By Garry, W8GMD

Jerry Anderson, WB8FXY, and I manned a table at the Ann Arbor Creativity & Making Expo (formerly known as the Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire) in the downtown library on Sunday May 20th while everyone else was basking in the warm sunshine in Xenia, OH 😉 .  We had a fair number of visitors with most of the younger children having fun with the Morse Code keys. There was some interest in the remote demonstration of FT-8 on 40 meters until the band washout around 3:00 pm. I did make a few contacts at the beginning of the day but nothing later in the afternoon. To make these contacts, I was remotely controlling my ICOM 7300.  Everything else went well and we also talked to a couple of inactive hams and others concerning what Amateurs do, and have done  in times of need. 

I was told that we would be outside but as is seen in the pictures we were not.  I’m thinking they think of the area we were in as “outside” the general library area.  It was good that we were inside since it did rain a bit at the end of the day.  Jerry and I were also going to demonstrate 2-way communication on 2 meters but were not able to make it to any of the local repeaters in the location we were in. 

We were also helped by the AACME committee by making us one of the stops the kids had to go by to get their cards stamped.  This did generate interest in some that I think would not have stopped by if it wasn’t for that.  They got some sort of prize or something for having all the things stamped.  So all in all, I’d say everything went well and Radio Amateurs were well represented at the Expo.