TARPN: At Catawba Valley 2019 hamfest in Morganton
Photos by Kevin K4KDE
Morganton is about 3 hours west of Raleigh. Kevin K4KDE and I (Tadd KA2DEW) did the drive out from Raleigh.
Part of the plan was to meet Jason KG4RVN who was at our booth at both Charlotte/Concord and at RARs.
He's already got most of the parts for two TARPN stations west of Morganton and we're bringing him a care package of some radios and power supplies.
Jason helped us set up our table here.
Before the fest @7:23am, all set up.
9:51am - you can see our sign from all the way across the big room.
9:52am - we never had more than a couple people at the table at a time.
At 9:50am most people were busy shopping.
We did get several visitors who'd been to our booth at Charlotte/Concord hamfest and at RARS.
Thanks to
KG4RVN
N4LED
AJ4BP
WK4R
NC4DB
N0WMJ
AD4FK
AG4L
KM4BLG
KN4PKM
NL7OT
N4SZF
W7CSA
KM4CCM
KM4EVM
KC2FQ
KC4QPR
for stopping by!
11:06pm There was one long driveway with tailgating on both sides.
The shopping was mostly done by 11am and now people were doing second runs or stopping to talk.
The crowd definitely boomed at 10am and then got more sedentary by 11am.
11:07pm
11:35am
11:35am It was a pretty big hamfest and larger than I was expecting. But like most of the mid-sized hamfests it was somewhat short lived.
By 1pm it was a ghost town. You definitely want to be at this one at opening bell to do the best shopping and I think everybody knew that.
Kevin was pretty busy when the fest was biggest. He bought a couple of radios perfect for nodes for under $30 at the fest.
Consequently we didn't get photos during the busy time.
We need to hire a professional hamfest photographer next time haha. right?
12:51pm. time to start packing up.
Here is our geospacial contact list.
We have coverages and potential links plotted for all of these callsigns.
Spoiler: these ham houses and hilltops aren't quite enough to make a single cohesive network, but it's a good start!
Let's go out and commit pre-meditated ham radio!
Contact
me KA2DEW at my qrz listed email if you want to plug in or find out.
Don't forget to sign up for the
NCPACKET email list if you are in or near North Carolina
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