Hello All,

 

As most of us are aware, before John's unfortunate accident he spent quite a lot of time and effort to design beautiful, unique Award certificates as an incentive for Ultralight radio group members to accomplish various goals in their DXing. Many of us have been fortunate to receive one (or more) of these stylish certificates, decorated with classic radio artwork from the 1920's and 1930's.

 

The Ultralight Awards Committee (John, Rob Ross and me) discovered that these certificates were becoming a very popular reward for outstanding DXing accomplishments, and John took great pride in his creativity in designing the artwork, as well as in congratulating the DXers who qualified for each award. Some DXers who had qualified for the awards but never seemed to apply for them (like me) were even occasionally chastised by John, and politely advised to get with the program.

 

John's superb design creativity is displayed in each one of these beautiful Award certificates, but unfortunately he did not share his design secrets with anyone, and his sudden accident has left Rob and me scrambling to find a solution. The Ultralight Awards program is one of our most popular DXing incentive programs, and we certainly plan to continue awarding these unique certificates, if at all possible.

 

After some discussion, Rob and I have decided that in order to honor John's memory, we wish to retain John's original "classic radio" artwork in all future Award Certificates. In order to accomplish this, at least temporarily, we plan to issue new Award Certificates based upon the unique artwork in previously issued certificates, with a different serial number system. Unlike me (the occasional target of John's wrath), Rob has already collected many of John's fine Award Certificates in many different categories, giving us a decent start in getting the new program going. I'm certain that John was using the Adobe Photoshop software to create these unique certificates, but since his sample files are presumably unavailable, we will need a little time to collect and prepare the future Award Certificates, in the different categories. Partly in order to honor John's memory, however, we certainly do plan to continue the Ultralight Awards program, and welcome your comments and suggestions as we proceed in this effort.

 

73 and Good DX,

Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)