Hidden Earth
National Caving Conference

Cave Radio & Electronics Award

This award was first given in 2001. It is presented by the BCRA's Cave Radio and Electronics Group for an outstanding contribution to Cave Radio and / or underground electronics.

Rules

The BCRA Cave Radio and Electronics Group will make an annual award for contributions to the field of Underground Radio, Underground Communications and or Underground Electronics, the rules of which are as follows.

The award will normally be presented at the annual BCRA conference, which is usually held in the autumn. If the BCRA conference is not held in the autumn, the award will be presented at the next suitable CREG field meet.
The CREG committee may withhold the award if they feel that no suitable candidate has been nominated.
Anyone may be considered for the award, even if he is not a current CREG member.
Anyone may nominate a candidate for the award, even if he is not a current CREG member.
Nominations must be sent to the CREG chairman before the end of June.
Each nomination requires the candidate's name, and a brief statement of why he is being nominated.
A candidate who has already received this award for the same body of work at an earlier date will not normally be considered for the award.
The nominations and supporting information will be presented to the CREG committee, who will vote on the candidates within two months of the closing date.
No committee member may vote for more than one candidate.
The CREG chairman will not have a vote except in the case of a tie, when he will have the casting vote.
A committee member who has been nominated by someone else is allowed to vote for himself.

Previous Winners

Also see Reports of past events

2001 Mike Bedford: Mike receives the award for his work as editor of the CREG Journal which, over the years, has published some outstanding work in the field of Cave Radio; and also for his other cave related electronics work. Mike receives a lifetime trophy.
2002 Jean-Jacques Fauchez: This year's CREG prize has been awarded posthumously to Jean-Jacques Fauchez who, sadly, died earlier this year. Jean-Jacques was an enthusiastic and prolific experimenter in the field of cave radio and electronics. His published work covered a wide range of topics: receivers, complete radios, propagation experiments, test gear etc. He was also an engineer, a radio amateur and an inventor. From his work it is clear that he was not afraid to depart from the beaten track in a number of ways and our field of endeavours has benefited greatly from this.
2003 Stuart France: Stuart France is probably the most prolific designer of practical cave electronics projects in the UK. Some years ago Stuart (with Bob Mackin) designed, built and published a design for a radiolocation beacon. Stuart also designed a fully-functional cave radio and, recently, he has produced a commercial design for a high-performance LED lamp. But the field in which he deserves special recognition is that of data-logging. Stuart has adapted his cave data-loggers to measure caver traffic, water depth, temperature, barometric pressure and ultrasonic bat squeaks. CREG is a part of BCRA, and the aims of BCRA include promoting the study of cave science. Stuart, although not a BCRA member himself, has perhaps contributed more to BCRA's core aims than any other member of CREG..
2004 John Hey: One of CREG's main projects has been research and development, over a long period of time, into cave communications. We remember the pioneering work of Bob Mackin, and his Molefone; many others have also contributed but we particularly want to recognise the work of John Hey. As a result of John's work, the British Cave Rescue Council is the first and only national organisation to systematically equip all its cave rescue groups with modern cave radio communications equipment. Of course, development of the HeyPhone was not all down to John, there are many others who have contributed to this project. But, without John, the project might never have happened. John did far more than just design the HeyPhone, he actually built all the production units by hand which is a major achievement and a demonstration of his commitment.
2005 Beat Heeb: There are a number of people who have been associated with cave radio and other electronics topics for longer than CREG has been in existence - not only in the UK but in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. These contributions are all, of course, 'special' and must be recognised. But it would be very unadventurous of CREG to simply work its way through a list of 'the usual suspects'. It would be unusual for a single project or magazine article to stand up against this wealth of experience, but this year, we have found a contribution which does. In June 2004, we published an article that described a cave radio device that sends and receives text messages, in much the same way as a mobile phone. On first consideration this is merely an 'interesting project' - one of several similar ones. But on closer inspection, we recognised that the designer - a Swiss caver called Beat Heeb - has done a highly professional piece of design work. Many cavers who have worked on cave radio and elec-tronics projects - even important projects - have, to a greater or lesser extent, simply developed the practical work of others. Only rarely have we actually experienced the work of a designer. Beat's project is quite definitely, a 'design'. We feel that his article has been one of the best we have pub-lished in the CREG journal for a long while, for the level of technical competence of the author; the use of state-of-the-art concepts and for its view of the future.
2006 Graham Naylor: This year's award goes to someone whose name does appear on the list of 'usual suspects' (see 2005 citation). Graham Naylor is probably best known as the designer and driving force behind the French Système Nicola - an earth current cave radio now in use around the world. Graham has also played his part in encouraging international Europe-wide cave-electronics projects. Graham is now working on a digital cave radio, with its advantages of compactness and low power drain. Although these are good credentials for an award, Graham receives this year's award specifically for his proposal of a novel method of generating a single-sideband modulated carrier that can be used with a digital power amplifier. Graham's proposal is a true 'inventive step' in the design of what will undoubtedly become the next generation of compact, highly-functional cave communications equipment.
2007 Phil Underwood: This year's award goes to Phil Underwood for his development of an electronic compass/clinometer/data-recorder for cave surveying; a device with, potentially, a large market; and one of tremendous use to cavers. Phil is one of several people who have been experimenting with instrumentation such as this, but Phil receives his award not only for the development of the device but for writing about it in Compass Points and the CREG Journal. Phil's project shows innovation as well as significant mathematical, software and hardware skills and gives to cavers a highly-useful tool which, in combination with the continued developments in survey-drawing software that are happening, will make it easier for cavers to produce higher-quality cave surveys.