Hamvention Friday opened in the midst of dense fog. Fortunately, the fog burned off before noon.

Attendence seemed high for a Friday with indoor exhibits swamped with amateurs soon after the doors opened at 9AM. The ARRL Expo area drew a substantial crowd with popular activities such as the W1AW 75th anniversary exhibit, the Youth Lounge and spectral purity testing courtesy of the ARRL Lab. Of course, lines formed immediately at the DXCC card checking table.

The Hamvention forums also drew considerable crowds. The ARRL Power Line Interference forum was as informative as it was entertaining with ARRL Lab Supervisor Ed Hare, W1RFI, discussing power line noise interference with assistance from ARRL Lab Engineer Mike Gruber, W1MG, and an arcing "Jacob's Ladder."

The standing-room-only attendance at the Advances in Software Defined Radio forum was a testimony to the increasing interest in SDR in the ham community. There were several first-time vendors showing off new SDR transceivers as well.

Speaking of advances in transceiver design, the new Ten-Tec Model 506 "Rebel" QRP transceiver drew a fair amount of interest. The rig is branded as an "open source" transceiver using Arduino compatible software and a Uno32 processor. According to Ten-Tec representatives, the Rebel is designed specifically to appeal to experimenters.

AMSAT-NA had the engineering model of the Fox-1 satellite on display. The satellite is presently scheduled to fly in November 2014.

For more photos, see the ARRL Expo Facebook page.