Bowling Green KY Hamfest - 10/6/2013

The day was beautiful, a little warm for October, but no rain. This was my first time at the Bowling Green hamfest, and I had a single indoor table. The facility is WONDERFUL, modern, clean, and well lit. It was in the convention center, a very modern and well maintained facility. The hamfest seemed well organized and the hosting hams were extremely helpful and friendly. The door prizes were very good, someone had done a lot of work to round up these donations.

Now the unfortunate part - about 1/3 to 1/2 of the tables remained empty all day, there just weren't enough vendors. The crowd remained lite throughout the day, and I noticed some vendors packing up by 9:30. I stayed until about noon, hoping things would pick up, but while there was a "surge" in late morning the place was never crowded. From talking to people, and my own observation, some of the issues were:
1 - PR wasn't good, a lot of hams just didn't know the hamfest was going on.
2 - There was no outside selling area, or if there was one, nobody seemed to know where it was.
3 - There was no food, and unless you walked to the neighboring hotel there was nothing except coffee to drink (for a seller this can be a BIG DEAL, you can't really leave your table to run to a local fast food place).

I enjoyed the hamfest, and I was able to buy some things which I needed (or wanted), but my sales were extremely slow - with gas, fees, etc, I guess I about broke even. I really hope that this hamfest will address these problems - and I understand that some of them may not be "fixable" at the current location, I love hamfests and this has the potential to be a GREAT early Fall event, I hope it does well!

 

I was there too, four of us Hams drove up from Paducah. We went last year as well. I ended up buying a QRP rig and a couple of other small items. It would be nice to have someone there selling coffee and/or snacks, wouldn't take much I would think to at least set up a small table for that. The crowd was down slightly, but the number of venders was up some, I was told by someone in charge, no exact figures though. I talked with old friends, and made some new ones. We had a good time, Ed, AB4IQ won the 50/50 raffle, so he was happy as a lark, hihi, but we still couldn't talk him into buying us lunch. Oh well. Looking forward to next year! 73s