{"id":1176,"date":"2017-02-12T08:23:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-12T12:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/?p=1176"},"modified":"2017-02-12T08:41:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T12:41:23","slug":"8-11-february-2017-hamcation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/?p=1176","title":{"rendered":"8-11 February 2017: Hamcation"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my hobbies is amateur radio (call sign K4EAK<\/a>). I have a nice little setup in the house in LaGrange,\u00a0from where I’ve spoken to people in all 50 states and\u00a0several hundred different countries. I even once spoke to guys in Europe by\u00a0using special equipment to bounce\u00a0a radio signal off the moon!\u00a0Our local club assists first responders with communications during severe weather outages, as well as doing other public service tasks. I have a pretty good mobile setup in the truck, and from time to time I even play on the radio while we travel around in ACE. There’s an amateur radio chapter in our motorhome association, and a few times we’ve met up with them in various locations, like this trip<\/a> back in 2014. All of this is pretty geeky, and most people would (rightly) assume that ham radio guys are mostly nerdish dweebs,\u00a0who generally keep\u00a0their noses stuck in various electronical gizmos,\u00a0\u00a0and who for the most part have only\u00a0marginal interpersonal skills. Think of Big Bang Theory<\/span><\/em> come to life.<\/p>\n

If you’ve gotten this far, this part of our Florida trip involved a descent into the deepest, darkest\u00a0possible recesses of nerdism: the second-largest “hamfest” in the world, a\u00a0place where thousands (literally) of hams congregate to buy and sell new and used equipment, attend seminars on various communications topics, and “socialize” (using a generous definition of the term).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A panorama view of Central Florida Fairgrounds (Orlando), where hundreds of RVs and thousands of ham radio guys have congregated for the 2017 “Hamcation.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

The “swap meet” (the indoor version, but there’s also an outdoor “tailgate” version with hundreds of sellers) and the vendor area (where dealers and manufacturers peddle their latest wares).<\/em><\/p>\n

And since a couple dozen members of the motorhome club were in attendance, we\u00a0also set up one night for a potluck supper:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
About 36 members and guests from the “Family Motor Coach Association” Amateur Radio Chapter set up between a couple rows of member’s motorhomes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I know what you’re thinking: what was poor Wendy doing during all of this, seeing as how she has a mostly normal personality and finds my ham radio activities about as dull as a fence post? My answer is, who cares? No, I’m kidding. That was a joke. I’m actually very grateful that she puts up with these little eccentricities of mine with little (well, mostly little) objection. She did spend one day visiting our son-in-law’s parents down in Lakeland, where she was able to do the Frank Lloyd Wright tour<\/a> at Florida Central College, a college that has been described as the most beautiful campus in the United States. As the tour\u00a0website puts it, “The story of how a Methodist college with no endowment – during the Great Depression and World War II – was able to not only convince one of the most sought after architects of the time to draw plans for their school, but was also able to afford to build them, is a wonderfully entertaining story.”<\/p>\n

And we both enjoyed the evening get-togethers of the ham radio club. For all of the nerd-jokes that attend an event such as this, the people are actually friendly, welcoming, and interesting. Next stop: Fort Wilderness and Walt Disney World! Woo hoo!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my hobbies is amateur radio (call sign K4EAK). I have a nice little setup in the house in LaGrange,\u00a0from where I’ve spoken to people in all 50 states and\u00a0several hundred different countries. I even once spoke to guys in Europe by\u00a0using special equipment to bounce\u00a0a radio signal off the moon!\u00a0Our local club assists … Continue reading “8-11 February 2017: Hamcation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fmca","category-ham-radio","category-travels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p68mhx-iY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1176"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183,"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1176\/revisions\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skiprd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}