Well, Glen and I appear to have had a good time, so now I get to tell you what the rest of you missed.
Parking was easy, after a ten minute drive from the autobahn I drove straight into an available parking spot that was a couple of minutes from the entrance.In Germany organization is everything so when I arrived at the front gates of the exhibition center at 08:50 I saw about a hundred and fifty people, by 09:10 we were all through the gates.
The Kassel event is probably small by US standards but it still took me a good couple of hours to go around the hall. Half of the space was occupied by commercial vendors and the DARC and the other half was a well stocked flea market. This year it was crowded and at times there were two or three people in front before you could reach a stall. Maybe next year it will be time to have the flea market in one hall and the commercial entities in another?
After a quick break for Leberkäse on a crusty fresh bread roll I went outside to have a look around some of the mobile ham radio stations that had been set up, there were some good ideas but this part of the exhibition could have been a lot bigger. I then visited the calibration center where visiting hams were getting their transceivers and other equipment checked out.
I then had another trip around the flea market before heading home. Did I have fun? Hell yeah! Funk Tag is a nice small family friendly event that even puts on activities for the kids. Did I get everything on my shopping list? No, but I did find most of it and also came back with some fascinating pieces that could come in useful, someday. An accountant would look at my bag of bits then do a cost/benefit check against my 50 Euro fuel bill and the 8 Euro admission but I don't care because I had an enjoyable day.
Peter DL8OV
P.S. Thanks to to whoever noticed that I had left my headlights on then got a message broadcast over the PA system.