2021 KB4ZIN Award Presentation

This past year has been unlike any other. We have not been able to have meetings at the library, and other gatherings have been heavily modified due to the COVID-19 situation. Nonetheless, amateur radio continued on and with that comes the presentation of the 2021 KB4ZIN award.

This award was conceived in 2017 by Bill Conkling, NR4C to honor a local ham that has made great contributions to the Williamsburg ham community, and the hobby as a whole. The award is in honor of Jim Bailey, KB4ZIN who passed away in April 2017. Jim developed the repeater network in the Williamsburg area. His call sign remains on the repeaters to this day, and the repeaters are now maintained by the Williamsburg Area Repeater Group.

The club normally honors the recipient of the KB4ZIN award at the annual club dinner, however due to restrictions on the size of group gatherings this did not take place. Instead, the 2021 recipient was honored during the February 2021 Zoom club meeting.

The recipient of the 2021 KB4ZIN award is Dino Papas, KL0S. Dino has been a huge asset to the Williamsburg ham radio community for many years. He served as WAARC president from 2018-2019, and is currently the club’s Director At-Large. Dino has hosted the club’s Builders’ Group in the garage at his QTH, where folks bring projects to work on along with any tools they need, and can get assistance from elmers that are familiar with soldering and hombrew projects.

With the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 Dino organized the Coffee and Radio net on the 146.760 repeater at 9am every morning. The net continues to this day for hams in the local area to check in and keep everyone informed on what is going on in the local area. To date 208 unique call signs have checked in to the net. In addition to the daily net, Dino also sent out a daily dose of ham radio humor for 90 days to break up the monotony of the quarantine.

Each recipient of the KB4ZIN award receives a plaque that they get to keep for one year, that lists the names of each person that received the award. There is also a small trophy in the shape of a microphone that the recipient can keep forever. This year instead of being presented at the club dinner, members of the KB4ZIN award committee organized a parade at Dino’s house to present him with the award and celebrate with him.

WAARC would like to congratulate Dino for being the recipient of the KB4ZIN award in 2021.