We all have heard about the Dayton Hamvention; I have written about it several times. Then there is the Orlando HamCation. I have never been to HamCation, but it is on my bucket list. I am a big fan of local hamfests and try to go to as many as I can and have for years. These days I look for great deals on scanners, antennas or accessories but as often as not just end up walking around and leaving with the same amount of money in my wallet as I came in with. The people you see at hamfests are sometimes rather unique, usually harmless and often unwashed.
Hamfests are typically sponsored by a local ham radio club, and they always do a great job setting it all up and running it. There is a boatload of work that has to be done for any hamfest, large or small. Usually there is one guy that does the majority of the work to organize it, ensure the venue is set up and enough volunteers are available for parking lot, ticket sales and other duties. My best friend just last week coordinated his club’s hamfest back in Illinois, and or the last few weeks it has been taking a lot of his time.
When I lived in Illinois, we had a large group of (mostly) CARMA scanner club guys that would haunt the local hamfests. In Chicagoland hamfests are mostly a summer thing and mostly on Sundays. There was however a big January hamfest (usually on Super Bowl Sunday) at the Odeum, a stadium and expo center in suburban Villa Park. This fest was a great event, with hundreds of flea market and commercial exhibitors. The lines were always long, the joint was always crowded, and the food was always awful, just what a hamfest should be. This hamfest later moved on to the Kane County Fairgrounds after the Odeum was closed and was still a decent fest the last time I went before I moved out west but has since stopped being held.
Another hamfest we always went to was the CFMC Hamfest at the Lake County Fairgrounds. This used to be the largest hamfest in the Midwest, spanning two full days (Saturday and Sunday) with a big Friday night bash for club members only. It drew people from a dozen states and was considered the “Dayton of Illinois” for years.
This fest was a major event, with several large buildings and a ton of outside flea market spaces. When we produced the Scanner Master book for Illinois in the 1990’s, we took a booth at this hamfest and sold hundreds of copies. We also sold a van full of radios and scanners from several of us and a couple guys who could not attend. I walked out with more cash than I had ever held before but most of it was destined for others. I did alright for myself however, so it was all good.
This fest started to shrink over the years, however. It went to Sunday only and eventually moved from the Lake County Fairgrounds to a smaller venue 50 miles away in Boone County. This made it out of reach for a lot of the Chicago area (it was much closer to Rockford than Chicago) and that certainly didn’t help. The last couple times I went I was in and out in minutes, it just was not the same.
One of the most enduring hamfests was the 6-Meter Club fest. Originally held in a local racetrack it later moved out to the DuPage County fairgrounds. Post Covid it moved to a local church and is still a good event.
There are a lot of other smaller hamfests in the Chicago area, many clubs have sponsored them. They range from a dozen or so tables in the parking lot of a VFW hall to ones with commercial exhibitors and a hundred or more tables.
Out here in the Phoenix area the hamfests tend to be on Saturdays and mostly in the fall, winter and spring. It is way too hot in the summer to hold them out here and half the hams are snowbirds anyway. For those of you not understanding, “Snowbirds” live in Arizona or other warm climates in the winter and go back north in the summer. We have thought of doing that ourselves but so far have resisted the urge.
We have a couple decent-sized fests here in December and January and smaller ones scattered around the spring and fall. They are nowhere near as large as we had in the Chicago area of course.
Of course it wouldn’t be a hamfest tale without some hamfest stories. Here are a few memorable nuggets:
Don’t steal federal radio stuff:
We were at one of the larger fests in Chicagoland years ago and one of the tables had some pretty neat Motorola consolettes and other Motorola radios. Some of us noticed that they looked like they were pulled from federal service based on frequency tags on the portables and property tags on the other stuff. We figured it was surplus from some agency and didn’t think much of it. That kind of thing was fairly common at the time.
