hi dear readers.

A couple of weeks ago I visited Friederichshafen. As last year I had the opportunity to join Ruddy, ON7DR for a 500 mile drive direction south.
This year we had an old fashioned hot edition and we enjoyed temperatures of 30+ degrees.
Was it worth it? Well if you drive down there just to see the beautiful eyes of optibeams Diana, no it's not. But for all other reasons it is.
There were many commercial stands and I had the impression there were more visitors then last year. You could find some good deals as well,
the german W**O was my favorite dealer this year. Last year I hesitated to buy the FT2000 @ the hamfest. A couple of months ago I decided to buy one in Frederichshafen, but couple of days before leaving I found a great second hand FT2K in PA-country. Another 350 mile drive..... I found some good deals for the FT2K accessories like the speaker, CW filter and the keypad.

The fleamarket was as big as last year. Over 2 halls were filled with old radio junk and some interesting parts could be found. Some dealers move from
the main hall to the fleamarket to reduce their costs, so it's worth to check these dealers as well. Like all other fleamarkets also Friederichshafen has
stands that have nothing to do with hamradio nor electronics, but I consider them as a moment to relax my eyes and attention.
Friederichshafen is just more dan hardware, there were several interesting meetings. I joined the 3B7C presention, IOTA conference and the DX'ers meeting.
For me, the 2008 edition was well worth the money & time. A thing I would like to see more in the future is the distribution of QSL cards of some major
DXpeditions. In previous editions you could easely score some nice QSL cards, this year, only 4U1ITU was offering cards. well done guys.

Enjoy my windows XP Bodensee picture  hihi