circulation was not great in that building and then drop in several thousand people wandering around after opening day, and everyone winds up breathing "bad air". As an inside vendor, being in there for four days, can take a toll on anyone if they have any kind of repository issue.

[WA2SQQ]

Last February I attended the Orlando Hamcation. I'll be going back this year. Plenty of space, a huge flea market and plenty more room for expansion. I think Orlando may become the new Dayton. The rest rooms were clean, the food was good, and parking was ample. Admission was $9

Oh, and it was 78 degrees in February!

[KA8WTK]

I just took at look at the Hara property and the new location in Google maps satellite view. If you zoom so the scale on the map is about 500ft for both, the new location appears much larger.
It will be interesting to see what they do about parking and busing this next year.

Bill KA8WTK

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Greene County fairgrounds occupies roughly 32 acres (1,393,920 square feet). Don't know how much of that is actually usable. There are five buildings (assembly hall, dining hall, and 3 livestock): 81,800 sq. ft.

Hara building complex is roughly 165,000 sq. ft. A guessment of roughly 4000 parking spaces on all sides, gives 720,000 sq. ft. Total 885,000 sq. ft.

So roughly, Greene County in theory might be bigger in overall square footage but remember all the non vendor (attendees) parked in numerous lots that were not part of Hara. Plus, people parked on the roads, some neighbors turned their yards in parking facilities, and some came by bus (car parking further removed).

Dara has roughly 6 months to get the logistics and plans in some kind of order. By January or February at the latest, vendors need to know the details of what's available, access, security, placement, and probably a host of other issues.

[KD6VXI]

I'm happy to see it continue.   I've never had the opportunity to hit a hamfest of a couple hundred people,  much less HAMcation or Dayton.   Maybe there is still time for me?   Haha

Hats off to them for at least giving it all they can!

-Shane
KD6VXI

[Detroit47]

Looks like another Hamfest dying. The quickest way to kill a Hamfest is change the venue. Setting up on grass is a PINTA. Not to mention our older Hams with mobility issues those electric scooters should do real well on grass.  Look at Google with a satellite view of site. It will be a total disaster if it rains. It must have been the cheapest place they could find. I wonder if the cast of Green Acres will be there? I have to wonder if they are going to try and charge 70.00 for a space on the grass? And 100.00 for an end space. I can see Yaseu and Kenwood setting up in a fecal stained cow barn. RIP Dayton.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7011487,-83.941561,657m/data=!3m1!1e3

[W1ITT]

Detroit, I wish to disagree with you.  I was a third of the Hosstraders hamfest in NH for 34 years.  Now I'll allow you that a 5000-6000 person event isn't the same as 25,000 people, but we changed venues four times and every time we either held our own or increased attendance.  I think people were curious about what the new place would be like...
As to the mud worries, fairgrounds that aren't built on well drained soil don't survive as agricultural events.  Farmers know to build their fairgrounds on well drained permeable soils, usually sandy plains that aren't good enough to grow veggies. They aren't built on poorly drained land like some of the improvised  outdoor concert venues such as Glastonbury in the UK which is famous for mud and good music and some of the here-today-gone-tomorrow events in USA.  One year at Hopkinton State Fairgrounds in NH, our hamfest put up with 6 inches of rain over two days. Bridges and roads washed out not far away.  There was one "pond" at a road junction on the grounds in front of the much loved Swine Barn, but most people did OK in buildings and under canvas shelters in the flea market areas. Our commercials were all in real buildings and did good business, and the hamfest stayed in the black.

Except in the proper bins behind the livestock buildings, I've not seen stray manure.  Farmers are concerned with what has come to be called "biosecurity" which means that things are cleaned and power washed to prevent the spread of disease to valuable animals.  So manure gets cleaned up, partly because it's become too valuable to waste, but mostly because livestock is too valuable to lose due to disease.
I suspect that the biggest danger in the outdoor flea market area will be sunburn.  Bring your sombrero and give it a chance....
73 de Norm W1ITT

[Detroit47]

As to the mud worries, fairgrounds that aren't built on well drained soil don't survive as agricultural events.  Farmers know to build their fairgrounds on well drained permeable soils, usually sandy plains that aren't good enough to grow veggies.

Coordinates: 39.6975599°N, -83.9363195°W
Approx. Elevation: 906 feet (276 meters)
USGS Topo Map Quad: Xenia

http://www.topozone.com/ohio/greene-oh/locale/greene-county-fairgrounds-3/

Which is low to the surrounding area.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Detroit, I wish to disagree with you.  I was a third of the Hosstraders hamfest in NH for 34 years.  Now I'll allow you that a 5000-6000 person event isn't the same as 25,000 people, but we changed venues four times and every time we either held our own or increased attendance.  I think people were curious about what the new place would be like...

73 de Norm W1ITT

In that area of New England, it was(is) the only "big" hamfest twice a year so people came regardless of how many times you changed locations. Unless they wanted to travel to Rochester or PA or down to MD or out to Dayton, it was the only big hamfest for the area except maybe for Boxboro which was held once every two years. I bet if you had moved it to mud swamp, people would still come.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

County fair is presently going on there.
Here's some photos taken by KE9V

https://ke9v.net/2016/08/03/hamvention-the-fairgrounds/

I guess these are early hams waiting for the gates to open: