SEA-PAC 2009

SeaPac, billed as the northwest’s largest ham convention, celebrated its 27th year on June 5, 6 and 7th, 2009. The convention which is held each year in the beautiful Pacific coast community of Seaside, Oregon was attended by over 2200 Amateur Radio operators, families and friends for the 3 day event.

Seaside is a perfect location for a hamfest. The temperatures were in the 70’s with only a little rain and wind on Friday evening. The attendance was up from previous years and the vendor and commercial spaces were sold out. Seaside has added more hotels in the last few years so rooms were quite competitive and plentiful. For families, fully furnished homes are available and quite affordable.

This year in lieu of the traditional Friday workshop, an additional 5 free seminars were added to the schedule including “Everything you wanted to know about bats” which included a field trip to observe bats in their natural habitat. For some, this was a refreshing break from the traditional radio and electronic seminars.

Friday night the Sunset Empire ARC and Seaside Tsunami ARS held at their second annual spaghetti feed for hams and the general public. SeaPac ham attendees received a discount to the all you can eat feed. The sponsors and community provided a nice selection of door prizes to those attending. No one went away hungry. Funds generated went towards repair and upgrade of their emergency communications in Clatsop County.

The Saturday festivities opened at 9am at the convention center to the attendees who were there to see the exhibitors, flea market arena and technical seminars. The flea market and exhibition vendors were quite pleased with the attendance. Exhibitors commented that they preferred SeaPac to other hamfests because of the personal attention given to them. SeaPac provides a crew to help unload and move equipment into the exhibition hall as well as providing an exhibitors hospitality suite for coffee, sandwiches and snacks at no extra charge.

Carl Clawson, WS7L, said that the 9am VE testing was well attended and quite a few CSCE’s were issued for new licenses and upgrades.

Guests included the ARRL CEO, Executive Vice President and Secretary David Sumner, K1ZZ. The ARRL forum included Sumner along with the Northwest Division Director Jim Fenstermaker, K9JF, and William Sawders, K7ZM, Northwest Division Vice Director. David Sumner is also the trustee for the leagues amateur station W1AW. SeaPac set up a special event station W1AW/7 in the lobby to allow new comers to HF to operate. An amateur radio display explained how HF propagation works. New Technician licensees were invited to get the feel of HF and take home a certificate for operating the station.

Throughout Saturday, 14 seminars were presented with topics ranging from Antenna Modeling, D-Star and other Digital modes, DXing, Emergency Preparedness, Equipment Building, 4 Square Antenna Construction, Ham Radio Law, Ideas for teaching Ham Radio Classes, Portable Antennas, Software Designed Radios, Transceiver Design and many other topics of interest. Additional seminars were presented on Sunday morning.

The usual YLRL and DX buffet luncheons were held at noon Saturday in the nearby Best Western Hotel. Each luncheon had a guest speaker with a topic of interest to their group.

Each year a contest for the design of a special commemorative souvenir pin is held. This year’s winner was Bill Balzarini, KL7BB. The pin he designed along with previous years pins are available at the convention.

Saturday evening a no-host happy hour was followed by the annual banquet which was emceed by Everett Curry, W6ABM. Dinner music was provided by Paul VanDyck, K7VWH and his XYL April.

After the dinner hour which featured fresh northwest salmon or barbeque beef, ARRL guest David Sumner presented his remarks about amateur radio.

The Keynote speaker this year was veteran broadcaster Paul Linnman of Portland, Oregon’s KEX radio station. Paul is best known as the reporter who brought the world the “exploding whale” story. Paul also featured stories on KATUs “Spirit of the Northwest” television series. He is also a published author with two books about the whale story and “Oregon Golf”. Linnman presented interesting features and history of his life in the Northwest.

Carl Clawson announced that the 2008 Chuck Mickley Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Morgan Brethower, KD7ZLL. Brethower is a freshman in Physics and Electrical Engineering at Oregon State University. He hopes to do research in optics and solid state electronics and eventually become an astronaut.

Special Prize drawings were held Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning in addition to the usual hourly drawings. The major prize drawings at 1 pm included the remaining prizes donated by area merchants and our exhibitors. Several clubs held drawings for prizes, as well. Two Tri-band HT’s were given during the Saturday banquet raffle. The final prizes on Sunday included early bird prizes to those who registered before the deadline along with other major prizes including an Icom 208H and IC-2820H dual band mobiles, Kenwood TS480SAT HF-6m radio, Yaesu FTM-10R dual band mobile, a Garmin GPS and a 42-inch LCD HDTV.

SeaPac is sponsored by the Oregon Tualatin Valley Amateur Radio Club and co-sponsored by the Clark County, Hoodview and Sunset Empire Amateur Radio clubs.

Next year’s SeaPac convention will be held 4, 5, 6, June 2010.

Wayne Schuler, AI9Q
SeaPac Co-chairman/Secretary
ai9q@arrl.net