Campfires, Callsigns and HamVention 2026

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HamVention 2026 is over, and for me, it did not disappoint. The main reason I attend each year is to meet the hams I’ve enjoyed making contacts with throughout the year. Thousands of people, all incredibly friendly, helpful, and encouraging, gathered together because of a shared love for radio.

Historically, I’ve camped with three other guys — two from Ohio and one from Wisconsin. We spend the weekend catching up, sharing meals, and telling stories… lots of stories. But this year felt a little different. Almost every night we were invited to a different campsite for dinner, and one evening even turned into a full dessert night. It gave us the chance to meet new operators, hear even more stories, and laugh harder than we had all year.

Even though I’ve only been home for one full day, I’m already looking forward to next year. Here are a few moments from the weekend that stood out to me.

  • On Saturday, I met a 10-year-old girl named Zoe who had just earned her General license. She was a bundle of energy and absolutely loved POTA. Seeing young operators excited about amateur radio is always encouraging and reminds you that the hobby still has a bright future.
  • On Friday, I activated Caesar Creek Lake State Wildlife Area (US-7850) for only the second time ever. Both activations were done entirely on 146.52 and completed within about 15 minutes. When you have that many hams camping in the park, .52 is almost always a good choice.
  • I also had one of those classic “technology moments.” I hadn’t used my PoLo logger on my phone for a couple of months, so imagine my surprise when the screen informed me that “PoLo Beta has expired.” Not knowing what else to do, I contacted the “PoLo Helpdesk” — which is to say, I texted the creator directly. Obviously, he was extremely helpful and got me back up and running quickly.
  • One of my favorite parts of the weekend happened every evening around the campfire. Eight to fifteen hams would gather around, making QSOs on 2 meters and 70 centimeters while activating Caesar Creek State Park. There was plenty of laughter as people forgot their own callsigns, announced the wrong frequency, fell behind on logging, or simply shouted their QSO information across the fire instead of transmitting it over the radio.

That’s really what HamVention is about for me. Sure, there are radios to buy, forums to attend, and gear to admire, but the best part has always been the people. The conversations around a picnic table, the late-night laughter around a fire, and the friendships built through a shared hobby are what keep bringing me back year after year. Ham radio may revolve around equipment and technology, but weekends like this are a reminder that the real connection has always been between people.

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Same Radio, New Price Tag?

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This week, more than 30,000 ham radio operators will descend on Xenia for the Dayton Hamfest — better known as Hamvention. Held at the Greene County Fair and Expo Center, Hamvention is widely regarded as the world’s largest amateur radio gathering.

For hams, it’s an event packed with opportunity: the chance to finally meet people you’ve only talked to on the air (or exchanged CW with), hunt for rare treasures in the massive flea market, and get a first look at the newest gear from the major manufacturers.

This year, Icom is generating a lot of buzz with the debut of a mysterious new radio known only as the X-026. Based on the rumors and early speculation, it appears to be a mobile rig with a detachable faceplate and support for multiple antenna inputs — strongly hinting at a multiband radio that could cover HF, VHF, and UHF.

Beyond that, though, we’re firmly in speculation territory.

But here’s the question: don’t we already have “shack-in-a-box” radios? Radios with multiple antenna ports and wide band coverage have existed for years. And who doesn’t have a rig with a detachable face? [Yawn]

In a hobby that prides itself on experimentation and innovation, why do the “big three” manufacturers often feel like they’re really is no innovation?

Take something as simple as charging technology. Last Black Friday, I picked up two Baofeng handhelds that charged via USB-C. USB-C! A standard, everyday connector that nearly everyone already owns. No proprietary chargers, no bulky cradles — just plug it in and go.

And that feature didn’t come from Icom, Yaesu, or Elecraft. It came from Baofeng.

So what would I actually want to see in a new radio? What kind of innovation would make me seriously consider replacing my current rigs? Well, probably the very things that WON’T be in the X-026.

About a year ago, the internal speaker in my FT-891 failed after tens of thousands of contacts. Frustrated but resigned, I headed to Walmart to buy an external speaker. That’s when I realized how difficult it was to find a simple wired speaker. Nearly everything on the shelf was Bluetooth.

