The Drake Forum

The night before the Convention opens several of the Drake enthusiasts met for dinner. Along with a great meal they talked about their favorite subject, radios, and hopeful flea market finds over the next three days. From left to right, Peter Shilton (VE3AX), Jim Snell (W8DRZ), Mark Gilger (WB0IQK), and Ron Baker (WB4HFN).

Out in the flea market I found a well recognized net control of the Tuesday 3.865Mhz Drake Net, Danny Schrader, WA4SDE, selling lots of Drake equipment and parts.

At the Drake Forum, a two hour even this year, opened with Bill Frost talking about company history, radio production and lots of interesting tidbits of information on the radios.

Later in the forum, pictured above, Sindre Torp, LA6OP, "The Worlds Largest Drake Collector", talked about his radio collection, several "one of a kind" Drake prototypes, and the homebrew test equipment Drake built to test and repair the equipment.

Seated in the back of the forum I found Evan Rolek, K9SQG, taking in all the forum activities. Evan is one of the Net Control Operators for both the 3.865Mhz Drake Swap Net on Tuesday and for the Drake Technical Forum on Sunday.

The Forum Finale, on the left Jeff Covelli, WA8SAJ, tells us about the R7-A Receiver raffle with only 150 tickets to sell and this year was a sell-out event. On the right, Sindre Torp, LA6OP, announces the winner of the Drake R7-A Receiver, and the winner is: ticket #147, Paul Rubin, N8NOV.