ARRL Board of Directors Bestows Awards

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

• The ARRL Doug DeMaw, W1FB Technical Excellence Award went to Steve Franke, K9AN; Bill Somerville, G4WJS and Joe Taylor, K1JT for July / August 2020 QEX article, “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.
• John Levo, W8KIW, of Hillsboro, Ohio, was nominated for the 2021 ARRL Silver Antenna Award. This award recognizes a public information officer who successfully promotes all aspects of radio amateurs that improve understanding of the contribution of amateur radio for 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 2021 ARRL Maintenance Award The winner of the 2021 Award 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. Kachmarski is recognized for the development of a protocol for digital radio communication with open source M17, which leads to the development of DroidStar (Android app) 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.