Subj : 2023 Hamvention Awards Announced
To   : QST
From : ARRL de WD1CKS
Date : Fri Mar 03 2023 07:45 pm

03/03/2023

The 2023 Hamvention Awards committee, chaired by Michael Kalter, W8CI, has
announced the 2023 Hamvention award winners.

The Special Achievement Award recipient is Dr. Jason McDonald, MD, N2TPA. He is
an active, well-known Amateur Extra-class operator who earned his license in
2003. Dr. McDonald began as a radio frequency engineer before changing careers
to become a trauma surgeon. Dr. McDonald's amateur radio interests range from
operations on the air to international disaster response. His true passion is
working with youths to promote amateur radio.

Dr. McDonald brings amateur radio to the world through youth projects and
Scouting, particularly through Radio Scouting. Empowering youth through
education is the goal of the clubs he has helped form. W1PTG is a testing group
that Dr. McDonald helped create to offer exams in underserved areas and get
more people into the hobby. This team of volunteer examiners graciously donates
its time and money to ensure each licensee in the program receives mentor
support and a radio.

He has been instrumental in promoting international friendship and community
through amateur radio by forming Scouting clubs in Canada (VA7RSI), the
Philippines (W1PTG and DX1MC), and Florida (KQ4GCK). To date, more than 500
youths in these clubs have been licensed and are on the air.

The Amateur Radio Club of the Year is the Delaware Valley Radio Association
(DVRA), an ARRL Affiliated Club formed in 1930 and serving the Trenton, New
Jersey, metropolitan area. The club has tripled in size over the last 6 years
due to the wide range of amateur radio activities and events they offer. An
all-purpose club, the DVRA's activities include public service events, operator
training/mentoring, Scouting events, informational monthly meetings, POTA
events, and the operation of a world-class club station.

The DVRA's center of activity is club station W2ZQ, which operates on a regular
schedule. The station was renovated 6 years ago and currently houses two
complete HF stations, a VHF repeater, an APRS digipeater, and a Winlink VHF-RMS
node. The recent addition of 1296 MHz Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) capability has
been optimized with the assistance of member Joe Taylor, K1JT. Station
activities include an open house, hands-on seminars, contesting, and special
event activations. Most importantly, the exchange of ideas that occur within
the walls of the building is priceless.

The DVRA's focus on training and diversification of its projects attracts new
hams and engages radio amateurs at all levels.

The Technical Achievement Award recipient is Dr. James Breakall, WA3FET, whose
work has been instrumental in amateur radio antenna technology for decades. He
has teamed with many experts in the field to develop state-of-the-art
advancements with a wide range of applications, including the Numerical
Electromagnetics Code (NEC). As a professor of electrical engineering at Penn
State University from 1989 to 2022, Dr. Breakall developed cutting-edge antenna
technology and mentored his students in amateur radio, resulting in 700 new
licensees. Now a retired Professor Emeritus, he serves as a consultant to the
Army, Air Force, and Navy on many antenna-related projects.

Nittany Scientific, a company initiated with his students, developed some of
the first optimization methods applied to NEC in a package called NECOPT, a
design he called Optimized Wideband Antenna (OWA) Yagi. The goals of the
optimization were minimum peak SWR in a band, maximizing the lowest gain in a
band, and maximizing the minimum front-to-back ratio in a band. These OWA Yagi
designs have been used in numerous contest and DX stations around the world.
Because Breakall wanted this technology to be readily available worldwide, he
has never pursued patent licensing. He was also the first to use helicopter
measurements and Geometrical Theory of Diffraction (GTD) techniques for
antennas in terrain at HF that led to software such as TA and HFTA.

In 2010, Dr. Breakall collaborated with Joe Taylor, Angel Vazquez, WP3R, and
Pedro Piza, Jr., NP4A, to use the Arecibo 1000-foot dish for EME. He worked on
many antenna designs at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and at the HAARP
facility in Alaska. Dr. Breakall has frequently presented at Hamvention forums
to share his expertise on antenna design and enthusiasm for amateur radio. As
an avid amateur radio contester, Dr. Breakall has built contest stations in
Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico, and he has participated in more than 100
contests; he has also won a fair amount of them. Dr. Breakall has authored
numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles and books.

Amateur of the Year 2023 Carsten Dauer, DM9EE, has been active in European
amateur radio through the World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC) and Youth
on the Air (YOTA) for 30 years. Recently, he has spearheaded a movement that
provides amateur radio equipment to war-torn Ukraine by collecting donations
and personally delivering the approximately 5,000 kg of radios, power banks,
solar packs, and first aid kits have been shipped to Ukraine. Countless hours
of planning, packing, documentation, and accessing permits have gone into this
endeavor. On the return trips from Ukraine, Dauer transports war refugees to
havens in Germany, including his own hotel.

Supporting fellow hams and inspiring youth involvement is Dauer's passion. On
his website, http://dm9ee.de/dm9ee-ukraine-help/[1], he states, "Ham radio gave
me a lot and I try to give back to our great hobby. The world is very small
when you have a radio license. You talk to the world, and eventually you also
visit people in other countries... and you always learn more about culture when
you know people there. Ham radio is [a] great [way] to learn languages, even if
it is only a few friendly phrases."

You can read more about the 2023 Hamvention Awards at their website[2] or at
ARRL.org[3].


[1] http://dm9ee.de/dm9ee-ukraine-help/
[2] https://hamvention.org/
[3] http://www.arrl.org/

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