I attended Hamcom in Torrance on September 16 and 17th.

I attended tech talks all day Saturday (http://www.hamconinc.org/tech-talks-sked.html).

One of my favorites was "Dealing with Government for Amateur Radio Antennas" given by Attorney Jonathan Kramer, W6JLK. He was very articulate, witty, and an all-around great speaker. His talk was not only very informative (he's a smart guy), but very funny. If you are interested in putting up an antenna and/or an antenna tower, check out his presentation found at: http://w6jlk.com/arrl17/ (won't be the same without his narrative, but worth a look-see).

As an aside, on Monday January 23, 2017 the US House of Representatives passed the Amateur Radio Parity Act of 2017 by unanimous consent. This action now sends the bill to the US Senate for its consideration. We should all be writing to our senators regarding the Amateur Radio parity Act (HR555). If you live in a deed-restricted community (ie. HOA, etc.) this affects you, but even if it does not, we should do this to help our fellow hams who are in this situation currently (and it'll ultimately help any of us who end up in a deed-restricted community one day).

Here is info on the act: http://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-parity-act

How to write to senator: https://arrl.rallycongress.net/ctas/urge-us-senate-to-support-amateur-radio-parity-act

Other talks I attended:

Elecraft: mostly advertising their new products (including 1500W amp), but that's what I was after - they have only 40-some-odd people working for them and ALL ARE IN THE USA - even the programmers! AND they manufacture their radios in the USA too - mostly Northern California! WOW.

AREDN project: Andre Hansen, K6AH, AREDN Project Manager - good intro to the mesh network - apparently Orv Beach did a "birds of a feather" session later in the day.

Lunch speaker: Ned Stearns, AA7A - DXpedition to sub Antartic South Sandwich and South George Islands - I read about this journey on their web site as it happened and tried to reach them while they were there, but my set-up just wasn't good enough. It was neat to see HIS personal pictures and video of the islands. The first island honestly looked miserable. It was amazing how they scaled rock walls while waves splashed on them to get to the island; they climbed rope ladders and pulled full-blown generators up behind them; for a week they lived on top of several feet of penguin dung (smelled foul) in tents that were constantly collapsing and getting ripped apart by incredibly high winds - these guys really rough it just so we can make cool DX contacts.

New Designs for Vertical Antennas: Tom Schiller, N6BT (former owner of Force-12)- He has discovered some very interesting properties of vertical antennas that no one has documented in the past! I bought his "Array of Light" antenna book for $30.

Ham Radio's Role During the Vietnam War: Dennis Vernacchia, N6KI - Gave a fantastic talk and showed pictures he took of his MARs station during the year he served. This is the only time I've seen first-hand pictures from someone who served in Vietnam. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to this talk, but it turned out to be absolutely fascinating. I overheard something about turning his presentation into a TV show - I hope he does.

The Future for Ham Radio Equipment: Bob Allison, WB1GCM, ARRL Assistant Lab manager - A lot about how they test radios at ARRL, talked about many manufacturers and a lot about Flex radio. My favorite quote: maybe once all radios are SDR's, and drawing incredibly lower power, they will all be left on 24/7 and messages will regularly be relayed from one to the next. Some may scoff at this, yet, (ironically) what does ARRL stand for!?

I spoke with some vendors about new light weight lithium phosphate battery technology good for backpacking (we may carry at Santa Barbara Electronics), as well as a new fold-out photovoltaic panel array for hiking (small, light, sturdy), another guy selling a 10-80M small portable loop antenna (in QST this month), Dave Bottom, WI6R, the owner of RadioSport headsets (a super smart guy with a really neat work history from San Luis Obispo; and he races on the same tracks as I :-), and many more.

Our dinner speaker was space weather expert Dr. Tamitha Skov of Aerospace Corporation (federally funded R&D center for the Air Force). She was energetic, sharp, and a great speaker. Anyone interested in how the weather affects ham radio would have loved this talk. She taught us thing about weather (out in space) that I don't think I could have learned anywhere else.

It was quite a weekend for someone like me who has recently gotten back into the hobby.

Ken