Before long however rumors started to fly around the fest that the seller had been raided by the Marshall’s Service, FBI, CIA or some other federal agency depending on the source of the rumor. What we did see was 2 of the guys at the booth being led out in handcuffs and carts full of equipment being wheeled out by serious looking guys in suits. They blocked off the general area around that booth for an hour or two while this was going on and it was left empty the rest of the day. I never did get the real story on who was arrested by whom, but I have some suspicions. I am also happy that I didn’t buy anything from them.
Reconnecting with an old girlfriend:
At another hamfest I ran into an old girlfriend wandering around the booths. Apparently, she came with a mutual friend, the same guy that had set us up in the first place a year or so prior. While she had a passing interest in radio and participated in our local GMRS group, her radio hobby participation was mostly due to us dating and not to an organic interest. I had set her up with a scanner so she could listen to me working on the police department and she enjoyed talking about the stuff I did during my shift but after we broke up, she returned the radios she had borrowed from me.
I was happy to see her though and we spent a couple hours walking thru the booths and chatting. Eventually I noticed our mutual friend had left and I realized it was more than a coincidence that we ran into each other. We ended up staying together for several more months before moving on. It was however the first and only time I picked up a girl at a hamfest, it is possible that was the only time it ever happened for anyone.
Getting lucky 3 times in a row:
Get your mind out of the gutter! I mean I found treasures at 3 hamfests in a row. These days most hamfests, at least out here in Arizona, are small affairs and I have gone over a year or more without buying anything of substance. There just wasn’t anything interesting, and if there was the guy wanted WAY too much for it.
This winter I actually had a shopping list for a fest over in the East Valley. I found the items I was looking for and then at one booth I saw a pair of Zetron Model 27 audio mixers. The guy wanted $10 each and said that as far as he knew they worked. I bought them both. I set them up at home and tested them out, they both did work well. After tightening up the knobs and rewiring the units with audio cables I sent one to my buddy Will in Chicago and kept one for myself. After Will got his he set it up and found that one of the speakers did not work, that might have been missed when I tested them here. The activity lights worked, and I know at least one of the two speakers did but I might have missed that one. He sent it back to me and I found a replacement, installed it with a little soldering and sent it back. It is working perfectly now, as is mine here.
At the next hamfest here in the West Valley I found a Railroad Astro Spectra for $20. The seller had no clue if it worked or even what it was. I told him about it, and he said his dad had it in his garage when he passed, why he had it the seller had not a clue. I took it home, powered it up and it worked perfectly. It was in excellent condition; it even still had the plastic film protecting the display. While it is a 20-year-old radio, it has the narrow-band allocations, and I was even able to program a few ham radio repeaters into it. It now sits on my desk monitoring the local railroad.
The third lucky fest for me was a small swap meet at a local club. I went not so much for the fest, but rather to tour the radio museum there and for the hotdogs they were grilling. I strolled around the parking lot looking at the dozen or so flea market vendors and saw a really nice canvas bag with military markings on it. While obviously a reproduction, it was high-quality and marked for $30. I thought that was high but when I asked the guy about it, he said the $30 was for the entire table, including a half dozen Baofeng radios, a like number of chargers, a dozen or more antennas and a bunch more stuff. I really wanted the bag, so I bought the whole collection. I turned around and sold the radios at the next hamfest for $60, kept a few of the antennas for myself as well as the bag.
Selling Bob’s stuff:
I have known Bob for close to 40 years, he was a ham and a member of CARMA. Like me he was once a dispatcher and retired from a suburban police department a few years before I did. I ran into him at his part-time retirement job soon after I bought my new home and it turned out he too was fixing to move to a new home just a few miles from mine in Arizona.
Over the next few years we would get together now and then, and he joined a local radio club I was with. Eventually he developed health issues and asked that I take care of selling his radio gear if he passed away. Of course I agreed, if the roles were reversed, I would have asked him to do the same for me.
