Its a long drive home, so come, see conquer. But our local ham fest is a relaxing three day camp out.
=========================Deerfield Fairgrounds, =========================https://near-fest.com/ ========================Friday at 0900 =========================and ending =====================Saturday at 1500 hours.
The hamfest scene has always most-closely resembled that of weekend "yard sales," especially the "100 family" types. What happens is that the bargain hunters and flippers get there before many homes even have set tables up. Now you see "NO EARLY BIRDS" and get minivans parked down the street waiting for the appointed hours. Hamfests, refining the concept a little, include flippers who quickly find underpriced items, buy and then immediately bring them to their own fleamarket tables marked-up for resale. Getting there early is part of the draw.
A friend of mine gets a vendor's pass so he can scoop up the good stuff before they let the general public in.
The early Ham gets the bacon HI 73 from, The K0UO " Rhombic Antenna Farm" 2 miles of wire in the Air & On the daily
Gee, I rarely get to bed before 5 AM - A night owl that sometimes checks in to 75m early bird or breakfast nets before I go to bed! Have always been at peak performance after midnight. Since own my own business and large home office, I always schedule client meetings in the afternoon.
Around here Hamfests start at 8:00PM with vendor setup at 7-8. Most vendors stay until at least 3:00PM. Some Hamfest organizers fail to realize people come from out-of-town. I had one guy at my table from North Dakota. Pheel
Dallas Sat swap, don't know if they still have it, started at midnight and was over before dawn. It made sense in that it maximized attendance. We'd drive from Atlanta, spend a few hours, drive back. The deals were that good!
My favorite was the Charlotte NC CC-AWA parking lot swap meet - absolutely no sales or even display of equipment before 0800 or you'd get expelled and banned. You would park your car/truck/trailer and then had to leave the area without uncovering anything - everyone waited behind a rope for the LeMans start at 0800. Good fun!
It starts when people get there.......wheeling and dealing in the parking lot begins long before the doors open,
This is too hard to enforce amd leads to bad will. NEAR-Fest just lets everyone in at the same time. It’s a free for all.
