Yasme Foundation Announces Supporting Grants for 2013

The Yasme Foundation Board of Directors has announced the nine recipients of its Excellence Award for 2013. The Foundation says the award “honors individuals who, through their own service, creativity, effort and dedication, have made a significant contribution to Amateur Radio” — technical, operating, or organizational. The Yasme Excellence Award is in the form of a cash grant and an engraved crystal globe. Recipients for 2013 are:

Tom Roscoe, K8CX, is recognized for his dedication to collecting and publishing current and historical photos and other documents on his Hamgallery website. HamGallery is an excellent Amateur Radio resource provided free of charge to the online community. He maintains an extensive collection of vintage QSL cards.

Lee Sawkins, VE7CC, is recognized for his software, widely used to manage and filter DX cluster spotting output. Without such filters, the output of the spotting network would be overwhelming and unusable. His filtering software enables logging programs to integrate with the spotting network for contesting and general-purpose operation. He supports the local DX and contesting community in British Columbia and will represent Canada in WRTC-2014 as the team leader from the NA-12 region.

John Devoldere, ON4UN, is recognized for building one of the premier amateur stations in the world and for his extensive contributions to the DXing community. Beginning with 80 Meter DXing, published in 1978, his book expanded to Low-Band DXing, which, in its fifth edition, has become the most widely used handbook for operating and building antenna systems on the bands at 7 MHz and below. His book highlights important advances in HF amateur technology and encourages operation on these bands.

Michael Carroll, N4MC; Eldon Lewis, K7LS; Dean Gibson, AE7Q, and Joseph Speroni, AH0A all have been instrumental in providing radio amateurs with convenient access to information maintained in FCC databases. Before it was discontinued earlier this year, N4MC’s Vanity HQ site became the single most popular resource for US amateurs seeking to obtain a desired call sign. He continues to maintain the National Silent Key Archive and call sign history database. K7LS and AE7Q have created similar online services. AH0A was a pioneer in providing useful summaries of licensing information, including licensing statistics.

Ken Claerbout, K4ZW, is recognized for his work in support of the series of video seminars and lectures produced in association with the Potomac Valley Radio Club (PVRC). Initially focused on contesting, the scope has broadened to include a variety of operating and technical topics. More important, the videos have encouraged others to publish similar webinars and archive them for viewing at any time.

Ashraf Chaabane, 3V/KF5EYY, has become an energetic representative on all fronts of Amateur Radio in Northern Africa and globally, presenting a positive role model for Amateur Radio throughout the Arab world with his enthusiasm and competitive spirit. His mission is to see the day when Tunisia issues him that country’s first individual Amateur Radio license. Chaabane will represent Africa as the team leader for the African team in WRTC-2014.