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 Previous: QRP Community: Spring is in the Air |  Next: The K7RA Solar Update |
NEWINGTON, CT, Mar 10, 2005--A TV news producer from California, a retired researcher and ham radio author from New Jersey and a DXpedition leader turned emergency communications hero from India, have been selected as recipients of the 2005 Dayton Hamvention awards. The site of the 2005 ARRL National Convention, Dayton Hamvention will take place May 20-22 at Hara Arena near Dayton.
Amateur of the Year
 Dayton Hamvention 2005 Amateur of the Year Alan Kaul, W6RCL. |
Selected as Dayton Hamvention’s 2005 Amateur of the Year is Alan S. Kaul, W6RCL, of La Canada, California. Hamvention is recognizing Kaul for his ongoing dedication to educating radio amateurs about the many facets of ham radio and to publicizing Amateur Radio through the media.
A career electronic journalist who’s currently a West Coast Producer for NBC Nightly News, Kaul has been an amateur licensee for much of his life. He’s been a contributor to the Westlink Amateur Radio News and its successor, Amateur Radio Newsline. Drawing on his experiences in Jordan, where he operated as JY9RL while on assignment in the 1980s, Kaul prepared an insightful report on the death of King Hussein, JY1.
As the first manned ham radio operation from the space shuttle Columbia by astronaut Owen Garriott, W5LFL, was in the planning stages, the late Roy Neal, K6DUE, tapped Kaul to be the “volunteer” producer of a half-hour video about the flight, “Amateur Radio’s Newest Frontier.”
More recently, Kaul was instrumental in the 2002 production of the ARRL video “Amateur Radio Today,” for which producer Dave Bell, W6AQ, recruited Kaul’s volunteer assistance as a script writer and co-producer. Former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, KB2GSD, narrated the presentation, which deals with Amateur Radio’s ability to provide reliable communication in crises and emergencies. The ARRL video has also served the League in dealing with members of Congress and other decision-makers. It received the Chicago Film Festival’s Certificate of Merit for a non-broadcast documentary in 2003.
Among other Amateur Radio activities, Kaul enjoys low-power (QRP) and CW operation as well as contesting, and he’s a founding member of the Hollywood Hills QRP Contest Club, an ARRL-affiliated club. Kaul’s latest video project, with the working title “The ARRL Goes to Washington,” is slated for release this spring.
Kaul also has publicized other ham
radio activities, and he produced a three-minute report on Kid’s
Day that aired nationally on NBC.
 Jerry Sevick, W2FMI (left), with Array Solutions President Jay Terleski, WX0B, at Dayton Hamvention 2004. [Array Solutions Photo] |
Technical Excellence Award
This year’s Dayton Hamvention Technical Excellence Award winner is Jerry Sevick, W2FMI, of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Sevick is well-known in ham radio technical circles for his many books, articles and other publications. Among other books, Sevick is the author of Understanding and Using Baluns and Ununs,Transmission Line Transformers, Theory and Practice of Transmission Line Transformers, and Building and Using Baluns and Ununs--now out of print. He also authored numerous articles for QST and other Amateur Radio publications. He is noted for a classic series on short vertical antennas that appeared in QST. His April 1978 QST article, “Short Ground-Radial Systems for Short Verticals,” is considered a classic.
In 1956, Sevick joined the staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he supervised groups working in high-frequency transistor and integrated circuit development, reliability, applications engineering and high-speed pulse code modulation. He later served as director of technical relations before retiring in 1985.
It was his interest in Amateur Radio that launched Sevick into experiments with short vertical antennas and broadband matching networks. In the course of designing networks to match coaxial cable to short ground-mounted verticals, he came to view transmission line transformers as a possible solution. Sevick undertook the characterization and design of transformers for low-impedance applications, resulting in Transmission Line Transformers. He also presented a series on baluns in Communications Quarterly and a series on ununs (unbalanced to unbalanced transformers) in CQ magazine.
Sevick holds a doctorate in
applied physics from Harvard, and he taught physics at Wayne
State--his undergraduate alma mater--from 1952 until 1956. Sevick
serves as an ARRL Technical Advisor. He’s a member of
IEEE.--Dayton Hamvention
![](VU2RBI-BharathiPrasad-2-lrg.jpg") Bharathi Prasad, VU2RBI, during the VU4RBI tsunami emergency operation. |
Special Achievement Award
The recipient of the Dayton Hamvention Special Achievement Award is D. Bharathi Prasad, VU2RBI, a prime mover behind the VU4RBI/VU4NRO DXpedition to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in December. As the DXpedition was beginning to wind down December 26, a massive earthquake occurred off northern Sumatra, triggering a massive tsunami that claimed upward of 300,000 lives across South Asia. When the disaster struck, Bharathi immediately shifted the DXpedition into an emergency communication operation, and her efforts, as well as those of the other DXpedition team members, received widespread media attention. One news account dubbed Bharathi “Angel of the Seas” for her effort to reestablish communication links with the Indian mainland and other parts of the stricken region.
The DXpedition team also offered its services to the office of the Chief Secretary, Government of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in establishing an emergency communication network to assist the administration. For several days Bharathi Prasad and her DXpedition compatriots stayed on the air to pass emergency and health-and-welfare traffic from the stricken islands.
It was largely through Bharathi’s efforts that the DXpedition was able to gain permission from the Indian government to operate from Andaman and Nicobar Islands, still one of the most-wanted DXCC entities. Bharathi says she shares her Hamvention honor with her fellow operators, with the National Institute of Amateur Radio and the Indian government.
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