[aprssig] Digital Communications Conference, and Roger's Award

[Darryl Smith]

People

As most of you are aware, Roger, G4IDE died last week on the 9th of
September, the day before the TAPR/ARRL Digital Communications Conference
started. I found out just as the TAPR board meeting was about to start, and
found it rather difficult to tell the rest of the board about his death.

Since most people on these lists did not get a chance to attend the Des
Moines conference, I thought it would be appropriate to take a moment fill
everyone in on the event. 

The TAPR President took the opportunity to notify the assembled APRS
community at the National APRS Symposium on September 10th at the DCC. I can
tell you that everyone was quite shocked at the news.

Saturday evening after having a day of technical papers, we had the annual
DCC dinner. During this dinner, John Ackerman, TAPR president took the
opportunity to talk to those assembled about the award for Roger. John read
out the text of the award, which appears below.

After reading the citation, and showing the award to those assembled, those
in attendance held a moments silence for Roger and his work. During the
evening there were conversations on Roger's legacy to the hobby which were
always wonderful to listen to. 

Although the award is dated 11/September/2004, it should be noted that this
is only because this was the date that the award was formally presented to
the TAPR community. In fact Roger and a large percentage of the APRS
community found out about the award well over a month ago. With Roger's
illness we wanted to ensure that Roger did get the recognition before he
died.

Roger's family have sent out an invitation to any Amateur operators to
attend his service if they wish to. Due to some quirk of fate, I will be
arriving in London for the first time in my life on Tuesday morning, and
will be attending the funeral on Wednesday, representing the international
APRS community and TAPR.

It had been planned for me to visit Lincolnshire later in the week, but
things have been rescheduled because of the funeral. I hope to be able to
hand the award over to Roger's family this coming week. 
The award consists of a parchment and a plaque. 

You may view the plaque (at the moment) on
http://www.radio-active.net.au/tapr/roger.jpg

The plaque reads 

"TAPR Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions made to the Radio Art by
Roger Barker, G4IDE, Lincolnshire, UK. Awarded September 11th, 2004 at the
23rd ARRL & TAPR Digital Communications Conference. Des Moines, Iowa"


The text of the parchment is 

"TAPR Lifetime Achievement Award

TAPR is pleased to award a Lifetime Achievement Award to Roger Barker G4IDE,
of Lincolnshire, UK. 

Roger has worked tirelessly for many years to provide quality software for
Amateur Radio operators, allowing them to operate advanced digital modes
without the difficulties once associated with these operations. 

The UI-View software is the benchmark by which all other APRS Raster Mapping
software is compared to. 

Whilst writing excellent software, Roger has also ensured that users are
able to experiment with his software by allowing access to the internal
features of his software through an extensive API. Once the software was
written, he ensured that the software was extensively supported, starting
mailing lists to support his software. To date one of these lists has had
35,000 messages, with Roger reading each one and replying to a significant
number of them. 

These are just some of the reasons that TAPR is proud to present a Lifetime
Achievement Award to Roger Barker, G4IDE, for his services to Digital
Communications"



Darryl Smith
TAPR Board


---------
Darryl Smith, VK2TDS   POBox 169 Ingleburn NSW 2565 Australia
Mobile Number 0412 929 634 [+61 4 12 929 634 International] 
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