ARRL Board of Directors honors John Levo

National Amateur Radio Association
http://www.arrl.org/

The ARRL Board awarded several prizes at its meeting in July 2021.

John Levo, W8KIW, from Hillsboro, was named the winner of the ARRL Silver Antenna Award Philip J. McGan for 2021.

This award recognizes a public information officer who successfully promotes all aspects of radio amateurs that improve understanding of radio amateurs’ contributions to education, public safety and recreation.

The board said Levo’s efforts over time had captured “the many opportunities for radio amateurs such as hobbies, educational tools and public safety services.”

• The ARRL Doug DeMaw Award, W1FB Technical Excellence Award went to Steve Franke, K9AN; Bill Somerville, G4WJS and Joe Taylor, K1JT for their QEX article in July / August 2020 “FT4 and FT8 Communication Protocols”. The DeMaw Award recognizes the author of an article or series of articles that is considered to have the highest degree of technical merit in ARRL periodicals for the last year.

• The winner of the 2021 ARRL Maintenance Award 2021 is James Baxter, KØUA, of Branson, Missouri. The board said Baxter “illustrates the spirit of this award because of his hard work in helping hundreds of hams go on the air, especially with FT8, and by spending countless hours in web sessions with them to resolve configuration issues, show them best practices and to help track RFI problems. “

• The Board presented the 2021 ARRL Technical Innovation Award to Steve Hainal, KF7O; Wojciech Kachmarski, SP5WWP and Roger Clark, VK3KYY. Hainal was cited as the instrumental and driving force behind the Hermes Lite 5 W HF SDR transceiver as a fully open source hardware and software project. Kaczmarski is recognized for developing the M17 open source digital radio communication protocol, which led to the development of DroidStar (an Android application) by Doug McLain, AD8DP. Clark was cited as the leader of successful efforts to increase the cost of portable radios for use by visually impaired operators, which significantly reduced the cost of entry for such amateurs.

• The Herb S. Brier Instructor of the Year Award for 2021 went to David Ritter, ND4MR. ARRL sponsored this award with the Lake County Amateur Radio Club in memory of Brier to recognize the excellent amateur radio training and recruitment. A member of ARRL for nearly 40 years, Ritter is a registered ARRL instructor and full professor at Wilkes General College in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, where he has been the lead and sole technician licensing instructor since 2010.

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