Wow, its getting hard to predict the turn out for these events, one would think that a smaller market would have a smaller turnout; Not true, over 1500 people showed up and descended like a plague of locusts cleaning us out out hats , shirts, literature and of course antennas.
To further complicate matters the antennas for the give away we had shipped ahead to the event site were mistakenly refused and sent back to the St. Louis where house (thanks, Farmers coop). Luckily we keep about 100+ antennas in the hold of the bus as a back up, so we had enough to last a little of two hours, but it would have been nice to have the rest. We ended up doing the event in the back of the studios of KFSM. Local Ft. Smith police were even on hand to provide crowd control.
KFSM has its transmitter about 30 miles north of Ft. Smith, and it has the challenge of trying to cover a market nearly 100 miles wide including the cities of Fayetteville and Bentonville in Northwest Arkansas. The even maintain 2 separate studios in both ends of the market. In such a dispersed area we are seeing people being successful with the C2 and C4 long range antennas.
I think it’s the rural residents in these smaller markets that gets turn outs like this!