HamFest and Organ Stop Pizza

Saturday, one of the local ham (amateur radio) groups was having a HamFest (people selling ham radio and other items that they no longer want or need) at Organ Stop Pizza. We decided to check it out and join them for lunch at Organ Stop after the sale.

Carl found a few things that he thought would be useful - an LED fluorescent light for the shed on our lot, and some LED bulbs (yes, I know, these are *not* ham radio items).

Some of the folks selling gear...

Some more gear for sale...

And even more!

This was the seller that Carl bought his items from - they had a lot of new (not previously-used) items. They used to have a retail store, but now they are just selling out of their home and at events like this one.

The club hosting the event was Superstition Amateur Radio Club (the Superstition Mountains are near here).

Anybody need some vacuum tubes?

They also had these black round flat disk things that were going around-and-around on some spinning thing and sending music out of speakers -- I think I heard that they were predecessors to music CDs... 😉

We headed in to Organ Stop Pizza for lunch and a show.

They have the largest Wurlizer pipe organ in the world. While you are eating, you are literally *inside* the pipe organ, with various parts of the instrument all over the building, on the ceiling, in cubbies on the side walls. Each component lights up when it is being played.

https://organstoppizza.com/the-pipe-organ/history/

The organist gave a great concert, primarily of Christmas music, and took a break near the middle to tell us about the organ and demonstrate the different parts of the instrument. We sat in the balcony right at the railing and had a great view to see the console and all the different parts - especially the trumpets which were mounted right behind us!

In case you'd like to hear some more about this along with some of a concert, there are several offerings on YouTube - here is one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ3w7tdh5to

We are planning to go to Organ Stop with another amateur radio group for their Christmas party in a week or so, and will probably make other visits there through our time here in Mesa.