The wife and I left last Wed. for Dayton and the drive from ST Paul to there is in the neighborhood of 750 miles. We usually drive relatively hard the first day and get to Danville, IL and then drive the 250 miles to Dayton the following day. While driving down we ran into a lot of heavy rain and was hoping that they would not follow us to Dayton and cause a rain out.
Got up early Friday morning and headed to Hara Area and upon arriving at about 9:00 AM I told my wife that the turnout looked light since the wait to get into the handicapped parking lot was nonexistent. We made or way through the flea market and was surprised to see a number of tables still covered with plastic even though it had not rained at all up to that point. You can't sell stuff if the customers can't see it.
After spending 2 hrs in the flea market the first sprinkles began and almost everyone headed inside. Since I ride a mobility scooter I can tell how busy the event is by the number of ankles I have hit or the number of stops I have to make to avoid running over the inconsiderate people. Even down on the main floor the crowd was really light on Friday as I was able to motor around without to much trouble but the telling point was I was able to get right next to the displays and see them and touch them and I have never been able to do this on the main floor at any time prior to this.
After about 2 hrs the rain let up and we went back outside to finish the flea market for the first time. The was a great deal of ham gear and the majority of it was overpriced, like a Johnson Adventurer that I saw that had a $1000.00 price tag on it. Remember this is just a very old novice rig, it was in good shape but 1K of good. We left around 3:30 to go find a nice place to eat after cleaning up a bit.
On Saturday we attended the Ham Radio Deluxe, Drake and Gordon West Instructor forums and this timed it perfectly because the rain had began shortly after our arrival. The forums we informative and I won a CNC weighted tuning knob for my Drake TR4. After leaving the forums we went back out and did the flea market loop one more time. The attendance for Saturday was a bit better than Friday but in my opinion it was way down from last 4 years but I will be curious to see what DARA estimates the attendance to be. It seems out when an event sells tickets it has to estimate the number of people attending. That is unless you wish to inflate the numbers, which a large group of people think is exactly what happens.
If you want to see a thread I started on QRZ.com about the poor and disgusting conditions of Hara Area be prepared to read for a while. Here is the link.
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?436661-Hara-Arena-Has-seen-better-days
Got up early Friday morning and headed to Hara Area and upon arriving at about 9:00 AM I told my wife that the turnout looked light since the wait to get into the handicapped parking lot was nonexistent. We made or way through the flea market and was surprised to see a number of tables still covered with plastic even though it had not rained at all up to that point. You can't sell stuff if the customers can't see it.
After spending 2 hrs in the flea market the first sprinkles began and almost everyone headed inside. Since I ride a mobility scooter I can tell how busy the event is by the number of ankles I have hit or the number of stops I have to make to avoid running over the inconsiderate people. Even down on the main floor the crowd was really light on Friday as I was able to motor around without to much trouble but the telling point was I was able to get right next to the displays and see them and touch them and I have never been able to do this on the main floor at any time prior to this.
After about 2 hrs the rain let up and we went back outside to finish the flea market for the first time. The was a great deal of ham gear and the majority of it was overpriced, like a Johnson Adventurer that I saw that had a $1000.00 price tag on it. Remember this is just a very old novice rig, it was in good shape but 1K of good. We left around 3:30 to go find a nice place to eat after cleaning up a bit.
On Saturday we attended the Ham Radio Deluxe, Drake and Gordon West Instructor forums and this timed it perfectly because the rain had began shortly after our arrival. The forums we informative and I won a CNC weighted tuning knob for my Drake TR4. After leaving the forums we went back out and did the flea market loop one more time. The attendance for Saturday was a bit better than Friday but in my opinion it was way down from last 4 years but I will be curious to see what DARA estimates the attendance to be. It seems out when an event sells tickets it has to estimate the number of people attending. That is unless you wish to inflate the numbers, which a large group of people think is exactly what happens.
If you want to see a thread I started on QRZ.com about the poor and disgusting conditions of Hara Area be prepared to read for a while. Here is the link.
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?436661-Hara-Arena-Has-seen-better-days