That got me thinking: why aren’t our radios Bluetooth capable?

With Bluetooth, we could easily use wireless speakers, headsets, and microphones. It seems like such a simple addition, yet it would dramatically improve convenience and usability — especially for mobile operators.

Imagine a mobile rig with reliable hands-free VOX support through a wireless headset. Our phones already do this effortlessly. The technology exists. So why are amateur radios still lagging behind?

And then there’s connectivity.

Most of us now have large monitors in our shacks — many of us have multiple screens. So why aren’t manufacturers embracing modern display options? Why not include a mini-HDMI or USB-C video output that would allow operators to connect external displays and customize what they see? Waterfalls, SWR graphs, ALC meters, frequency displays — all on a larger screen, arranged however the operator wants.

These are just two examples of features that would feel genuinely fresh and innovative.

Instead, I suspect we’ll see more of the same: superficial changes, minimal innovation, and price tags high enough to make it difficult to justify replacing perfectly capable rigs already sitting in our shacks that already do the same thing.

I guess we will discover the truth in a few short days.

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Radio Myths – “You’ve Got Too Many Radials!”

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There’s been a surge of new antennas hitting the market lately—many of them verticals. And in my opinion, vertical antennas are fantastic, especially for portable operations.

When I head out to a park, I don’t always have a convenient tree available to hang an EFHW. Even when I do, time matters. I don’t want to spend half my activation wrestling with a throw bag, trying to get it over the right branch, and carefully positioning the antenna. EFHWs are excellent—but they take time. That’s why I often turn to verticals.

I’m not alone. Many activators are coming to the same conclusion, which explains the growing number of portable verticals on the market. Along with them comes a popular idea: using “resonant” or “tuned” radials. The logic usually goes something like this—use a certain number of radials for 20 meters, but when you switch to 40 meters, you need to add more.

At first glance, that sounds reasonable. But flip the logic around, and it starts to fall apart. If that were true, then when moving from 40 meters back to 20 meters, you would need to remove radials. And that should raise some red flags.

Rudy Severns, N6LF, addressed this very question in a QEX article (May/June 2009) titled *“How many radials does my vertical really need?”* His conclusion was simple: more radials are better. Period.

Now, there is a point of diminishing returns. As Severns notes, “You gain perhaps another fraction of a dB going to 32 radials, but by the time you reach 64 radials there isn’t much change. The broadcast standard of 120 radials, each 0.4 wavelengths long, is hard to justify for amateur use—especially at today’s copper prices”.

Still, the principle holds: additional radials continue to improve performance, even if the gains become small. Which means that once you’ve laid out radials for a lower band like 40 meters, removing some when switching to a higher band like 20 meters is actually counterproductive.

So don’t buy into the marketing hype. The idea that ground radials need to be “resonant” or “tuned” is largely a myth. And when someone asks how many radials your vertical needs, the simplest answer is still the best: 

More.

Note: This article is discussing ground radials only. Elevated radials, which play a different role in the antenna system, is a different beast all-together. Rudy Severns, N6LF, discusses these differences in another article written for QEX magazine Mar/Apr 2009. To gain a firm understanding of various ground systems and access to all his test data, I recommend all seven of his articles that can be found (for free) at “https://www.antennasbyn6lf.com/“

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Make It Work!

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Imagine you’re going on an adventure. A little out of state excursion, where nature abounds and state parks are plentiful. You have a couple full days allocated to grabbing your QRP rig, throwing a wire in a tree, and activating POTA parks to your heart’s content.

Sheer radio bliss.

You get to your first park, open your gear cases, and — much to your horror — realize that your wire antennas and ununs/baluns are in a bag you left on the bench at home. Your POTA dreams are over before they started.

Or are they?

This is where the trial and error experimentation aspect of the radio hobby really comes into play.

What I did have at my disposal was about 40 feet of 18 gauge speaker wire and a 4 foot section of 50 ohm coax with PL-259 connectors on each end.

One end of the speaker wire got shoved in the center pin hole of the SO-239 socket, careful to make sure the shielding covered the ground connector on the socket. Then the coax plug went in, holding the speaker wire in place, with the ground connector on the plug making as much contact as I could muster.

