VOLUME 19            DECEMBER 2002                NUMBER  12

RADIO MISCELLANEA -- DECEMBER 2002

From Antique Radio Classified for December 2002
(Copyright 1996-2002 by John V. Terrey - For personal use only.)

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From the Internet: Commentary on the AWA Conference

Wow, what fun!

It's a great thing to have name tags mandatory. I believe all shows should be doing that. ... Attendance, according to one of the people in the registration tent, actually showed six more vending spots rented over last year. But that didn't mean that they were actually occupied. Yes, there were many empty stalls, perhaps for vendors who couldn't take the whole week off, and may have come only for Friday or Saturday. And yes, lots of us had extra stalls rented just to park our vehicles nearby. ...If anyone goes to the AWA meet in the future, be sure to take the trip to the museum and annex. It is worth seeing.

I had arrived Tuesday around 1 P.M., and the clandestine selling was indeed already taking place. ...The floodgates opened at 5 P.M., and by 6:30 many of the sellers were fully set up and doing lots of business, with no visible enforcement of the no-selling rules.

All in all, I was pleased with the meet, good (not great) attendance, lots of neat items to look at, and many fine people to converse with.

--Jim Menning

Show Started Early!

We arrived about 6:30 P.M. today, Tuesday - a smooth trip with no problem at all... The registration tent was set up and running, but the flea market was already running! There must have been ten or fifteen set up with merchandise laid out, folks hauling purchases across the lot. The published start time for the flea market was Wednesday morning!! This is a bad idea! Folks traveling 1,000 miles or more to find the show running at other than published times! This will hurt this show in the long run. I urge you to contact the conference chairman and express your concerns about sticking to a published schedule.

--Robert Lozier

Let's Shorten the Meet!

...I have not been there since 1998, and attendance looked about 15 to 20 percent down from then to me...

My gripe with AWA is the scheduling! The flea market should open Friday at 8 A.M.That gives you a stronger Saturday for the less committed and the general public to attend the flea market. Also, others who can't take the whole week off (or most of it) would also come on Friday knowing they have a shot at lots of stuff! They book the hotel for the week as it is now, why not cut a day out (Wednesday) and have setups and some seminars or whatever, as we do in Lansing? We enforce no selling on Thursday, and folks respect that mostly. The others get politely shut down fast if they try to display anything on Thursday, and it works great! It is the same at Charlotte, which has the famous "Lemans Start" at 8 A.M. Condensing the days strenghtens the overall show, too.

--Mark Oppat

Let's Shorten the Meet!

... I was out there at 5 A.M. making the rounds. There was a fair quantity of decent wireless gear and twenties sets, and some of them changed hands for reasonable prices.

I'll cast my vote for shortening the meet to Friday and Saturday.

--Alan Douglas

I Had a Great Time!

I attended my fourth Rochester AWA Conference this past Wednesday... I arrived at the RIT Conference center about 5:30 and found a much lighter crowd than say two years ago when I was already parking on the lawn at that hour. ...Attendance seemed down as far as sellers - a lot of spaces in the flea were just filled with people who had nothing to sell. I had a great time and thank heartily all the folks who work hard to make this conference happen, despite my disagreements with AWA. I do think this conference would be far better served by a Friday/Saturday schedule like Elgin.

--John Hagman

We Must Open the Hobby

I was stunned and dismayed to hear that we were still going to be crammed into the Marriott again! While I really give a lot of credit to those who put together such a daunting task, there has go to be a better place where we're not shuttled around, and don't have to lock out the general public... I love to go to the conference, but we must open the hobby to the general public or the AWA will dwindle and die out over the next 10 or 20 years as those whose interest started the field pass away. We need to grab the interest of those who never experienced the equipment when it was new, but can come to appreciate it anyway.

...And just a side note, to those who have never stayed in a room that was inhabited by college students - "Bring your own rubber sheets!"

--Keith Park

My First Radio Flea Market

It was great fun meeting fellow members of the news group at the flea market on Wednesday.

Since I had to carry anything I bought back on the plane with me, I was severely limited in my purchases. If I had been within driving distance, there were at least a half dozen other radios I would have snatched up...

As this was my first radio flea market, it was fun seeing such a huge number of radio enthusiasts in one place who share the same passion as I do. My wife thinks we are a peculiar bunch. She commented to me that everyone there looked very bright and a little off center.

--Jim Bailey