Amateur Radio "Hamfests"

Like I mentioned in an earlier blog, one of the things that drew me to Quartzsite Arizona was the gathering of Amateur Radio enthusiasts, Hams. When hams have a convention and/or flea market event, they refer to them as a "Hamfest". So the gathering at Quartzsite was named "Quartzfest". This year there were well over 200 RV's participating with around 500 folks in attendance.

A little unusual for me, but I didn't take many pictures the weeks I was there. One night though, the sunset was pretty spectacular.

And here is my little camp site. Notice that my solar panels now tilt up. It makes a big difference from being flat and was a fun project although it was considerably more involved that I first thought.

While at "Quartzfest", I learned that there was going to be another hamfest the last Saturday in Palm Springs, about a 150 miles west of where we were. The president of that club was camped next to me and convinced me to go. On a side note, he was Canadian and lived part of the time on an island in the middle of the Georgia Strait. My daughter Teresa will remember it as it is the island next door to the one with the "ROCK!".

Back to going to Palm Spings, I was pretty interested in seeing the area as my brother and his partner spend their vacations there and plan on moving there when they retire.

The hams who came from Quartzfest got to camp for free. That's us on the lower level. The RV's on the upper level were vendors. This hamfest was on one of the club members property, just a short distance south from the airport. It must be worth a fortune. Just above this place is Bob Hope's house. The hamfest was basically in the ham's back yard and garage.

Here are some of the vendor's in the multiple car garage.

And some more vendors in the back. (Christine, the lady writing on the clip board was selling survival first aid kits and things).

There are three large international manufactures of amateur radio and other radio equipment. The radios on the red tables were from one of them. They gave me a nice cap. But that's not why I took this picture. The other equipment on the desks were the ham owner's radio station, "ham shack" in amateur radio lingo. It was pretty impressive. And now you know how "Radio Shack" got it's name.