International Achievement Award for Radio Ham

Radio Amateur Matt Ettus, N2MJI has won the 2014 annually awarded Wireless Innovation Forum of International Achievement Award at the recent WInnComm 2015 event held in San Diego, California, USA.

The Forum International Achievement Award is presented to an individual, group of individuals, or organization that made especially significant contributions to international furtherance or acceptance of Software Defined or Cognitive Radio. 

Matt, N2MJI has utilised his company Ettus Research, now a part of National Instruments, resources as an innovatior in the Software Defined Radio community since he released the first Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) in January of 2005 with GNU Radio software support. 

Over the past year Matt Ettus has made significant contributions to the international SDR community with one of the most novel being RF NoC, an innovative network-on-chip based programming architecture that enables flexible and instantly reconfigurable FPGA acceleration for radio designers. This new approach improves the modularity of FPGA IP, improving reuse across designs.

The Wireless Innovation Forum is a non-profit international industry association dedicated to driving the future of radio communications and systems worldwide.

Wireless Innovation Forum Announcement - 
http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/570592-1427830733-wireless-innovation-forum-announces-2014-achievement-award-winners-at-winncomm2015-in-san-diego.html

Nanaimo Club Celebrate Founding

The Nanaimo Amateur Radio Association will be celebrating their 67th anniversary as well as World Amateur Radio Day on April 18

The Nanaimo Daily News reports an open house is planned to mark the occasion. There will be demonstrations of voice and digital modes of ham radio and a direction finding hunt, where a radio transmitter is hidden and has to be found on a certain frequency through various search techniques.

Emergency preparedness will be covered at the April 18 event by members of the Coastal Emergency Communication Association.

Full story - http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/news/radio-waves-group-to-celebrate-its-founding-with-open-house-1.1816931

Nanaimo Amateur Radio Association - http://www.ve7na.ca/

RSGB Youth Committee Minutes Released

The minutes of the RSGB Youth Committee meeting held on 14 March 2015 have been released

In the minutes RSGB Board member Steve Hartley G0FUW indicates that in 2014-15 the level of young members in the RSGB had remained broadly constant.

The number of young members had plunged by 43% in the preceding 4 years to the low 200's.

The minutes record that the increase in the average age of RSGB members has halted but it is due to older people in their 40's joining rather than younger people.

In 2011 60% of RSGB members were aged 60 or over and the average membership age had been increasing one year every year so it is encouraging news that this aging trend has now stabilised.

The minutes note the RSGB Board's view that the Society has money and that this money is being well spent if it furthers the hobby and brings more youngsters into the hobby. For the Wales DX15 event the Committee has secured £3900 from the RSGB and the RCF.

The Youth Committee Chair Mike Jones 2E0MLJ plans to give a 30 minute presentation about the Committee's work to the RSGB AGM in London on Saturday, April 25.

Download the Youth Committee minutes - http://rsgb.org/main/files/2014/12/RSGB-Youth-Committee-Meeting-14-March-Minutes-PDF.pdf

RSGB Youth Committee - http://rsgb.org/main/about-us/committees/youth-committee/

Youth Committee on Twitter - http://twitter.com/yota_uk