HAMVENTION® 
2007 TECHNICAL
EXCELLENCE AWARD

http://www.hamvention.org/07techexcell.htm

The Dayton Hamvention 2007 Technical Excellence Award winner is David Cameron, VE7LTD.  This award is given for the person who has made an outstanding technical advancement in the field of amateur radio.  Cameron was instrumental in development of the software, hardware, and technology that permits repeaters worldwide to be linked together over the worldwide web through the Internet Radio Linking Project or IRLP.

His nominator noted that "His work literally transformed FM repeater communication from a local entity into a world-wide communication network that has been of immense value in emergencies and has helped unite the world's radio amateurs over the internet and radio."

Cameron was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  While attending the University of British Columbia (UBC), he joined the UBC Amateur Radio Society in 1993.  David built his first repeater and computer-based controller in 1995.  He took over maintenance of the UBC repeaters in 1996 and began instituting improvements to the operation.

David Cameron
VE7LTD
(UBC photo)

The Internet Radio Linking Project was started in November of 1997 in an attempt to use the Internet to link radio systems across Canada.  Due to numerous problems it was shut down in early 1998.  Cameron set out to design a more robust system and chose Linux for the networking software.  He designed an interface board to connect the radio to the computer, wrote and improved software and succeeded in creating nearly seamless radio link between two remote sites on the Internet.  The IRLP system runs a large network of dedicated servers and nodes offering excellence in voice communications.  IRLP and its derivatives have opened up a whole new world of communications in VHF/UHF repeaters with the power of the Internet.

~ Henry, W1GYL

Link to Homebrew Extra
"2-m 300 ohm Twinlead J-Pole Antenna" by Bill Miller, K1IBR/SK, August 2003 (pdf)