Amateur of the Year – Dr. Larry E Price, W4RA – Dr. Price served as President of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) from 1999 to 2009. Dr. Price’s leadership had significant and direct impact on the development of amateur radio throughout the world. – At his direction, many noteworthy achievements occurred such as elimination of the Morse requirement, protection of existing frequency allocations, adoption of ITU Recommendation ITU-R M.1544, Minimum qualifications of radio amateurs, expansion of the 40 meter amateur band in ITU Regions 1 and 3, and new LF allocations.
Special Achievement – Dave Sumner, K1ZZ – As Special Achievement Award winner, Sumner was cited for his contributions to the international Amateur Radio community through the International Amateur Radio Union and for his leadership in the fight against Broadband over Power Line (BPL) interference to radio amateurs.
Technical Excellence – David Freese Jr, W1HKJ – Dave Freese is recognized for his development and distribution of the Fast Light Digital Modem Application (fldigi) family of programs for use in amateur and emergency communications. FLDIGI is an easy to use, free of charge, and open source computer program intended for Amateur Radio Digital Modes operation using a Personal Computer. FLDIGI operates in conjunction with conventional radio transceivers, and uses the PC sound card as the main method of input from the radio, and output to the radio.
Club of the Year – The Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society (W4GR) serves Gwinnett County, Georgia. The Gwinnett Amateur Radio Society has several well rounded training programs aimed at old and novice amateur radio operators with many programs aimed at youth. They continually host and support amateur radio programs and they participate in a multitude public service events. Their last effort for Field Day was a massive effort that included eight stations. Their TechFest is an opportunity for the community to become aware of the many modes of operation of Radio Amateurs and view some of the preparations taking place by public service volunteers in the Ham radio community. Maintain a wide area repeater system while hosting several nets each week.