Unfortunately, he did pass last year, and his family asked me to sell his radio stuff for them. I went to the house and collected a carload of stuff. I brought it home and sorted thru it all, cataloged it and sold a bunch of it to various friends. The rest I brought to a nearby hamfest. Another friend and I set up and sold almost everything he had left as well as a bunch of stuff of our own.
I collected several thousand dollars for the family. They appreciated being rid of all of Dad’s stuff, that was one less thing they needed to worry about. They also got some cash to help with expenses. While I wished I didn’t need to do this it was an interesting experience. I had done this once before, 25 years or so ago a different friend died quite young and several of us collected his extensive collection of radio gear (scanners, several Icom receivers and ham radio stuff) and we had an auction at a CARMA get-together and sold it all for the family.
A wannabe but never will be:
Are you familiar with the Jeremy DeWitte fake cop story? If not, look him up on YouTube. It is a rabbit hole that will entertain you for months. This is a guy who likes to dress up as a cop and run around terrorizing central Florida while escorting funeral processions. Our favorite F-Boy is now impersonating a prison guard as a guest of the Florida Department of Corrections.
At some of the local hamfests out here in Arizona I had seen a guy dressed in all “tactical black”: black cargo pants, black shirt, black tac vest, black duty belt with cuffs, 3 radios, sidearm, Asp, and more. He drove a black Dodge Charger with spotlight and all kinds of push-bars, light packages, antennas, TBL plates and all the toys. As a trained and experienced police officer I could tell at an instant, he wasn’t one at all. Our Tackleberry wannabe was obviously a never-will-be.
The last time I saw him at a fest he was trying to buy a Motorola APX but could not chew the price down enough. I heard the exchange, and he made it clear he didn’t care what bands the radio was for, so I assume it was just for show to go along with his XTS5000.
A few weeks later I saw on the local news of a guy arrested for pulling over an unmarked police car on the local freeway. When they showed the video, it was our buddy, the Tackleberry clone. They showed the car on the news; the same one I saw at the fest.
Later he pled guilty to a reduced charge and received probation. I have not seen him at a hamfest since. The car and all of his tactical gear was impounded, I doubt he ever got it back.
Hamfests are fun, you get to meet friends and see lots of radio stuff. Sometimes you find great deals or just the thing you were looking for. Often you also see a few oddities along the way, human and otherwise.
Hamfests are typically sponsored by a local ham radio club, and they always do a great job setting it all up and running it. There is a boatload of work that has to be done for any hamfest, large or small. Usually there is one guy that does the majority of the work to organize it, ensure the venue is set up and enough volunteers are available for parking lot, ticket sales and other duties. My best friend just last week coordinated his club’s hamfest back in Illinois, and or the last few weeks it has been taking a lot of his time.
When I lived in Illinois, we had a large group of (mostly) CARMA scanner club guys that would haunt the local hamfests. In Chicagoland hamfests are mostly a summer thing and mostly on Sundays. There was however a big January hamfest (usually on Super Bowl Sunday) at the Odeum, a stadium and expo center in suburban Villa Park. This fest was a great event, with hundreds of flea market and commercial exhibitors. The lines were always long, the joint was always crowded, and the food was always awful, just what a hamfest should be. This hamfest later moved on to the Kane County Fairgrounds after the Odeum was closed and was still a decent fest the last time I went before I moved out west but has since stopped being held.
Another hamfest we always went to was the CFMC Hamfest at the Lake County Fairgrounds. This used to be the largest hamfest in the Midwest, spanning two full days (Saturday and Sunday) with a big Friday night bash for club members only. It drew people from a dozen states and was considered the “Dayton of Illinois” for years.
This fest was a major event, with several large buildings and a ton of outside flea market spaces. When we produced the Scanner Master book for Illinois in the 1990’s, we took a booth at this hamfest and sold hundreds of copies. We also sold a van full of radios and scanners from several of us and a couple guys who could not attend. I walked out with more cash than I had ever held before but most of it was destined for others. I did alright for myself however, so it was all good.
