AWA Convention 2008

[WU2D]

Well the Antique Wireless Convention was the same week as the ARRL Boxboro Convention and I had to make a choice...

I picked the AWA in Rochester NY because I had an errand to drop off a homebrew tube headphone amplifier to a buddy in Utica and I could do that on the way. Anyway I put my ARC-5 mobile station (which is on a plywood board) in the car and mini-mag Hustler on the trunk and took off. Worked a quite a few AM'ers on the way including W1VZR Pete, who informed me that he has abandoned NH and has moved back up to Limerick ME! Thanks for keeping me company on the Thruway Dirk, Nick, Bob, Tim, Pete and many others.

At the convention there was a fantastic tribute film about John Rollins W1FPZ (SK), that Bruce W1UJR and others produced where John (in his last month) takes you around his workshop and shack in Arrowsic, ME. We heard him tell the story about how his 1000 ft VEE beam made of # 8 phospor bronze  (from the RCA facility NOS) caught a Navy helicopter that was flying low one day. The system had twin 1000 pound counterwieghts on each end and the chopper had to first pull that up then break the 1000 pound plus tensile on the wire!

I had a great trip. I also wanted to let folks know that the AWA is considering allowing non-AWA members to participate in the old time contests and receive prizes and or membership basically for building up and old breadboard or using old gear and using it in the contest. A picture of your lashup would be shown on the website which will finally be revamped with more ham information.

As you know the 1929 QSO Party, pre 1949 and old time DX CW contests and the Old Time AM contests have been closed to non-members up to this point.

I will post about the flea market next:

73's Mike WU2D

[WU2D]

Well the flea was a disapointment this year with only about 25 sellers. Same old story about online selling I fear which we do not need to rehash. I did stay to see what would be in the auction and lo and behold a lot of great stuff suddenly appeared from the cars! I saw a pristine Valliant, National gear Collins and RME and a nice 129 among the typical battery, console and cathedral radios. And there was strangely a pretty big pile of military surplus that I imagine came from donation overflow from the museum. There were piles of command set stuff, a couple of SP-600's, several BC-348's , 342, 312's and so on. 

So I decided to stay for the auction to try for some ARC-5 transmitters which I always like to work with. The short story is that the really good stuff brought big money, but the typically high priced items went low if they did not look good.

The SP-600s were complete! but no cases and one was a little rough. The one on the right went for 45 dollars the one on the left 135 dollars! I got four command set transmitters for 45 dollars and two wacky military receivers CRV-46151 (195 - 9.05 MC) for 5 bucks. It was embarrassing how low even some of the nice battery set and crystal radios went for compared to 4 years ago. Several beautiful Atwater Kent radios went for 50 to 75 dollars. There has been a huge adjustment downward in radio prices.

73's Mike