The Young Ham of the Year for 2022
Audrey McElroy, KM4BUN

July 15, 2022

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Mark Abramowicz, NT3V, YHOTY Chairman, Amateur Radio Newsline (newsline@arnewsline.org)

Rich Moseson, W2VU, CQ magazine (w2vu@cq-amateur-radio.com)

NEW YORK – Audrey McElroy, KM4BUN, of Cumming, Georgia, has been selected as the 2022 Bill Pasternak WA6ITF Memorial Amateur Radio Newsline Young Ham of the Year.

Audrey, 18, is the daughter of Tom, W4SDR, and Janet, K4PRM, McElroy. Her brother, Jack, is KM4ZIA.

Audrey credited her parents with generating her early interest in amateur radio.

“By the age of like 3 or 4, I was out there helping my dad put antennas up, run coax in the hot summer heat,” she said. “And, I became so fascinated looking into radios.”

With mentoring and experiences talking on the radio with her dad in their basement shack, Audrey went on to pass her Technician license test in June 2014 at the age of 10.

She quickly moved up to General and in just a few short years took and passed her Extra class license test on Election Night 2016 at the age of only 13.

Audrey entered the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program at her school and brought her amateur radio hobby into elementary classrooms for presentations in her suburban Atlanta school district. 

Operating Field Day and serving as a net control for the Sawnee Amateur Radio Association in Forsyth County, Georgia whet her appetite for more unique operating experiences.

In 2019, Audrey was invited to join the Dave Kalter Memorial Youth DX Adventure to Curacao.

“Probably one of the best experiences in my life, not only in amateur radio, but overall,” she recalled. “We were so blessed to be able to use the PJ2T station.

“And we spent day and night making contacts. We broke the record for the number of contacts made. I think we made over 6,500 contacts in just the span of really just a few days when you count up the hours.”

Audrey said she also developed an interest in high-altitude balloon launches thanks to mentoring from NASA engineer Bill Brown, WB8ELK.

She took part in a number of launches. One of her balloons circled the globe nearly five times.

Audrey put her amateur radio hobby together with her biotechnology studies to develop a senior capstone project that involved a high-altitude balloon launch. Her payload was small roundworms known in the scientific community as c elegans.

“My whole project was launching them up to 100,000 feet, which I calculated using the amount of helium and everything,” she explained. “And, at the same time I was taking measurements and readings about the pressure and the temperature effect on the worms.”

Audrey is an honor student who graduated in June from Forsyth Central High School in Cumming, Georgia.

She was accepted at Georgia Tech where she already has begun summer studies in computer science in her freshman year.

Audrey has made presentations during forums in Dayton, Huntsville and at Youth on the Air camp.

She said promoting amateur radio will remain a big part of her immediate future.

“Now I kind of make it my mission to bring more youth and especially women into amateur radio and STEM,” she said.

The YHOTY award will be presented to Audrey during a ceremony at the Huntsville Hamfest on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2022 at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Amateur Radio Newsline, CQ magazine, and Yaesu USA are primary sponsors of the award, along with Heil Sound Ltd. and Radiowavz Antenna Company.

The Young Ham of the Year Award was inaugurated by William Pasternak, WA6ITF, in 1986. Upon his passing in 2015, Bill’s name was added to the award as a memorial to his commitment to recognizing the accomplishments of young people to the Amateur Radio Service.