[Ground-station] HamCation 2023 - update and *call for volunteers*

[Michelle Thompson]

Last call for HamCation! Let me know ASAP if you want to use the booth
and an AirBNB (four bedroom, very close to fairgrounds) for your ORI
work.

-Michelle Thompson



On Thu, Jan 5, 2023 at 11:35 AM Michelle Thompson
<mountain.michelle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings all!
>
> If you are not familiar with the US amateur radio vendor fair
> HamCation, then please visit https://www.hamcation.com/
>
> ORI has a booth in a very nice location right in front of the prize
> drawing area.
>
> We have shown at HamCation for many years. In the past, we've
> collaborated with and supported exhibits and presentations from
> Society of Amateur Radio Astronomy (SARA), Tucson Amateur Packet Radio
> (TAPR), M17, DEFCON, GNU Radio, SBMS Beacon Project, and more.
>
> We've organized four all-day forum sessions, recruited talks from all
> over the world, and welcomed people and projects that needed space to
> present their efforts to the large crowd in Orlando, FL. We've done a
> lot of demos, given out thousands of dollars of prizes and swag, and
> hosted several contests. The organizers have been deeply appreciative
> and delight to work with.
>
> Aside from ARRL, ORI has fielded the most diverse and successful set
> of exhibits at HamCation in recent history.
>
> It's not a bad hamfest, as ham events go. Out of all of the ones in
> the US, this has been the best one for us.
>
> Our plans were to show the Versatune project, which is a fantastic
> upgrade to a beloved ham DVB product, show Ribbit and Rattlegram,
> demonstrate Haifuraiya satellite work, introduce our sounding rocket
> work, and more.
>
> Ribbit project team members cannot attend due to work and time
> conflicts. We'll show through IEEE and potentially at Ham Expo.
>
> Versatune has run into insurmountable delays and supply chain issues
> with Raspberry Pis. We looked at every possible alternative to get
> Versatune done faster with alternate parts, including rewriting the
> codebase for some very different off-the-reel parts that were
> available. We decided this was not a reasonable or achievable course
> of action. The original design is excellent and making progress - just
> not fast enough to show at HamCation in February 2023.
>
> Haifuraiya (Open source HEO/GEO satellite) will show at QSO Today Ham
> Expo in March and through IEEE.
>
> Sounding Rocket students cannot afford to come to HamCation, and we
> have similar supply chain problems there with Opulent Voice.
>
> So - What do we have at HamCation?
>
> We have a four-bedroom AirBNB very close to the fairgrounds reserved.
> Each room has a king sized bed. It has a large kitchen and very nice
> living room.
>
> We have a booth at HamCation that is now completely open for anyone
> from ORI to use. I will do anything I can to help you showcase our
> work at HamCation. Do a shift at the booth, enjoy the very nice house,
> and promote our work.
>
> More about this will be on Slack in the Hamcation channel.
>
> Get in touch with me (cell phone number below) to take advantage.
> Deadline is 1 February.
>
> If we have no staff, then we cancel and attempt to get the money back
> or donate the housing and booth space to a worthy group.
>
> Please forward to anyone you think might be interested. What sort of
> work do we support? It's outlined here:
> https://www.openresearch.institute/your-project-is-welcome/
>
> -Michelle Thompson
> (858) 229 3399