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I was an exhibitor at Dayton in the early 70's.
There were a bunch of folks then standing on their soapbox predicting
'doom-n-gloom'. It's 30 years later and Dayton is still going strong and I
suspect it will still be around for many years to come.
There is nothing to do at Dayton if you don't
want to do anything. There are hospitality suites all over the hotels. You can't
walk 100 feet without meeting a ham. Even as an exhibitor I enjoyed socializing
with fellow hams, as hams not customers, during the evening hours. It's a
'ham-radio' weekend and if you can't look at it that way then perhaps no
Hamvention, type, activity will ever satisfy you.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 19:45
Subject: [DX-NEWS] Death by repeatedly
shooting oneself in the foot
The Dayton
Hamvention has both macro and micro problem.
The macro problems, such as
high gas prices and declining interest,
are universal. However, there are
problems they have brought on
themselves.
When they were building up
the even they were great, they
would do anything humanly possible to help.
They would help
find rooms, etc. When the became fat cats with 30K+
attendance,
they hired an outside firm to run the convention. They also
stopped
support and discontinued free bus transportation from
downtown
to the Hara Arena. In three years the attendance went from 30K+
to
under
20K.
My personal gripe has always been their requirement that
you have to be
present to win a major prize. This discriminates against
people traveling
long distances since they have to leave early Sunday,
AM to get home. We
pay the same price as the locals but don't have a
shot at a major
prize.
Couple this with the facts that there is essentially nothing to
do in
Dayton and hotels are expensive. I predict that the Orlando
Hamfest will
take over in a few years. They have great facilities,
ample free parking,
Florida in February, and Disneyland. You
can get a nice hotel in Kissimmee
- about 10 miles away - , for
about a third of what you pay in
Dayton.
This past February they had over 8K people.
Urb,
W2DEC
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