This past weekend was the 2018 Orlando Hamcation. This year was my 5th year attending and it was another great event! My brother, Tony KD8RTT, and I teamed up to present the ARRL Collegiate Amateur Radio Initiative forum. Tony live streamed the forum and it can be found after the break.
The forum was a great discussion about the renaissance of amateur radio in colleges and universities. This year we focused more on the logisitical issues of running a club. Getting on the air is critical to a successful club and driving club activities is key. You can catch the full discussion above and check out Tony’s channel for more videos on amateur radio.
Hamfests always have some unique items to see and Hamcation was no different. This year I stumbled upon a rocket tracking camera setup. As you can see in the image below, this monster lens is mounted on a moving base to track rockets are they ascend. There is a small tracking camera at the end of the center. It is towed behind a truck and has to be parked to operate, but this setup looks to be able to host three cameras at a time. I’ve never seen such a device before and it was just a cool thing to checkout at Hamcation.
Besides tracking rockets, this year also had a new booth for FIRST Robotics. As many of you already know, FIRST is close to my heart and getting to show FIRST off to the amateur radio community was awesome! Hopefully some hams will consider mentoring teams and getting involved. This is a great opportunity for FIRST students to learn about electronics and radio, will hams could provide technical mentorship!
Finally, the best part of Hamcation was catching up with friends. We had a great Reddit meetup this year. Many of these folks I have only met once or twice before. Hamvention and Hamcation are a great opportunity to catch up in person.
So that’s the highlights of the 2018 Orlando Hamcation. I did purchase a few things, but that will be for a separate post.
Milluzzi Labs 