Hamvention 2025

I’m all done with Hamvention 2025. I’m now sitting in a delayed plane in Minneapolis, Minnesota… I’m probably going to miss my connecting flight from Denver to Rock Springs. While I’m sitting here waiting to depart, I figured I would go over my thoughts on Hamvention.

Two days before I departed for Hamvention, I taught my 2 day HF Operations Class. It was a great class with great students. I definitely didn’t have as many hiccups in this class as I had in the past, so I feel like I’m really getting this class dialed in. Below are a few pictures from that class.

First off, I would like to thank the Mississippi Valley Amateur Radio Association for letting me tag along. My best friend Rob, who is a fellow Recondo graduate from TSI, is part of that club and got permission to let me come along.

Ok, now for gear. I’m going to be honest I didn’t see much I was excited about in the gear realm. The one thing that I was hunting for was the Spooltenna booth. I have been following them on Instagram and sharing most of their content. Spooltenna is an EFHW antenna that is unwound when it is time to use it and re-wound when it’s time to pull it down. I love the idea of fast deployment and fast takedown. They were offering $10 for Hamvention, so I decided to jump on it. We will see in the coming weeks how I like it and how it holds up to my abuse. 

Sticking with the spool concept, I stumbled onto QRPstore and their coax Winder for RG316 coax. It will hold 50 feet of coax. I had to order this since they were all out at their booth. Another spool for testing.

Ok, now for the big kit. The Yaesu FTX-1F.

This was the big release of the show.

It is an HF/VHF/UHF QRP radio. It has split screens and dual monitoring. So I can have my HF antenna up and my VHF/UHF antenna up and be watching both bands. It had a 3d waterfall, but I wasn’t able to see anything since they didn’t have any antennas connected to any of the display models.

It doesn’t have a GPS, tuner, or wireless, which kinda sux. I figured they would try to have most of the same features as the IC-705.

One thing that did surprise me was the amount of LMR radios for say in the flea market side. I would say about every 4 tables had one kind or another of LMR radios. Lots of Motorola XTSs and Harris radios. I’m guessing these guys are buying surplus radios off government auction sites and then selling them for 100%+ mark up. Not a bad idea.

Now for the most ridiculous thing I saw at Hamvention. Dudes were wearing 4 radios….. I don’t know what the hell these guys were doing, but they looked ridiculous. I was only able to get one pic, but there were multiple people wearing 3 and 4 radios.

And here is where I would say something negative about the sad hams. All I’m going to say is that all of us need to do our best to stay fit and active! Mobility is life.

As for my trip, yeah, we missed our connecting flight and had to rent a car in Denver and drive back to Wyoming. That was a bit frustrating.