OARC Carp Hamfest on September 6th was the largest in the 28-year history of the event! It remains the region’s largest Amateur Radio flea market and trade show, featuring most of the big ham radio retailers, fellow hams selling radio goodies at unbelievable prices, and major door prizes. This is the OARC’s annual flagship event!

** This report is a work in progress. Check back to see additional details and photos as we add to this post in the coming days **

Huge crowds and great door prizes

More that 500 people came out to OARC Carp Hamfest this year. That’s the second hightest in the 28-year history of the event. We had more great door prizes than ever, all donated by the all our 2025 commercial vendors:

And some door prizes from a couple of vendors that could not attend (but still love us!):

Exhibitors and organizations include: Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC), Amateur Radio Emergency Service^® (ARES^®), West Carleton Disaster Relief, Diefenbunker, Quarter Century Wireless Association (QCWA), several regional Amateur Radio clubs, and more.

Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) Annual General Meeting (AGM)

This year, RAC held its AGM in the sports-club diner upstairs at the Hamfest arena. The meeting was attended by the members of the RAC Board of Directors and Executive and was open to all RAC members. The AGM will also be available online by YouTube livestream.

Winlink demonstration

This year’s Hamfest featured a demonstration of Winlink, with a functioning Winlink 2m/70cm Gateway, Typical ‘shelter’ station set-up with HF, 2m and 70 cm capabilities, APRS display, and local AREDN network. We’re very grateful to Ian Snow VA3QT (Team Lead) and Marcel Eschenmoser VE3UKW, both from the Emergency Management Simcoe County – Auxiliary Communications Team, for setting this up.

Amateur Radio exams written on-site

Nine (9) people came out to write their exams on site at Carp Hamfest. That is a slightly smaller number than other years, likely because several students were motivated to write the exam before the mid-July changes to the question bank. Results were as follows: Passed: 2 Basic with Honours, 2 Basic, 1 Morse Code; and Failed: 3 Basic, 1 Advanced.

As always we couldn’t have done it without our volunteers!

Ed, VE3WGO, has been delivering Carp Hamfest since 2007 and we’re all so grateful to Ed for his organizational skills and boundless energy. We are also fortunate to have a small army of volunteers to help make Hamfest to run smoothly. Every year, we depend on volunteers for all these roles:

venue set-up (afternoon of the day before)
road sign set-up and take-down
parking lot and tailgate relations
vendor registration
front-door ticket seller
inside vendor relations
photographer
talk-in (on-air notice on local repeaters)
announcer
OARC membership and extras table
venue tear down and clean up

OARC Carp Hamfest 2025 – Photo Gallery (click to enlarge)

** Photo captions are very much a work in progress. We have only added a few captions so far and some may be incorrect. Please Contact us with any corrections/additions/deletions. **