Contest University 2015 Kickoff at Dayton HAMvention By Tim Duffy, K3LR

Anita, AB1QB, and I began our 2015 Dayton Hamvention experience by spending a day at Contest University. Tim Duffy, K3LR, and the Contest University team put together another great program this year.

Contest University 2015 Dayton Agenda

Anita and I chose to attend the VHF contesting, Low-Band Antenna, and Waterfall Displays sessions, which were all very interesting. It was also great to see all of our friends from Contesting Community.

Anita, AB1QB At The ARRL Exhibit

We began our visit to the Hamvention exhibit halls at the ARRL booth. It is quite something to see the scope of the activities that The ARRL engages in for the benefit of the Amateur Radio Community.

ARRL Emergency Go Kit

One thing that caught our eye there was the very well put together Emergency Go-Kits that the ARRL can supply in disaster relief situations.

Elecraft K3S

Next, we visited the Elecraft booth and saw the newly announced K3S Transceiver. The K3S is a pretty major upgrade to Elecraft’s popular K3 transceiver. Most of the K3S upgrades can be retrofitted to existing K3 Transceivers. Elecraft’s approach to making significant upgrades available to update the older versions of their radios is a major selling point for them.

Elecraft KX3 And Accessories

We also saw the recently added accessories for the Elecraft KX3 Transceiver – the KX3 Pan Adapter and the KXPA100 100w Amplifier. These are both excellent units which we have added to our KX3 Transceiver setup. The PX3 provides a really nice band activity and waterfall display capability and the KPA100 is nicely integrated with the KX3 making the combination a 100W transceiver package. Look for more on our experiences with the PX3 and KPA100 in future posts.

Bob Heil And Gordon West – HAM Nation Forum

We had the opportunity to spend a little time with our friend Bob Heil, K9EID again this year. Bob and the HAM Nation crew are always fun to listen to. Bob was also part of Contest University this year where he spoke about improving contest audio.

Ward Silver, N0AX, and The Spurious Emissions Band

A big part of the Hamvention fun was the various dinners and end-of-day events that we attended. We made the RTTY Contesting, Top Band, and Contesting Dinners this year. A special treat was seeing Ward Silver, N0AX and the Spurious Emission Band perform some HAM Radio Hits!

We expanded our 2015 Dayton Hamvention experience with a County Activation Tour on the trip to and from Dayton. You can read more about that here.

The Dayton Hamvention is always a treat for us. We hope to see some of our readers there in the future.

– Fred, AB1OC