Leland C. Scott wrote:
When I turned in my ticket at the Hamvention I
normally check out what the prizes are. This year
I couldn't see even one item from Yaesu. Kenwood
and Icom etc. had items on display, but not Yaesu.
I wonder if the Hamvention did something to tick
them off.

Yaesu was not in the same arena with Icom and Kenwood, either. Don't
recall if it's always been that way.

Also I would say that both the flea market and the
inside vendor numbers were down by at least 20%.
There were MANY empty spaces in the flea market
area when in past years it was mostly full.

I was there on Friday. I thought it would plus-up on Saturday.

I also
heard that Mendelson wanted more space and a break
on the flea market rental since they are going out
of business. The Hamvention, based I what I heard
around, said no dice, so they didn't even bother
to show up and they're only a few miles from the
arena too. They spaced out many of the inside
vendor booth areas so it wasn't too obvious that
the number of vendors was way down.

The ARRL was there in force.

What did anybody else notice? I hope the above
isn't a long term trend.

Old men. Yes, it's a long-term trend. bb