Dayton Hamvention 2016 is just around the corner, May 20-22. Let’s call this out as a planning thread, and we will set up a live thread for the event (see last year here).
@pierros has filed for our space (do we have confirmation of where yet?)
Need to know who will be on site that weekend and willing/able to help man the booth (@ryan_turner? @danwhite?). This entails answering questions about the project, offering flyers & mailing list signup, and asking for people to help out. No need to go soliciting people to talk to, the rotator/antennas pretty much do it themselves. This year I’d like to have a schedule of at least 1 person in the booth at all times, though 2 is nice. Due to the size of the booth this year and doing it indoors we will be very tight on space so we may even need to limit the booth work.
Booth:
Being that we are inside this year we will be in a 10’x10’ (3m x 3m) space. This is likely to be flanked on 3 sides by curtain walls. We will be provided with 2 chairs and a table. Given that we will have a v3 rotator and antennas to demo, it will probably be best to push the table to the back side of the booth to hold extra literature, or take it down altogether. People will want to be able to walk up and see the rotator close. That said, this will make the booth VERY tight. Even out in the open people were bumping into it, especially as they pivot around with backpacks. Again, more than 2 SatNOGS representatives at a time may be too much in this tight space.
TAPR Forum:
We have a 25 min presentation (20+5 for questions) in the TAPR digital forum on Friday morning. @kb9jhu will be presenting. https://www.tapr.org/dayton.html
Who is bringing what rotator / antenna gear? We will have space for 1 rotator. I can bring mine, or we use the portable v3 in the Pelican case. (@pierros?)
We are planning on being there. 3 hotel rooms of people . I’ll push the students into getting forum accounts, they’re just timid… That will help the coordination also.
Just as an aside I was at a much smaller rally yesterday in the UK with our rotator and spoke with the RSGB president who asked us to do something for the RadComm magazine (which I’ll pull together). I could only give him a leaflet that I made up and as Dayton is much bigger you might want to think about some kind of giveaway as I didn’t get to talk to everyone.
We have an IC-9100 we’ll bring to Hamvention to use for testing hardware radio stuff. I’ll see if @space_grace or another lab member has bandwidth to get hamlib on our Odroid talking with the 9100 before the event.
@danwhite@ryan_turner I’m going to be short on help this year given the upsat work - can either/both of you help in the booth (and anyone else watching this thread?)
Friday AM is a gap as that is the TAPR forum I’m presenting in (about SatNOGS) and so I won’t be able to man the booth at all. Would like to arrange bathroom/food breaks as well.
@cshields yes absolutely. There will also be 3 students available to help man the booth, a 4th may be able to help depending at times depending on her schedule with FlexRadio.
Is there a good way to map out the booth schedule? I started a google calendar to hold the stuff and am waiting for my google-apps admin setting to refresh to allow you and others (@ryan_turner, who else?) write access to it.
This year I’d like to have a schedule of at least 1 person in the booth at all times, though 2 is nice. Due to the size of the booth this year and doing it indoors we will be very tight on space so we may even need to limit the booth work.