This fest started to shrink over the years, however. It went to Sunday only and eventually moved from the Lake County Fairgrounds to a smaller venue 50 miles away in Boone County. This made it out of reach for a lot of the Chicago area (it was much closer to Rockford than Chicago) and that certainly didn’t help. The last couple times I went I was in and out in minutes, it just was not the same.
One of the most enduring hamfests was the 6-Meter Club fest. Originally held in a local racetrack it later moved out to the DuPage County fairgrounds. Post Covid it moved to a local church and is still a good event.
There are a lot of other smaller hamfests in the Chicago area, many clubs have sponsored them. They range from a dozen or so tables in the parking lot of a VFW hall to ones with commercial exhibitors and a hundred or more tables.
Out here in the Phoenix area the hamfests tend to be on Saturdays and mostly in the fall, winter and spring. It is way too hot in the summer to hold them out here and half the hams are snowbirds anyway. For those of you not understanding, “Snowbirds” live in Arizona or other warm climates in the winter and go back north in the summer. We have thought of doing that ourselves but so far have resisted the urge.
We have a couple decent-sized fests here in December and January and smaller ones scattered around the spring and fall. They are nowhere near as large as we had in the Chicago area of course.
Of course it wouldn’t be a hamfest tale without some hamfest stories. Here are a few memorable nuggets:
Don’t steal federal radio stuff:
We were at one of the larger fests in Chicagoland years ago and one of the tables had some pretty neat Motorola consolettes and other Motorola radios. Some of us noticed that they looked like they were pulled from federal service based on frequency tags on the portables and property tags on the other stuff. We figured it was surplus from some agency and didn’t think much of it. That kind of thing was fairly common at the time.
Before long however rumors started to fly around the fest that the seller had been raided by the Marshall’s Service, FBI, CIA or some other federal agency depending on the source of the rumor. What we did see was 2 of the guys at the booth being led out in handcuffs and carts full of equipment being wheeled out by serious looking guys in suits. They blocked off the general area around that booth for an hour or two while this was going on and it was left empty the rest of the day. I never did get the real story on who was arrested by whom, but I have some suspicions. I am also happy that I didn’t buy anything from them.
Reconnecting with an old girlfriend:
At another hamfest I ran into an old girlfriend wandering around the booths. Apparently, she came with a mutual friend, the same guy that had set us up in the first place a year or so prior. While she had a passing interest in radio and participated in our local GMRS group, her radio hobby participation was mostly due to us dating and not to an organic interest. I had set her up with a scanner so she could listen to me working on the police department and she enjoyed talking about the stuff I did during my shift but after we broke up, she returned the radios she had borrowed from me.
I was happy to see her though and we spent a couple hours walking thru the booths and chatting. Eventually I noticed our mutual friend had left and I realized it was more than a coincidence that we ran into each other. We ended up staying together for several more months before moving on. It was however the first and only time I picked up a girl at a hamfest, it is possible that was the only time it ever happened for anyone.
Getting lucky 3 times in a row:
Get your mind out of the gutter! I mean I found treasures at 3 hamfests in a row. These days most hamfests, at least out here in Arizona, are small affairs and I have gone over a year or more without buying anything of substance. There just wasn’t anything interesting, and if there was the guy wanted WAY too much for it.
This winter I actually had a shopping list for a fest over in the East Valley. I found the items I was looking for and then at one booth I saw a pair of Zetron Model 27 audio mixers. The guy wanted $10 each and said that as far as he knew they worked. I bought them both. I set them up at home and tested them out, they both did work well. After tightening up the knobs and rewiring the units with audio cables I sent one to my buddy Will in Chicago and kept one for myself. After Will got his he set it up and found that one of the speakers did not work, that might have been missed when I tested them here. The activity lights worked, and I know at least one of the two speakers did but I might have missed that one. He sent it back to me and I found a replacement, installed it with a little soldering and sent it back. It is working perfectly now, as is mine here.
