I was at Midwinter Madness today (Saturday) and here are my own observations.
The title of this blog entry comes from the fact that, well, it isn't midwinter any more. It's almost a week into the Season of Spring. I was also just a little disapointed in the variety of hardware on the tables. Nothing significant wrong with any of it, just mostly not what I was looking for.
I set out the day planning on picking up a HF rig, and possibly a replacement Mobile dual band vhf/uhf rig. Half the order was filled. I now have a Kenwood 430s hf rig. I can finally listen with a reasonable possibility to the hf bands. Unfortunately unless I wanted a brand new, in the box radio, there was pretty much nothing available in dual band mobile rigs that were of any interest to me.
That's not to say that there was any issues with turnout. Compared to the Saint Cloud Ham Fest of a month ago, I would say that I saw about twice as many people while I was in Buffalo. I may be estimating a bit high, but I base the estimate on my feel for the space and density.
Likewise there were about half again, to twice as many dealers on site today.
The down side from my perspective was (as I mentioned above) the variety of equipment that was being sold. Most of what was available and being sold was computers, both laptops and desktops, as well as associated hardware, and Audio equipment. There was a pretty good scattering of video equipment, such as vcrs, dvd players, direct tv recorders and the like. In all honesty, I would say that there were probably more cell phones and PDAs than there was used ham radios.
I did see a couple of Icom hf rigs, a couple of 10 meter rigs, (both a mobile and a handheld). Some CB rigs (mostly handheld). There was also some old 49mhz low power (part 15) equipment that you might feel comfortable letting your kids play with. There was also a variety of test equipment, including a bunch of oscilascopes, some frequency generators, dwell meters, etc.
And of course walking through the parking lot I saw a wider variety of antenna's on vehicles than I have seen anywhere else so far.
All in all, I had a pretty good time, though I am in hope for better luck next time around.
73
-Rusty - kc0vcu