The other end of the coax ground ran to a grounded bolt on the car body, and the speaker wire got stretched out to a tree where I folded it back to as close to 33 feet as I could guess… And that reached a whopping 8 feet in the air at its absolute highest point.

The real star of this setup is the Xiegu G-90 transceiver. This radio will tune a vertical. It will tune a dipole. Heck, it’ll even tuna fish!

This setup tuned up to about 1.35:1, and dropped my 20 watts max down to about 16 watts going out the wire.

Voice modes were absolutely not going to happen with this rigging unless anyone was nearby to do some NVIS work, but I didn’t have the time to really invest in that today. The only real option was FT8 — and these situations are exactly what low signal strength digital modes were created for.

The result? 15 contacts in about a 30 minute window. Enough to activate a park!

If I have enough time tomorrow, I’ll hop on the local repeater network and see if anyone wants to try some NVIS phone on 20 meters… Or maybe I’ll see if I can cram enough Morse code refresher to operate CW… Or, better yet, maybe there’s someone in the area that can rustle up a spare 49:1 for me to buy.

The point, though, is that even with far less than ideal circumstances and gear, there’s always a way to enjoy a day playing radio.

Here are a few photos of what I managed to cobble together.

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More Watts, Less Gear: Chasing Power Without Losing Portability

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To say this has been a difficult solar cycle feels like an understatement. Not that I claim to be an authority—I’m still relatively new to amateur radio. I was licensed in May of 2020, and early on I heard plenty of “Old Timers” talk about how terrible the bands were.

“Just wait,” they’d say. “In a few years, you won’t believe how good it gets.”

Well… here we are.

A few years later, we’ve ridden up through the peak of the cycle and are now heading down the other side. And honestly? I find myself almost looking forward to solar minimum. That probably sounds backwards, but this cycle hasn’t quite lived up to the hype I was sold.

In fact, it’s been frustrating enough that I started looking into amplifiers for my Elecraft KX2. Nothing crazy—just something modest to bump my QRP signal up into the 35–50 watt range during what’s supposed to be the best part of the cycle.

Naturally, I started with Elecraft. If I’m running their radio, it makes sense to see what they offer. That led me to the Elecraft KXPA100 amplifier, which would effectively turn my KX2 into a full 100-watt station. It sounds perfect… until you see the price.

As of April 2026: $1,470.

That stopped me cold. For that kind of money, I could buy two Yaesu FT-891 radios. Which, as of right now, are about $730 each and already deliver 100 watts out of the box. It’s hard to justify spending more on an accessory than on a complete, capable transceiver.

So I kept looking.

However, what I found didn’t get much better. The only reasonably priced option was a kit from QRP Labs—a simple amplifier for about $30 that can push a QRP rig up to 50 watts… but only if you feed it 20 volts. If it is run from a typical 12.8V battery, you’re realistically getting around 25 watts. On top of that, it’s single-band.

Now, I love the price. But if I need multiple units for different bands, plus additional power considerations, the simplicity and portability of a QRP setup start to disappear pretty quickly. For the savings in price, I would need to expand my station to include a separate power supply and multiple amplifiers to cart to the parks.

And that’s where the frustration really set in.

Every amplifier I found that could take the KX2 to 50 watts or more ended up costing as much as—or more than—just buying a 100-watt radio outright. I completely understand paying a premium for a high-power amplifier that pushes well beyond what a typical QRO rig can do. But paying that same premium just to reach QRO levels? That’s a tougher sell.

At some point, you have to ask what problem you’re actually trying to solve.

If the goal is simply more power, then surely the easy answer is to buy something like a Yaesu FT-891 and call it a day. But for me, that’s not really the point. I chose the Elecraft KX2 for its portability, efficiency, and the flexibility it gives me in the field. I don’t want to replace that—I want to build on it.

So the search continues.

Somewhere out there has to be a balance between a portable, reasonably priced amplifier that doesn’t force one to bring an abundance of extra components and cables. Maybe it’s a kit. Maybe it’s something lesser-known. Maybe it’s something I haven’t even considered yet.

Either way, I’m not done looking. Because while the portability of the KX2 is great, there are times when a little extra power makes all the difference—and finding the right way to get there is part of the journey.

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