West Liberty Iowa Fest Report

[WQ9E]

This is one of those really nice small to mid-sized fests.  It always has a lot of good vintage parts and gear and a very friendly crowd.  The sponsoring clubs (Muscatine and Washington Area) do a very nice organizational job and everything seems to run smoothly.

I went over Friday night (it is around 160 miles for me) for the pre-fest activities and stayed in a hotel in Muscatine since all of the closer hotels were filled up due to the Iowa/Penn State game.  Sunday morning the main fest starts coming to life shortly after six and they have both inside and outside flea markets.  The weather was typical midwest crisp fall which is perfect hamfest weather.

Photos are at the bottom:

Things I found included the matching power supply to go with a Hallicrafters HT-45 "Loudenboomer" amp (single 3-400Z) I have had previously purchased, a Yaesu FTDX-100 which I have never seen before and it predates the popular FT-101 series, a Kenwood TL-922A, a bag of "strapping" ground straps, a command set with original installation diagram inside (nice diagram and grungy outside set for $10) and a box of 60+ integrated circuits including several CA-3028 for some future vintage construction.

Photo 2 is a HP-8640 I bought as a possible source of spares for my bench unit but it seems to work so we will see which one breaks first and a German level generator that goes from 6 Khz to 18.6 Mhz.  It is perfect for those really low vintage IF receivers, looks really cool, and came with a padded carrying case.  It weighs considerably more than the Loudenboomer power supply.

Photo 3 is probably my most important buy of the day.  Our daughter is really interested in planes and has become a master constructor of paper airplanes (something I was lousy at as a kid and I am worse as an adult) so I have been thinking R/C plane for her for some time.  I don't know much about R/C but I got everything in photo 3 for $100 so I think I did OK.  There are two mostly assembled gliders and three NIB powered kits along with two controllers, multiple servos, and other stuff I know little about.  It is going to be a big learning curve for me but my father-in-law and brother-in-law are heavily into this stuff so between them and google I think we will be OK.

I also picked up a couple of partially built 30's area homebrew regen sets and a 3 element 6 meter beam.  This is the last hamfest of the season for me and it was a good one.

Friday night a Tektronix 7904 scope with 8 or 10 plug-ins went for $100, there was a Collins 95S-1 (DSP) with a price of $2,700, a KWM-380 for $1,750, an SX-28A for $350, several Hammarlunds, the usual Yaesu FT-101 gear, and a lot of parts.  I am sure I missed describing a lot of stuff.

Rodger WQ9E

[N0WVA]

The Kadet Junior is a very well behaved trainer. One of my first RC airplanes. Still in production by SIG I think.

[KA0HCP]

Thanks for the report!

[w3jn]

Very cool, Rodger - a daughter interested in airplanes is an outstanding accomplishment!

Hope whoever bought that 95S receiver also got the controller program, or it's pretty much a paperweight.  One could easily write a controller program if you had the manual with the protocols though; all the DSP is in the radio unlike a SDR.  You just need to control the freq, mode, BW, etc.  It's a very nice receiver (my employer bought the first 4 off the line about 15 years ago) but has all the panache of a pizza box 

[WQ9E]

John,

The aircraft do look pretty fun but this is going to be an entirely new knowledge base for me.  Unfortunately I am sure to create some aircraft carnage in the process.  Now that the harvest is over we have many acres of "play space" courtesy of my farmer neighbor.  I am sure he is really looking forward to this so that he will have more, "you'll never guess what the crazy professor is up to now" stories.  The transmitters are on 6 meters so if Anna gets really interested we will have the "you have to get a license" talk

The 95S1 seller had a lot of cool stuff including a couple of portable satellite communications setups.  An emcom wacker could have easily moved up to intelligence agency wannabe with some of that gear   I neglected to bring my camera to the fest so no photos but there was some interesting stuff there. 

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

You have got to be running out of space, Rodger. But please, don't stop buying. Us sellers like guys like you. Come to NEAR-Fest!!