In two weeks, more than 20,000 hams are expected to converge on Dayton, Ohio, for the annual Dayton Hamvention®, the biggest ham radio confab of the year and host of the biggest ARRL confab of the year -- the 2009 ARRL National Convention.

That potent combination is hard to resist, so I will be making the trek to Dayton, but older and wiser (especially older), I am going west in two hops instead of my traditional one hop. Instead of driving 11 to 12 hours straight from Downtown Wolcott to Downtown Dayton, I will get half the trip under my belt Wednesday afternoon, then finish the remainder of the trip on Thursday.

The goal is to allow me to be more alert so I won't lose my way through Akron and be less exhausted Friday morning on the convention floor, where I will moderate the APRS Forum. The rest of the weekend will find me here or there at the Hamvention with my home base being the TAPR booth.

If you cannot go to the Hamvention in person, the Internet is the ticket to virtual attendance. For starters, you can view past Hamventions on the various photo and video hosting Web sites like Flickr, where a search on "hamvention" returns 1462 photos, or YouTube where a similar search reveals 807 videos.

Then there is Tom Medlin, W5KUB, and his crew, who will again be broadcasting live video and audio from Dayton at Tom's Web site. They begin their live show Wednesday morning as they leave Memphis for the drive to Dayton. They will continue broadcasting throughout the weekend from various locations at the convention, with the flea market being their home base.

Less exciting, but live nonetheless, you can watch my progress cross-country/3 as my mobile APRS station (WA1LOU-8) spits out packets every mile or so.

Anyway, I hope to see you and say "hi" in O-Hi-o!

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: To communicate with Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, save a tree and send him e-mail instead or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.

Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor