Text 5391, 149 rader
Skriven 2012-07-04 04:01:20 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
     Kommentar till en text av Y'all
Ärende: Amateur Radio Newsline: NEWSRELEASE
===========================================
                               NEWSRELEASE

                    For Immediate Release (July 3, 2012)

                             ERIN KING, AK4JG,

        NAMED 2012 AMATEUR RADIO NEWSLINE "YOUNG HAM OF THE YEAR"

(Santa Clarita, California) - Erin King, AK4JG, a 17-year-old from
Columbus,Georgia, who re-founded her high school's radio club and then
lofted a hamradio-carrying balloon to over 90,000 feet, recovered the
flight data and usedit to produce a truly striking video of that flight,
has been named asrecipient of the 2012 Amateur Radio Newsline Young Ham of
the Year Award.

Erin is the daughter of Paul, K4ETY, and Patricia King.  She has two
siblings:  Brandon, age 16 and Rachel, age 15.  Erin became a licensed
radio amateur in 2009 and now holds an Extra Class license.  She is a
member of the ARRL, the Columbus Amateur Radio Club, and the Russell
County Radio Club.  She enjoys operating on local VHF and UHF repeaters as
well as phone and digital modes on the High Frequency amateur radio bands.
She is looking forward to mastering Morse Code as her next amateur radio
challenge.

Erin became interested in amateur radio after joining a clubat her high
school dealing with robotics and then ham radio-equipped high-altitude
balloon launches.  This school group has participated in FIRST Robotics
competitions, and Erin has twice been Team Lead for Programming. The club
also launches several high-altitude balloon missions each year, in a
program called DREAMS.  They have flown various scientific experiments as
part of these missions, in addition to planning, building, and integrating
radios, Global Positioning System (GPS) units and TNCs to track and
recover the balloons.  To facilitate these activities, the group's
sponsor, Luther Richardson, KI4AOJ, has encouraged the students to obtain
their amateur radio licenses.

A subset of this group,including Erin, has participated in the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) "InvenTeam" competition,
designing and building a portable lightning detector and early warning
system. In addition, Erin re-started the Columbus High School Radio Club
and served as its president forthe past two years.  The club was active in
the 1950s and '60s, and Erin's great-grandfather (the original K4ETY) was
one ofits mentors at that time. The new club obtained the callsign W4CHS
(Columbus High School) andhas been active on the air.

Erin's involvement with amateur radio and FIRST Robotics has helped fuel
her interest in science and engineering. Last year, she appliedfor early
admission to both Georgia Tech and MIT; she was accepted to both and will
be attending MIT this fall.

Inside the shiny tube which contained Erin's MIT acceptance letter was a
note suggesting that the students "hack" their tubes, meaning to do
something cool with them, in along-standing tradition of MIT hacks or
stunts. Erin chose to send her tube to near-space.

Drawing on her ballooning experience,Erin planned, built, integrated, and
tested a complete new tracking setup to fit into the very small shipping
tube.  The payload consisted of two GPS units, two custom-made antennas,
one Argent Data OpenTracker+ kit (which Erinbuilt), one handheld radio,
and a fellow ham's Byonics Pocket Tracker, a self-contained 100-milliwatt
tracker/radio combination in an Altoidsr tin.  Erin also talked her mother
into letting her use mom's brand new GoPro Hero HD video camera.

With the assistance of a group of hams from the Columbus Amateur Radio
club, Erin launched her balloon from Lumpkin, GA.  A couple of hours
later, she and the tracking team successfully recovered it, along with the
complete HD video record of the flight. Erin took this video, as well as
other photos and video staken of the launch activities, and compiled it
into an 8-minute presentation,complete with background music.  She posted
it to YouTube, and put a link to it on the MIT hack-the-tube site
(see<http://tinyurl.com/ak4jg-space-video>). According to YouTube
statistics,Erin's video has been viewed thus far in excess of 82,500times.


This past May, Erin was invited to participate in no less than three
forums and sessions at the 2012Dayton Hamventionr.  These included the
25thanniversary "Youth Forum," the "Ham Radio Town Meeting" and an "ARRL
Expo"presentation where her video was screened.

Award Ceremony

The 2012 Amateur Radio NewslineT "Young Ham ofthe Year Award" will be
presented on Saturday, August 18th at the Huntsville Hamfest in
Huntsville, Alabama.  As the 2012"Young Ham of the Year," Erin will
receive --courtesy of Yaesu USA -- an expense-paid trip to the Huntsville
Hamfest, along with a gift of Yaesu brand ham radio equipment.  CQ
magazine will treat her to an expense-paid week at Spacecamp
Huntsville,and will present Erin with a variety of CQ products.  Amateur
Radio NewslineT will provide Erin with a commemorative plaque at the award
ceremony.  Once again, the cost of year's plaque has been underwritten by
Dave Bell (W6AQ), President of DBA Entertainment Inc., Hollywood,
California.  Heil Sound Ltd. will also be presenting Erin with a ham
radio-related gift.

The presentation of the Young Ham of the Year Award has been a regular
feature of the Huntsville Hamfest since 1993.  This has been made possible
through the generosity and kindness of the event's Planning Committee and
the good offices of Huntsville Hamfest Association Vice President Charlie
Emerson, N4OKL. (Seehttp://www.hamfest.org)

This year's award ceremony will be hosted by Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF, and
Don Wilbanks, AE5DW, of Amateur Radio NewslineT, Rich Moseson, W2VU, of CQ
Communications, and representatives of Yaesu USA and Heil Sound.

Award Program Background

The Amateur Radio NewslineT "Young Ham of the Year" award (formerly the
Westlink Report Young Ham of the Year Award) has been presented annually
since 1986 to a licensed radio amateur (ham) who is 18years of age or
younger and who has provided outstanding service to the nation,his/her
community or the betterment of the state of the art in communications
through the amateur radio hobby/service. A website with full information
on the award program and background material is located at
http://www.arnewsline.org/YHOTY.

Award Sponsors

The award program is sponsored by the Los Angeles, California-based
Amateur Radio NewslineT with corporate support from Yaesu USA Corporation
of Cypress, California, CQ Magazine of Hicksville, New York, and Heil
Sound of Fairview Heights, Illinois.

Since 1976, Amateur Radio NewslineT and its predecessor, the Westlink
Radio Network, have been providing radio amateurs around the world with
up-to-the-minute news at no cost to them. (Seehttp://www.arnewsline.org)

The award's three major corporate underwriters are world leaders in their
respective areas of Amateur Radio product support.

Yaesu USA, which has been a corporate underwriter since the inception of
the award program in 1986, is considered the trailblazer in the design,
manufacture and distribution of high quality amateur gear as well as
commercial two-way,  monitoring, marine and air-band communications
equipment (See http://www.yaesu.com).

CQ magazine and its sister publications, CQ VHF,Popular Communications and
World Radio Online, are published by CQ Communications, Inc., and are
considered the trend-setting publications serving today's modern radio
amateur.  (Seehttp://www.cq-amateur-radio.com)

Heil Sound Ltd. Is considered as a world leader in the development and
manufacture of new technology microphones and related audio products for
professional sound reinforcement and amateur radio communications.

                R\%/itt


--- Twit(t) Filter v2.1 (C) 2000-10
 * Origin: Roiz Flying \A/ Service * South Texas * USA * (1:387/22)