I know many of you have been to Hamvention many times. I have been twice, in 1975 and 2025. In 1975 it was at the HARA Arena, and for the last 6 years or so, in Xenia, Ohio at the Greene County Fairgrounds. In 1975 it was in April, and about 20 years ago they wanted to move it to May and negotiated with RARA to have their traditional mid-May date, since the Rochester Hamfest had been gradually shrinking.
I had decided Dayton might be a good place to sell a few things, so I obtained a flea market spot. The flea market spaces at Dayton are pricey, $70 for a 10 x 17 foot spot. That was just barely enough to fit my van. My two small tables were slightly outside of the marked space. I had brought a small 8×8 canopy, but there was no room for it. It ended up there were three empty spots to our left, but we didn’t know if someone might show up.
Apparently many people do one of two things: buy two or more spots with one just to park a vehicle, or drop off the stuff and park in regular parking. We made it work, but it was something I never dealt with in the local small scale hamfests.
They did a good job with traffic from what I could see. They had a two hour window for flea marketers to park and get setup before general admission started. We got there near the end of that window, so maybe we missed the worst traffic.
Even with those pricey flea market spaces, there is quite a massive amount of stuff being sold. Seems like you could find many rare vintage parts if you know what you are looking for. Many rigs being sold, I may have seen 15 or 20 Heathkit HW-100/101’s. Not too many rigs less than 5 years old, but some. If you tried to walk the flea market without stopping to look closely, it would take a couple of hours. Luckily my friend Gary, N2HPL was with me and held down the fort a few times so I could look around.
With a flea market that large, you have to be aware that almost anything you are selling is available somewhere else there. So not only are people expecting low hamfest type prices, you probably have competition.
Luckily the weather mostly cooperated. It was warm on Friday, maybe 85, but it was somewhat overcast between 10 AM and 2 PM, which helped . Saturday was sunny and about 68 but windy. Many people had to take down their canopies to avoid them becoming parachutes. We were parked inside the racetrack, and I could see that being not a great place with a lot of rain.
The indoor spaces were good. The building are relatively close together. It is easy to get confused about which building is which and what direction you want to go next. The buildings were all well marked but it was easy to get confused as to where things are without referring to a map. I guess I see no reason that the event location would need to change.
I can’t say how big the crowd was. I could get around the indoor vendor building without too much trouble. If you wanted to see something up close or talk to a rep or sales person, it wasn’t hard. The food vendors got very busy near lunch time, so you might have to wait in line for a bit. I did not see many Canadian hams, which is not a surprise. I spoke to a VK ham who stopped to look at my stuff, and saw a few other visitors from other countries.
The only splashy new product that I believe was announced at the show was Flex Radio’s new Aurora rig. 500 watt transceiver in one box that is only 18 lbs (I think). Looks like interesting technology. Yaesu had their FTX1 series radios there to touch and feel. Kenwood has a similar radio coming but I don’t think they had one on display. Icom had their high end transceiver there as well. DX Engineering had an impressive display with a ton of people to help and answer questions. I’m not sure if they had any stock on hand, but had a whole row of people taking orders.
I didn’t see or hear of any great deals. The discounts I saw seemed very moderate to some I have seen in the past. The loss of MFJ is interesting. I think some other vendors are starting to fill the void. MFJ made so many products it might be hard to ever replace them. I didn’t see them at Dayton, but I recently noticed some of MFJ’s imported products are now being sold under a new brand name, Intellitron (https://intellitron.com/).
The only things I bought were a membership to the RSGB, and a handmade wooden guitar stand. Not what I had expected, but there wasn’t anything special I was in the market for.
Dayton is an experience every ham should try at least once. I don’t think I’ll wait 50 years for my next one, but I will probably do it again at least once where I can enjoy the event without having to man a flea market spot trying to sell stuff.
