Awards

Amateur Radio Club of the Year

The Delaware Valley Radio Association (DVRA), an ARRL affiliated club formed in 1930, serves the Trenton, New Jersey metropolitan area. The club has tripled in size over the last six 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 center of activity is club station W2ZQ, which operates a regular schedule. The station was renovated six 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 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 occurs within the walls of the building is priceless.

The DVRA’s focus on training and its diversification of projects attract new and prospective hams and engage radio amateurs at all levels and with widely varying interests.

Technical Achievement Award

Dr. James Breakall’s work has been instrumental in amateur radio antenna technology development 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 Electromagnetic Code (NEC). As a professor of electrical engineering at Penn State University from 1989 to 2022, Dr. Breakall (WA3FET) 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 antennas 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 optimization had the goals of minimum peak SWR in a band, maximizing the lowest gain in a band, and maximizing the minimum front-to-back ratio in the band. These OWA Yagi designs have been used in numerous contest and DX stations around the world. Because he wanted this technology to be readily available worldwide, he has never pursued patent licensing. He also was 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 in conjunction with Joe Taylor (K1JT), Angel Vazquez (WP3R) and Pedro Piza, Jr. (NP4A) collaborated to use the Arecibo 1000 ft. dish to do moonbounce (EME). He worked on many antenna designs at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and at the HAARP facility in Alaska. Dr. Breakall has been a frequent forum presenter at Hamvention sharing 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 participated in over 100 contests, winning 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 WRTC and YOTA for 30 years. Recently, he has spearheaded DM9EE-Helping Hands, a movement to provide amateur radio equipment to war torn Ukraine by collecting donations and delivering them personally to communities in Ukraine. Approximately 5000 kg of radios, power banks, solar packs, and first aid have been shipped to Ukraine along with the donation of countless hours of planning, packing, documentation, and accessing permits have gone into this endeavor. On the return trip from Ukraine Carsten transports war refugees to havens in Germany, including his own hotel.

Supporting amateur radio friends and inspiring youth involvement is Carsten’s passion. On his website https://dm9ee.de/dm9ee-ukraine-help/, 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 great to learn languages, even if it is only a few friendly phrases.”