Anyone here going to the Dayton Hamvention this year? It's the world's largest hamfest, but if you live anywhere near Dayton, Ohio it's worth going to whether you're into amateur radio or not. If you live in the area you may have noticed the annual influx of vehicles that look like porcupines and your fast food drive thru speakers just don't work the same for awhile.
Hamvention is basically an electronics flea market on steroids outside. You can find anything out there usually cheaper than eBay. Besides the ham radio stuff, people have phone equipment for sale like test sets and old CO equipment racks. There's used cell phone tower gear like cell transceivers, antennas and hardline. There's been a guy the last few years that sells lock pick kits, training DVDs and has locks there you can try them out on. All kinds of electronic items abound like those radios you see in the drive-thru videos, scanners, law enforcement equipment, spy cameras and gear, computers and computer parts galore, pieces parts, tv-b-gones, surplus and more. 2600 has a spot in the flea market as well. Indoors there are many exhibitors selling new electronics gear. They also have forums with astronauts speaking sometimes and stuff like that which may or may not interest you. Afterward everyone goes downtown and gets loaded and/or wreaks havoc on the airwaves which has earned the nickname Dayton Jamvention. There's prizes, sometimes individual prizes worth over $10,000. At the end there's loads of free stuff in the flea market people didn't want to bring home.
$20 gets you a ticket good for all 3 days indoors and out. If you're a high school student, you can get in for free!
http://www.hamvention.org
