No more paper Hamvention tickets.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026 at 07:20:38
The Dayton Hamvention has decided to do away with paper tickets this year.
I understand that this is just progression, and stopping use of a delivery system that can’t get a parcel to the state next door without accidentally routing it 1000 miles away (yes that’s happened to me recently…twice!) is probably a good thing…
Still.
No more stashing my ticket in a device I bought and repaired, only to find it years later. The paper ticket was the annual introduction to summer for some of us, and a QR code on your phone just doesn’t have the same effect. I guess if there’s anyone that should understand that things have passed us old-timers by, it’s me. Someone whose bench is mostly vacuum equipment.
There’s also the question of how QR code scanning will work. When people enter the show at opening, it’s a long, long line. We hold up our ticket, the people at the gate make sure you have it out, and we move on. Each of these codes will require that the holder stop, allow the code to be scanned (and hopefully your phone isn’t reflecting the scan away,) and then you can enter. This takes a lot longer than just flashing a ticket. I guess we’ll see how bad this turns out - hopefully we won’t have a repeat of the first year at Xenia where traffic was just a mess…
You can order a ticket online at any time, even while standing in line for the show. They’re using some system called fairs dot com, which desperately wants you to allow it to send “updates” (read: advertising garbage) via text. You don’t need to check those boxes when you order, FYI. As always, you can get a ticket here: https://hamvention.org/purchase-tickets/
Goodbye paper ticket. We hardly knew ye.
