Oops.
At least it was only 8 miles and not 80.
Its like arriving on a summit without your coaxā¦
Iām hoping to be there tomorrow, mainly to see if the venue lives up to the hype 
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Weāre hereā¦
Come and say hello!
Thanks to Andy @MM0FMF and Colin M0BUU for helping prepare and run the stand.
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Nice to meet you all today. Good to see so many people interested in SOTA (or was it Colinās collection of lovely rigs 
)
Hope you all got home ok.
I managed to bump into @2E0BIA and his wife on Lambrigg fell on the way home. Nice surprise.
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Nice to meet various people at the rally. I can confirm that rallies are far more fun as a punter than as a trader. The hall looked okay too - and the lighting was good (although to be fair some of the folks that I met would have looked better in poorer lighting).
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Faces for radio Richard? Though having said that, I donāt particularly like listening to my own voice in recordings either. (Cue opening for someone to say āuse morseā). 
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Use FT4/FT8
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It was very strange to see Richard the wrong side of the table! Nice to meet people after a long break. I didnāt notice any real change in Norbreck physically. Rough is still a good description for the place.
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Nice to have a chat. It was very pleasant to be a punter: setting off at 9am instead of 6am, two pints at the rally, having time to chat to people, then leaving at lunchtime for walk in the sun along the promenade to see the comedy carpet and then to lower the tone further by having drinks in 'spoons. That and someone else doing the driving made me see the enjoyable side of rallies.
https://www.visitblackpool.com/detail/comedy-carpet-blackpool-651130/
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Carpets slightly less sticky.
Floors much less littered.
Hotel staff just as unmotivated and unhelpful as ever.
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You should have been in the pub in Preston on Saturday evening near my hotel. Looked OK outside, food and beer was fine, but it was a āSports pubā and they had many big tellies showing the boxing match. Full of lots of young people who were the worse for drink by 900pm and a few fogeys like me. Sure an incredible number of very pretty scantily clad young ladies which was nice 
Plenty of young blokes in the gents doing lines of coke which wasnāt nice 
I think I am getting very old.
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Yes, I am familiar with the sort of venue you describe - I see those aspects often on my gigs, sadly.
Iām a big heavyweight boxing fan and love the big world title fight occasions. Itās the one and only thing Iāll put my hand in my pocket for and āpay-per-viewā. Normally I go round my friendās house and we share the costs of the PPV and the supper/beer, but Marianne has become a Tyson Fury fan too, so we ordered it in on the home telly. I made a Caribbean themed buffet, Jimmy took delivery from a local micro-brewery, and we watched in the comfort of our own lounge. Sounded like our big fight experience was preferable to yours Andy!
I thoroughly enjoyed the rally on Sunday. Unlike Richard, I was on the exhibitor side of the table, but had some great chats with vistors to the stand. This was a good variety - long-time SOTA friends/seasoned activators, people thinking about trying SOTA for the first time, people who dabble occasionally, people who wanted to understand the rules - but best of all, lots of people who have become licensed and/or started SOTA since the last rally in 2019. Most of them Iād become familiar with on the air, but actually met for the first time yesterday - that was very pleasant.
Best of all, may I say, was spending all day with two people who have become extremely good friends of mine over the last two decades - Colin and Andy - thanks fellas.
I took the long route home via a summit. I would normally do Billinge Hill G/SP-017 - but I couldnāt use GB20SOTA from there - so it had to be The Cloud G/SP-015. DX Heat Map indicated life up on 10m and 12m, so I took my homemade 10-12 GP antenna up with me. First CQ call and back came ZD7! Followed by a couple of PYs plus 5B4 and TA. Lovely stuff.
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The member of Norbreck Castle staff I interacted with was very helpful.
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What traders, very noticeable by their absence this year maybe its already happened!
If trader attendance doesnāt pick up it will need to be smaller, lots of empty table this year and no major traders to be found. Surely there must be somewhere better than Norbreck. It seems attendance was doen put things like parking was still a nightmare.
Iāve never found parking an issue. Iāve never had more than 5 mins walk to the door.
IMHO I thought visitor attendance was fine for the 1st time since 2019 with COVID etc. and Ā£1.71/l for diesel. Iām sure there were people afraid to attend for health reasons and people who couldnāt afford to attend ( in my case Ā£73 for fuel, Ā£50 for room, Ā£30 for food and coffee, Ā£153 all in). I thought it was worth it because I got to chat to Colin M1BUU and Tom M1EYP on the stand, I met Alex G7KSE for the 1st time (heās been press-ganged into uWave operation) and many other people.
Yes more traders needed but youāll find that they have found they can sell fine online such that rallies are not cost-effective.
If you know somewhere then suggest it to the NARSA committee. AFAIK Norbreck is considered to give the best bang per buck. Donāt forget quite a few people travel and stay (such as GM and GI vsitors) so having a town with plenty of accommodation is good.
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I know that I was with you on the stand, but my own opinion, formed entirely by myself aligns neatly with yours.
It was great go meet Alex G7KSE in person, itās usually Twitter that connects us.
I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of visitors, not bad at all considering the factors involved. I honestly thought the rally had a nicer feel with more space and less people.
I had a really good day it was nice to catch up with people that I hadnāt seen in a while.
The place is still a dump though, the toilets were especially depressing. I can see that it would take quite a lot of investment to make the building come up to a reasonable standard and it would probably be difficult to get a return.
Regarding numbers etc., this is from an email from the organising committee.
āWe took just over Ā£4k on the pay doors so my preliminary estimate is that we had 807 visitors. Thatās a bit down on 2019 when we sold 1027 but, from the feedback I received, everyone was really happy that we were back after the pandemic.ā
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Just my 2Hz worthā¦
- First rally Iāve been to (only been licenced 12 months)
- The exhibition hall seemed pretty decent and ideal for the event, maybe the comments on here lowered my expectations somewhat
- The staff on reception were helpful, the barman was pleasant but seemed pretty fed up with life
- Was much busier than I was expecting
- Plenty of space in the car park when I arrived although it was a bit tight getting to the empty spaces around all the coaches picking up hotel guests
- Couldāve done with a food place in the exhibition, even if it was just cakes/flapjacks (maybe the hotel donāt allow that)
I enjoyed meeting Tom and speaking to Richard, nice to put faces to voices/callsigns. Turns out there were quite a few of the regular/reliable SOTA chasers on some of the stands but I didnāt realise and didnāt say hello to any of them 
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