N5NTG | 
01 25th, 2010| 
Wade KE5ZUO on Talk-in, JC Smith N5RXS, wanting to resell empty tables
San Antonio Radio Club’s event chairman, JC Smith N5RXS, reported on the air, Saturday morning at 6:15am, prior to opening the doors, that all vendor tables had been sold out already!
Wow! In fact, JC placed several calls were placed on the air searching for hams who had rented tables, but hadn’t yet shown up to claim them, so that he could resell those empty tables to folks who forgot to advance register! Amazingly enough, it seems that some hams will pay to rent a vendor table, just to get in the door before the general admission, so they can scout out the better deals and buy before the crowd starts rolling in. This practice is discouraged, but it happens, and then it leaves empty tables that could have been used by another ham.
One of the challenges we faced this year, was the SARO 146.94 repeater being used for talk-in, failed around 6:20am, just after we had started making announcements. We were actually then hitting the Austin’s .94 repeater, so we changed to simplex and kept on going. Bob K5AUW set up his mobile for crossband on simplex in the beginning, then we changed over to using my radios (as discussed later). The .94 San Antonio repeater stayed down the rest of the day.
