The Hara is a deplorable, decrepit, dump (the three D's), but the fact is, DARA runs Hamvention, and no one else.

Aside from the late morning shower, the weather was pretty good. My group had dinner Thursday night with a number of VHF/UHF "luminaries". Then we tailgated and shopped Friday and Saturday, selling a bunch of near new gear.  The shoppers were out and had cash.  I guess my best purchase was  a spool end of brand new 150' of half inch Andrew Heliax for $110.00.  That's seventy-three cents a foot!  Later found four LDF4-50 solderless Heliax connectors for seven bucks each.  Fantastic buys!  There were a large number of great looking Drake L4C's that was thinking of procuring.  But in the end, I felt the dream of ownership might be better than actually having one sitting on my desk.  In the end, my largest purchase was made in my hotel room Saturday night when I pulled the trigger on an Apache Labs ANAN-100 SDR. 

So in the end, the weather was pretty good, and I never actually broke out the rain gear.

Sunscreen?...Nah, I won't need sunscreen. Yeah, right!  Turned out warm and nice umtil after 6PM.

Alinco reports their DX-SR9T will beready the ship in a couple of months.  This looks drastically different than what they were showing last year, and it appears to have become a hybrid oof sorts. Here's it's cut sheet
http://m9.photobucket.com/albumview/albums/TwoSevenRight/IMG_20130517_210058_663_zpsb8adcdc9.jpg.html?o=1&newest=1

Here's cut sheet for the Zeus
http://m9.photobucket.com/albumview/albums/TwoSevenRight/IMG_20130517_210014_921_zpse7737c97.jpg.html?newest=1

SSB Electronics has released their Zeus ZX-1 SDR.  4 MHz. wide spectrum display, USB to PC connection. $1600.00 .  The German rep told me the software was written in Russia.  Very clean little box. Available for immediate shipment.

Apache Labs appears to be a no show!  Too bad as I have a pocket full US $$$ too!

Given only one chance (not sure why), I'd choose either Andrew LDF4-50A or FSJ4-50B depending on the number of bends you encounter.

Last year Alinco was displaying their future SDR transceiver at Hamvention, but there wasn't many details on it other than it's projected price which was expected to be in the range of $800 US.  I'll be curious to see if that project has progressed at all.

Consider this, Dan.  By your description, you have a fairly extensive radial field.  A big radial field can cause a feedpoint impedance as low as 35-37 ohms.  So you have a 50 ohm tramsmission line connected to a 37 ohm amtenna; a built in mismatch that no lengthening or shortening will fix.  This is where a transformer may help.  As an experiment, try disconnecting the antenna from the radial field and use only your lightning ground rod as your return path.  Your feedpoint impedance should now be 50 ohms or a bit higher due to ground loss and you should now see a better match across the bands.  Unfortunately, you now have a very ineffecient radiator.

You didn't mention what you were using to establish a VSWR reading, but I feel that the onboard rig meters put you in the ballpark at best.  An antenna analyzer or forward and reflected power readings from a Bird will give you accurate readings.

Wondering if Apache is bringing any merchandise to Dayton to sell.  I kind of doubt it though.  I've got a brand new i5 idling on my shack desk just waiting to be plugged into either an ANAN-10 or ANAN-100.  It'll be interesting to see their display and be able to do a fair comparison with Flex.

Directive Systems, K1FO yagis? They also carry stacking frames, power dividers and harnesses.

1) I use a 2" wide piece of copper ribbon to connect the stud on the coil to the DX Engineering radial plate. I trim it to fit it in the space on the coil body, and connect it to several screws on the radial plate.

2) If you use an UnUn, do not place it near the coil.  My first attempt with the SteppIR UnUn, I RTV'd it to the coil housing.  Really bad results!

3) if you have an extensive radial field, try an antenna analyzer and measure the feedpoint impedance.  Mine was sufficiently low that I needed a 1.56:1 transformer at the feedpoint.

James, my friend and I are each burning in i5 PC's in preparation of owning either the ANAN-10 or the -100.  We are going to take a look at them at Dayton next month.  But I can't seem to find band by band TX IMD specs for either unit. Do you or anyone have test data that would cover this?  Poor IMD figures are what turned me away from the Flex-1500, and we're hoping that the Apache units turn in better figures.

Hope you have a great time, Dale.  If we can answer any questions for you, don't hesitate to ask.