Vakkotaur

There weren't any forums jmaynard had to be at on Saturday, though he wanted to go to (and did go to) the FCC forum in the morning. I didn't go to that, but explored a bit more of the convention space. I didn't expect to see everything and I likely didn't, but I got to see a good chunk of things and a couple minor purchases here and there. When we met up again, I got to see the Tron Guy's effect on people. It's sort of a Rorschach test. Comments run from "Oh cool." and "Wow." through "What.. is it?" past "That takes guts." to no comment at all, but just looks of amazement, bewilderment, amusement, or bemusement.

The Icom folks had hired a couple people who did very good bit as obviously female robots. Ray, one of the Icom folks, made sure to tell the Tron guy to show up at 2 PM when the robots would make another appearance. He did. They did. I have pictures. I also learned a bit about performance shtick from watching and interacting with at least one of the "robots."

A small subset of the D-Star group met up for supper after the close of the convention for the day. Well after, actually. A few of us stayed longer than perhaps should have at the D-Star booth and had some trouble exiting the Hara Arena building. A bit more fiddling around was needed to get to a place that would have room for us in a reasonable time, but it all worked out. It turned into a long day, though not a late night.

Sunday morning was pretty much like Saturday for me, though Jay attended another D-Star related forum. We looked through the outside area as things were winding down and it showed. Many folks had already packed up, others had stuff marked down, in some cases to free.

We stayed for final drawing. My ticket number had not come up for any of the hourly drawings and, alas, it didn't come up for them when the unclaimed items were drawn for again, nor when the bigger items were, nor when the really big items were. As all but the last twelve items were "must be present to win" and many had left, things went on a while as numbers were called and nobody claimed anything. Dayton is not an Icom only show by any means. (From Friday night: "Is any manufacturer not here?" "No.") However, Icom was certainly a major force. Sure, there were prizes contributed by Alinco, Kenwood, Yaesu and others, and there weren't small things either, but Icom had the most or at least the most really big ticket items.

When we finally left Hara Arena, it was well past lunch time. Since there was a Skyline Chili around, we had a late lunch there. I've now had their "5-Way" (which is not 5-alarm) and for what it is, it's good. It's also not what I think of when someone says "chili." I didn't spot the bottle of hot sauce until after I'd finished.