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2003 Hamvention Award Winners

By 03/06/2003March 6th, 2021Awards

Amateur of the Year – Larry Tyree

Larry “Tree” Tyree, N6TR, of Boring, Oregon has been chosen to receive Dayton Hamvention’s Amateur of the Year award for 2003. Mr. Tyree is the creator, organizer, and promoter of the successful “Kids’ Day”, now adopted by the American Radio Relay League. Kids’ Day is not a contest, but is designed to give young people a chance to experience Amateur Radio first hand, hopefully inspiring them to become future Hams. Mr. Tyree also created the very popular contest logging software called “TR-LOG”. Mr. Tyree has been a Ham since 1967, lives in Oregon with his wife and three daughters. Hamvention is proud to honor Larry “Tree” Tyre, N6TR as its Amateur of the Year for 2003!

Special Achievement – Jonathan Taylor

Jonathan Taylor, K1RFD, of Ridgefield, Connecticut has been chosen to receive Dayton Hamvention’s Special Achievement award for 2003. Mr. Taylor is the writer and developer of the Internet linking program called EchoLink, and the repeater-control program called EchoStation. EchoLink allows Amateur stations to connect with each other over the Internet, to expand the coverage of repeaters and simplex stations and to provide licensed hams access from their PCs. EchoLink has given many hams both young and old whose license restricts them from using the HF bands the ability to talk and make friends all around the world via the Internet. Mr. Taylor provides EchoLink without charging any fees for its use. Hamvention congratulates Jonathan Taylor, K1RFD for his Special Achievement!

Technical Excellence – Steve Dimse

Steve Dimse, K4HG, of Cudjoe Key, Florida has been chosen to receive Dayton Hamvention’s Technical Excellence award for 2003. Mr. Dimse invented, developed, and personally funded and maintains the Global APRS Internet network that links 20,000 plus worldwide APRS operators. This is a tremendous value in supporting emergency services, Amateur Radio Vehicle Tracking, Search and Rescue, Weather and storm tracking. Steve also wrote the global database software called FINDU, which can capture and integrate data for viewing by anyone. As the popularity of the APRS Weather grew, non-hams began to be attracted to the technology and develop and interest in Amateur Radio. Since non-hams could participate on the APRS-IS side, Steve helped form CWS, the Citizens Weather Service. Over a million live weather observations from the combination of APRS and CWS have been forwarded to the National Weather Service. Hamvention congratulates Steve Dimse, K4HG for his Technical Excellence!