A Very Good Hamvention

I had a very good Hamvention.

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Here is a short explanation for newcomers to this blog so that my Hamvention stories make more sense.

I am well known in ham radio having written over 1,200 articles for various ham radio publications as well as having authored a half dozen books on the subject. The caveat is that my notoriety was accomplished as a male, so my male name and ham radio call sign are recognized by people who have been in ham radio for awhile. However, I have been attending Hamvention and other ham radio conferences as a female for the past nine years.

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Thursday evening, I attended my ham radio group's board of directors' meeting. Normally, we hold it in a meeting room at whatever hotel we use for our Hamvention stay. However, one of the board members lives in Dayton and invited us to his home for the meeting, so that is where we met this year.

I had met our host's wife numerous times when I attended Hamvention as a male and we got along swimmingly, but I had not seen her since I began attending as a female. I thought she would be OK with it, but you never know.

Her reaction when she saw me was better than OK. First, she complimented me profusely on my hair, then she gave me a big hug and complimented me again.

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Friday morning, my group has a forum at Hamvention and I spoke briefly to encourage folks to contribute to my group's quarterly publication which I edit. (That's me at the lectern in the first photo).

After the forum, a fellow came over to talk to me. He is a member of our organization and I have probably seen him at every Hamvention I have attended during the past 10 to 15 years.

The gent asked me, "How are you related to Stan Horzepa?"

I sure did not see that coming!

It took a little convincing before he realized what was what. He seemed to be OK with it because he was very pleasant when I ran into him again during the weekend.

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Similarly, while I was staffing our booth at the convention on Saturday, a stranger comes up to me, looked at my old pre-Stana call sign badge and said, "You're not Stan Horzepa."

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On the other hand, a lot of people are now accustomed to me as Stana nee Stan. Countless people came to our booth and spoke with me while addressing me as "Stana."

Saturday evening, I attended the Hamvention Awards Dinner. This is the same dinner I attended two years ago when I received the Hamvention Special Achievement Award. Past award winners are often invited back and that is why I was in attendance. The second photo shows me dressed to kill for the dinner. I received a handful of compliments from the women in attendance (they loved my retro dress).

There were approximately 70 attendees and besides the award winners, the other attendees were the makers and shakers of ham radio and their spouses — a very prestigious group. Everyone I encountered addressed me as "Stana" and proudly introduced me to their spouses.

They treated me as a woman and I never felt more accepted.

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Yanny

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A half dozen Femulate readers (you know who you are) showed up at the booth to say, "Hello." I have met all but one at past Hamventions.

One, Jenna, brought a copy of one of my books that she had in her library and I was happy to personally autograph it for her.

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I guess I make a lasting impression.

Friday evening, my group co-hosts a banquet with another group and we have been using the same banquet facilities for over ten years. The meal is a buffet and like many buffets, the food line ends with a meat table where a server wields a carving knife to provide you with a slice of prime rib, turkey, ham, etc.

As I approached the meat table, the woman staffing the table greeted me and said she always looks forward to our banquet to see what kind of "wild outfit" I will be wearing. She admitted that the polka dot jumper I was wearing Friday night was not so wild, but she was happy to see me nonetheless.

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Why was it "a very good Hamvention?"

The food was very good. The breakfasts at the hotel were very good (and I was constantly ma'am'd by the hotel staff) and the dinners were over the top.

The 725-mile roadtrip was a good one. Although I absolutely hate the drive, traffic was light, there were no highway construction delays and I encountered only one traffic delay (due to a minor accident).

The weather was lousy. It rained every day, but most of the activities I participated in are indoors, so it did not rain on my parade.

I managed to find everything on my shopping list. (I am transitioning from soldered to crimp-on coax connectors, so I was able to buy the crimp-on tools and connectors at bargain "Hamvention" prices.)

It was great to see my radio friends and acquaintances again and to meet new friends as well.

Friends and strangers treated me as a woman. I guess I will always be amazed at such treatment. I  am very aware that there is the body of a 6-foot-2, 200 pound guy under all the female finery, yet the civilians buy into my female persona. Amazing!

The only negative was that I got a call from home that something was wrong with my dog. So instead of returning to Hamvention on Sunday, I started driving home to see what was wrong. When I arrived home, my 16-year-old blind pup came to life when she heard my voice and we had an emotional reunion (my face is still wet). She seemed fine and my guess is that she was just depressed because I was gone for so long. (I missed her, too.)

And so it goes.

Wearing Zimmermann

Arianda Sodi, professional femulator

Good Hair Day

Wednesday, left home without girl clothes on. I usually don't dress driving the first leg of my Hamvention roadtrip so I can get on the road as early as possible and beat the commuters in the tri-state area.

Femulating for the trip would get me on the road about 90 minutes later. Yes, I could get up 90 minutes earlier, but at my age, I need 7 to 8 hours of sleep. Yes, I could go to bed 90 minutes earlier but that never works because I just lay awake for 90 minutes and fall asleep at my normal time. And so it goes.

Anyway, I femulated Thursday morning after waking up in a hotel on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

I packed three wigs for the long weekend: the blond wig from Noriko called "Sky" that I have been wearing almost every time I femulated in the past year, the same wig in a different color called Kahlua-Blast (a medium brown base with honey blonde highlights in the front) that I wore once and a new blond wig from Raquel Welch called "Salsa."