At the next hamfest here in the West Valley I found a Railroad Astro Spectra for $20. The seller had no clue if it worked or even what it was. I told him about it, and he said his dad had it in his garage when he passed, why he had it the seller had not a clue. I took it home, powered it up and it worked perfectly. It was in excellent condition; it even still had the plastic film protecting the display. While it is a 20-year-old radio, it has the narrow-band allocations, and I was even able to program a few ham radio repeaters into it. It now sits on my desk monitoring the local railroad.
The third lucky fest for me was a small swap meet at a local club. I went not so much for the fest, but rather to tour the radio museum there and for the hotdogs they were grilling. I strolled around the parking lot looking at the dozen or so flea market vendors and saw a really nice canvas bag with military markings on it. While obviously a reproduction, it was high-quality and marked for $30. I thought that was high but when I asked the guy about it, he said the $30 was for the entire table, including a half dozen Baofeng radios, a like number of chargers, a dozen or more antennas and a bunch more stuff. I really wanted the bag, so I bought the whole collection. I turned around and sold the radios at the next hamfest for $60, kept a few of the antennas for myself as well as the bag.
Selling Bob’s stuff:
I have known Bob for close to 40 years, he was a ham and a member of CARMA. Like me he was once a dispatcher and retired from a suburban police department a few years before I did. I ran into him at his part-time retirement job soon after I bought my new home and it turned out he too was fixing to move to a new home just a few miles from mine in Arizona.
Over the next few years we would get together now and then, and he joined a local radio club I was with. Eventually he developed health issues and asked that I take care of selling his radio gear if he passed away. Of course I agreed, if the roles were reversed, I would have asked him to do the same for me.
Unfortunately, he did pass last year, and his family asked me to sell his radio stuff for them. I went to the house and collected a carload of stuff. I brought it home and sorted thru it all, cataloged it and sold a bunch of it to various friends. The rest I brought to a nearby hamfest. Another friend and I set up and sold almost everything he had left as well as a bunch of stuff of our own.
I collected several thousand dollars for the family. They appreciated being rid of all of Dad’s stuff, that was one less thing they needed to worry about. They also got some cash to help with expenses. While I wished I didn’t need to do this it was an interesting experience. I had done this once before, 25 years or so ago a different friend died quite young and several of us collected his extensive collection of radio gear (scanners, several Icom receivers and ham radio stuff) and we had an auction at a CARMA get-together and sold it all for the family.
A wannabe but never will be:
Are you familiar with the Jeremy DeWitte fake cop story? If not, look him up on YouTube. It is a rabbit hole that will entertain you for months. This is a guy who likes to dress up as a cop and run around terrorizing central Florida while escorting funeral processions. Our favorite F-Boy is now impersonating a prison guard as a guest of the Florida Department of Corrections.
At some of the local hamfests out here in Arizona I had seen a guy dressed in all “tactical black”: black cargo pants, black shirt, black tac vest, black duty belt with cuffs, 3 radios, sidearm, Asp, and more. He drove a black Dodge Charger with spotlight and all kinds of push-bars, light packages, antennas, TBL plates and all the toys. As a trained and experienced police officer I could tell at an instant, he wasn’t one at all. Our Tackleberry wannabe was obviously a never-will-be.
The last time I saw him at a fest he was trying to buy a Motorola APX but could not chew the price down enough. I heard the exchange, and he made it clear he didn’t care what bands the radio was for, so I assume it was just for show to go along with his XTS5000.
A few weeks later I saw on the local news of a guy arrested for pulling over an unmarked police car on the local freeway. When they showed the video, it was our buddy, the Tackleberry clone. They showed the car on the news; the same one I saw at the fest.
Later he pled guilty to a reduced charge and received probation. I have not seen him at a hamfest since. The car and all of his tactical gear was impounded, I doubt he ever got it back.
Hamfests are fun, you get to meet friends and see lots of radio stuff. Sometimes you find great deals or just the thing you were looking for. Often you also see a few oddities along the way, human and otherwise.
