I’m sure most of you have heard the news about the end of the WARC Mid-Winter Swapfest. Here’s the information from https://warac.org/swap/index.htm:
The West Allis Radio Amateur Club is, unfortunately, cancelling the Mid-Winter Swapfest event. The 2021 Swapfest cancellation was due to the COVID. Beginning for year 2022, club-related issues force us to abandon the Swapfest despite our best efforts.
We understand the planning and effort that our sellers put forth to in order to attend the swapfests and provide interesting and useful goods to sell or swap. We thank all of our sellers and attendees for 48 successful Mid-Winter Swapfests.
We have no specific plans to get back into the swapfest business; however, as we all know, never say never. The Mid-Winter Swapfest has been a remarkable success throughout the years, and we have enjoyed being part of that success and we value the relationships which naturally spun off of the event. We will miss the excitement and action.
I, for one, will miss the event, as it was fun to see the Waukesha County Expo building filled with hams.. and all of those cool finds! Besides being a great way to support club operations, WARAC succeeded in providing us with nearly 50 years of good reasons to crawl out of the snowdrifts and head back home with new stuff to make our ham shacks more complete and our communication skills more effective. Plus, besides just helping us move equipment around, they created a cultural event to help us connect as hams. For all of those who helped make that possible, thank you from all of us!
Still, the loss of this Swapfest has left a gap in my winter, and empty space by my workbench. For those of you like me, left with that same gap, let me suggest the Tri-County HAMFEST 2022 as an excellent alternate. The Tri-County Fest, held at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, is smaller than the WARAC fest, holding as many as 110 tables, but still provides that great blend of new and used equipment, general electronics, and general Ham Radio fun! Best of all. it’s only about 35 miles west on I-94 from the old Mid-Winter Swapfest location. making it a short trip from both the Milwaukee and Madison areas.
Join us!
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