{Collins} Dayton 2015

[Tony Sokol <tonysokol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gang.

Since I haven’t seen much about Dayton 2015 I thought I would pass along 
my observations.The weather was ok over all.Nothing seasoned Dayton 
attendees could not handle.There were a couple of short heavy down pours 
and some drizzly periods with a fair amount of wind.Friday appeared to 
be the most productive day for attendance and sales.In speaking with 
some of the vendors business was much slower on Saturday.There were 
again many open spaces in the flea market.I did see quite a bit of 
Collins gear mostly S-Line but there were several St. James Gray boxes 
there including a really beautiful late serial number 75A-4 and the 
coveted 312A-2 console.

The Collins booth was quite active again.We had several membership 
renewals and many hats, shirts, and Signal magazines went home with some 
happy attendees.Once again the highlight of the event was the chance to 
meet and have an eyeball with many of our friends sometimes for the 
first time.For the most part there was a constant stream of activity.

In a word, the Banquet was great!Jim Stitzinger, Scott Kerr, and Rod 
Blocksome did a great job of telling us about the “behind the scenes” 
story of retrieving the VOA transmitter.The many hurdles encountered and 
the months of preparation were indeed monumental.When the approval was 
finally received the celebration was short-lived because it was followed 
by “Oh, by the way, you have two weeks to get it out of here!”To help 
put this into perspective imagine a transmitter so large that an entire 
room is dedicated to the power supply.Another room for the finals which 
use a chain hoist on an I-Beam to extract.65lb water cooled blocking 
caps in the finals.Electric motors on the water cooled tuning capacitors 
which are rated in HP!And the Goliath steerable antenna system…what a 
masterpiece of engineering and to think this was all designed with a 
slide rule.

The banquet facility was ok.The room was a little cramped and personally 
I like large round tables which make it easier for more to join in 
conversation.The wait staff was a stitch!Although the facility really 
didn’t lend itself for delivering a presentation like the VOA story, the 
food really made up for it.A wider choice and it was good.No rubber 
chicken and peas here!

The new hotel is indeed an improvement.I made the effort to ask as many 
people as I could how they felt about the new location.The reaction can 
be summed up as much cleaner, a better breakfast bar offering which was 
complementary, better neighborhood, close tomany restaurants, and easy 
to get from there to the Arena.The staff is on the ball and very 
helpful.The only downside is no shuttle but that can be handled by 
getting together with the guys that drove.I did pass along the hotel 
sales manager’s contact information to Scott who will be working on 
setting up something for next year.

All-in-all your CCA gang put together a great event.As a former CCA 
Dayton chairman I can tell you this is no easy task.Every year is a 
learning experience but Scott and Jim were pretty much ahead of the 
curve on this one.Don’t miss next year.It will be even better.

73

Tony – W9JXN

Have a great Memorial Day weekend and remember those that gave and are 
giving their lives so that we can do things like this.