Hamvention® names 2009 Award winners

DAYTON, OH - The Dayton Amateur Radio Association (DARA) will honor three amateur radio (ham) operators who have made significant contributions to the Amateur Radio Service, during Hamvention® 2009 which opens in Hara Arena on May 15.

Recipients of this year's Hamvention® awards are Amateur of the Year Wade D. 'Danny' Hampton Jr., K4ITL, whose efforts helped create an extensive emergency radio network for North Carolina; Special Achievement winner Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, who introduced ham radio to thousands of students from the International Space Station (ISS); and Technical Excellence recipient Copthorne 'Cop' Macdonald, VY2CM, a SSTV pioneer, ham radio author, and renewable energy advocate

Frank Beafore, WS8B, Hamvention® Awards Chairman said the committee had a tough task selecting the winners from the number of worthy nominees. "We believe each winner has made a significant contribution to the ham radio community. We were again impressed with the quality of the nominations."

Hamvention® Chairman Carl Rose, K8CPR, praised the winners, saying: On behalf of the Dayton Amateur Radio Association and Hamvention® 2009 it is my pleasure to congratulate this years Award Winners. Their outstanding contributions and the many years of service exemplify what the amateur radio service is."

Amateur of the Year Wade D. 'Danny Hampton Jr., K4ITL, of Raleigh, North Carolina, is the architect of the Piedmont Coastal Repeater Network, established in the early 1970s, which today sports more than 40 machines in North Carolina. The system is heavily used for public service work. Hampton has enhanced the network's utility with custom audio processing boards and RF components. The North Carolina Office of Emergency Management and SKYWARN have recognized the network's vital role in emergency communication. Recently, Hampton helped coordinate the development of a local hospital-based Amateur Radio emergency repeater system that ties 10 facilities together.

A ham since 1958, Hampton is Southeastern Repeater Association (SERA) technical committee chairman as well as ARRL North Carolina Section Technical Coordinator. "Danny's extensive knowledge of the two-way and broadcast radio industries in this state has enabled him to assist many repeater owners," said North Carolina SM John Covington, W4CC. "His advice in resolving RFI problems between repeater and commercial services, and other technical matters, has been extremely valuable to the Section."

The Hamvention 2009 Special Achievement Award winner Richard Garriott, W5KWQ, is a legendary video game programmer/designer and ham radio operator who was the sixth private citizen to fly to the International Space Station (ISS).

Like his father, Owen Garriott, W5LFL, who made history as the first ham to communicate from space with radio amateurs during the STS-9 Space Shuttle mission, Richard was a ham radio pathfinder in his own right through on-orbit experimentation, implementation of new capabilities, extensive operations using many diverse operations modes, and phenomenal educational outreach initiatives that inspired and transformed the lives of tens of thousands students, worldwide.

Garriott was the most prolific ham radio operator to fly on a short duration (<15 day) mission. His 10 day stay on the ISS represented an unsurpassed opportunity for hams and students worldwide. Over 500 2-way voice QSOs were conducted, over a thousand SSTV images were down linked, and tens of hours of packet operations were performed. He communicated with tens of thousands of students in seven different Challenger Learning Centers in the U.S., the Austin Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy in Austin, Texas, the Pinehurst School in Ashland, Oregon, the Budbrooke School in the U.K., and the National Space Challenge in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Garriott also had numerous random chats with scouts world-wide as part of the amateur radio Jamboree on the Air (JOTA).

In an effort to kick-start the SSTV operations mode on ISS, Richard received a specially modified Kenwood VC-H1 from the ARISS team which was left on-board the ISS.
This exciting, new capability will significantly enhance the stature of ARISS educational outreach. He performed numerous SSTV experiments, and helped the ARISS team test and debug several ham radio systems on ISS, including the software-based SSTV systems---SpaceCam and MMSSTV. In his short stay on ISS, he performed 10 times more SSTV downlinks than any other crew member on the Shuttle, Mir or ISS. .

The Hamvention award for Technical Excellence winner Copthorne 'Cop' Macdonald, VY2CM, who got his first ham license at 15, and while an engineering student at the University of Kentucky designed and built the first ham radio SSTV system. The paper he wrote describing the system won national first prize in the 1958 AIEE student paper competition. He worked with other SSTV pioneers to get the FCC to authorize SSTV operation in the HF ham bands an effort that succeeded in 1968.

Cop wrote many articles on SSTV for QST and CQ, and in 1973 started New Directions Radio a network of hams concerned with using ham radio and SSTV "to help create a more aware, more caring, and more responsible human society." Associated with this activity were his two magazine columns: "Cop's Column" in CQ and the "New Directions Radio" column in The Mother Earth News.

Cop moved to Prince Edward Island Canada in 1975. In the early 1980s he ran an energy conservation program there, and in the 1980s and '90s did much writing for the PEI and Canadian governments on energy conservation and renewable energy. At some point he realized that what we needed as individuals and a world society is that more insightful, more caring, more prudent way of being called wisdom. He has since written three books on that subject (Toward Wisdom, Getting a Life, and Matters of Consequence), and in 1995 started The Wisdom Page, a web presence devoted to wisdom resources now located at www.wisdompage.com.

Hamvention, the world's largest amateur radio gathering, brings more than 20,000 people to the greater Dayton area each year. The three-day event includes exhibits, a flea market, forums and education sessions.

For more information about Dayton Hamvention 2009 (scheduled for May 15-17), visit the website at www.hamvention.org or e-mail media@hamvention.org.

Information provided by Henry Ruminski, Media Chair - Hamvention(r) 2009

Source: Amateur Radio Newsline