Thursday morning, I femulated with Salsa. The accompanying photo shows how I looked wearing a Dress Barn frock, Avon scarf, Payless pumps, gold jewelry and an array of unmentionables.

By the time I arrived at the my destination in Dayton, Ohio, five hours later, I decided that Salsa was not me. It was just too country music fangirlish for me, so I switched to the Kahlua-Blast wig and fell in love with the way it looked. It reminded me of Janet Leigh's hair in the film Bye Bye Birdie, which is a look that I always liked.

Besides liking how the wig looked, I discovered something obvious: your earrings are more visible. I lost count how many times I thought, "Why bother wearing gold or silver earrings when they get lost in the blondness of my wig?" Now,my pretty gold and silver earrings are very noticeable in contrast to a dark wig.

I wore the Kahlua-Blast wig the rest of the long weekend and it was a big success.

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I had very little time to get on the Internet last week and the e-mail piled up in my in-box. I promise to answer it all in the next few days.

Wearing Ann Taylor (Source: Ann Taylor)

Kacper Kuszewski femulates Maria Callas on Polish television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Transform those Monday blues

I am driving home from Hamvention today; I should be home in the early afternoon.

I created today's post last Tuesday after I discovered a neat on-line app that girls like us can appreciate and enjoy. And I thought posting it today would be a good way to brighten the Monday blues.

Powered by FaceApp, this online app puts "Your Face on a Glamorous Magazine Cover In Seconds!"

But it does more than that! First, it performs a facial and removes all the lines and wrinkles you may have collected over the years. Then it gives you a glam makeover suitable for appearing on the cover of a glam magazine.

The app is simple to use. You simply point the app to a photo saved on your computer, tablet or smart phone and the app performs the transformation in about 15 seconds.

Sometimes the results are too blurry. (I performed ten transformations and discarded three as too blurry.)

One of my best transformations is the one you see at the top of this post. Yeah, "Wow!"

Enjoy!

Wearing Moda Operandi (Source: Moda Operandi)

Sunday

Stana is on the road.

Wearing Madeleine (Source: Madeleine)

James Beaman on stage in La Cage Aux Folles (2007).

Saturday

Stana is at Hamvention.

Wearing Eloquii (Source: Eloquii)

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo with Shirley MacLaine on television's Where Do We Go From Here (1977)

Friday

Stana is away.

Ellery top, Rag & Bone skirt, Jimmy Choo booties and Alexander Wang bag (Source: Intermix)

Crossdressers at the 1921 International Congress for Sex Reform on the Basis of Sexology, Berlin.

Thursday

Stana is on the road.

Wearing Alice + Olivia (Source: ShopBop)

Jack Doroshow in the 1968 documentary The Queen.

Wednesday

Stana is on the road.

Wearing Alexander Wang (Source: ShopBop)

Rory O'Neill (center) in the 2015 Irish documentary The Queen of Ireland.

See You in Xenia

My Internet presence will be sporadic from now until Monday as I will be traveling to and from the Dayton, Ohio area to attend the annual ham radio convention, Hamvention.

I will try to post when I can, but my dance card is usually so full during Hamvention that I have very little time to get on the net.

If you are attending Hamvention, I will be staffing TAPR's booths in Building 5 of the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia, Ohio. Maybe we can have an eyeball QSO!

Anyways, I am cutting this post short because I have to finish packing.

And so it goes.

Wearing Yumi Kim (Source: Rent the Runway)

Hari Nef on Internet television's Transparent (2016).

My Turn

Last week, I asked for your suggestions about how to improve the blog. In response, I received 14 comments and one e-mail. Following is a summary of what you wrote.

Seven readers were happy with the blog as is.

Two readers would like too see more guest posts.

Actually, I encourage everyone to post here. I do reserve the right to reject a guest post, but I seldom have in the past. In fact, I cannot recall ever rejecting a guest post.

One reader suggested that I provide the links for the sources of femulator photos.

Good suggestion and I do provide the links when I can, but I usually can't because I don't remember the sources.

If you need to find a source for a photo, upload a copy of the photo to Google Images, which is very good at locating sources.

That same reader suggested that I "stop mocking women who are not as pretty as you."

First, thank you for saying that I am "pretty." 

Second, I apologize for the mocking, but I cannot recall ever mocking anyone.

Two readers suggested that I avoid politics, while four readers were ok with my expressing political opinions and two readers were ok with my expressing opinions, in general.

I have been writing this blog for over 11 years and during that time, I usually avoid politics. Besides promoting the election of the greatest president in recent times, I only get political when a politician tries to turn his/her transphobic views into law.    

The current occupant of the White House is conducting a "War on Transgenders" that has the potential of negatively affecting my freedom, as well as the freedom of most of the readers of this blog. 

If you don't mind losing the freedom to live life as your true gender, then click the Next Blog button at the top of this page. But I do mind and I will continue to express my views on the matter until that despicable human residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue resigns.

Wearing ModCloth (Source: ModCloth)

It's true: Youth is wasted on the young!

Someday Funnies

A single father celebrates Mother's Day.

Wearing Stuart Weitzman shoes (Source: Elle)

Ronnie Barker femulates on the British television comedy series The Two Ronnies (1972).