As we move further into the busy month of May, the countdown to 2025 Dayton Hamvention® has reached single digits (three days, to be exact). The folks at OnAllBands thought it would be an appropriate time to give a well-deserved shoutout to the state of Ohio—DX Engineering’s home base and the place where tens of thousands of hams converge every May. Ohio’s role in the growth of ham radio is vast, so we only have room to shine a spotlight on a few examples.
Active in Ohio
Per the ARRL as of April 2025, Ohio has 26,786 licensed amateur radio operators, ranking only behind California, Texas, Florida, and Washington in terms of number of license-holders. Ohio boasts 119 ARRL affiliated clubs and 16 special service clubs, covering the state from the Ohio River to Lake Erie. In terms of A to Z, that would be the Alliance Amateur Radio Club (W8LKY) to the Zanesville Amateur Radio Club (W8ZZV).
Of the 71 sections of the ARRL in the U.S., the Ohio Section is the largest with more than 5,800 active ARRL members, according to ARRL-Ohio.org. Read much more about the Ohio Section of the ARRL at its official website.
The Edison Effect
Hams who have ever been in a tight, sweaty space while contesting or have roasted under 90-degree temperatures on Field Day will certainly identify with this quote often attributed to prolific inventor and scientist Thomas Alva Edison:
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
What amateur operators may not know is that Edison, “The Wizard of Menlo Park” to New Jersians who may claim him as their own, was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, about 80 miles west of DX Engineering headquarters. As an inquisitive child, he lived there for the first seven years of his life before moving with the family to Port Huron, Michigan, then to Boston, and eventually to Newark, New Jersey.
It was in his Menlo Park laboratory in 1875 and again in 1883 that he made this observation: When a current flows through a hot filament in a vacuum, it could jump from a filament to a cooler metal plate. He saw little importance in this revelation, but he had it patented anyway in 1883 (one of 1,093 U.S. patents he would acquire in his lifetime). Known as the “Edison Effect,” his discovery laid the foundation for the development of the electron tube, or vacuum tube.
Further, Edison’s invention of the carbon telephone transmitter is recognized as a forerunner to the microphone and other amplification devices. A telegraph operator in his early years, Edison contributed inventions, such as the Quadruplex Telegraph, that advanced the art of sending Morse code messages by wire. His work to improve the automatic telegraph between 1870-74 included changes that significantly increased word-per-minute output.
Did Edison also discover high frequency electromagnetic waves, which he described as “etheric force”? Read about the controversy here.
Home of Dayton Hamvention
It was on March 22, 1952, that the first Hamvention took place at the Biltmore Hotel in Dayton, an event that would forever etch the Buckeye State in the annals of ham radio history. The event has been sponsored by the Dayton Amateur Radio Association every year. A gigahertz of praise goes to the countless Ohio volunteers who have made his mega-show possible—a Herculean effort that drew a record 35,877 attendees in 2024. Get the full story of how Dayton Hamvention has grown over the years here.
Ohio Hams Making Their Mark
While it’s impossible to highlight every Ohio ham who has contributed to the art and science of amateur radio (or has used ham radio for scientific research), we’ll use this year’s Hamvention Technical Achievement Award recipient Dr. Kristina Collins, KD8OXT, as a representative for the many operators with Ohio ties who are making difference.
Dr. Collins earned her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University. She serves as the Chief Operations Scientist for the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation (HamSCI) Personal Space Weather Station Network. In this role, she collaborates with citizen scientists to pinpoint significant events, organize campaigns, and ensure PSWS data is validated and curated for scientific purposes.
Dr. Collins has been instrumental in organizing workshops through HamSCI and has guided many undergraduate and graduate students in radio science projects, including instrument deployments, eclipse campaigns, and data analysis. She is a dedicated member of Case Western Reserve’s Case Amateur Radio Club, W8EDU, working alongside her colleagues to integrate amateur radio into university teaching and research.
Read more about Dr. Collins and all the Dayton Hamvention 2025 award-winners here, including Amateur of the Year, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, who is currently a visiting professor of chemistry at Cincinnati’s Xavier University.
Space…The Frequency Frontier
Surprisingly, two of Ohio’s most famous sons, astronauts John Glenn (Cambridge, first American to orbit the Earth) and Neil Armstrong (Wapakoneta, first person to walk on the moon), were not licensed ham radio operators.
When 77-year-old U.S. Senator Glenn was scheduled to return to space aboard the Discovery space shuttle (STS-95) in 1998, original plans included carrying the SAREX (Space Amateur Radio Experiment) payload, but plans for Glenn and other astronauts to use SAREX to talk with U.S. and Japanese students were scuttled. SAREX supports the use of amateur radio by astronauts in low-Earth orbit. The Discovery STS-95 crew did “release the Petite Amateur Naval Satellite, or PANSAT, to test innovative technologies to capture and transmit radio signals that normally would be lost because the original signals were too weak or contained too much interference,” per NASA.
Also, read the fascinating history of how one ham detected radio transmissions from the Apollo 11 astronauts on the lunar surface.
Here’s a list of some of the astronauts from Ohio who are/were licensed hams:
- Ronald A. Parise, WA4SIR (SK), Warren: “First licensed when he was 11, Parise kept amateur radio at the forefront of everything he did, including his operations from space. During his two shuttle flights, he spoke with hundreds of hams on the ground,” wrote the ARRL upon his death on May 9, 2008. See WA4SIR’s historic marker in Ohio here.
- Kenneth D. Cameron, KB5AWP, Cleveland: As the commander of the STS-56 mission, the crew made numerous radio contacts to schools around world using SAREX II, including a brief radio contact with the Russian Mir space station, the first such contact between the shuttle and Mir using amateur radio equipment.
- Sunita Williams, KD5PLB, Euclid, spent 322 days in space and is noted as one of the world’s most accomplished spacewalkers. She also ranks as one of the most active hams communicating with schoolchildren from the International Space Station.
Williams’ mother, whose maiden name was Bonnie Zalokar, grew up in Northeast Ohio. Her father, Dr. Deepak Pandya, joined the department of anatomy at Case Western Reserve as a postdoctoral fellow in 1964 and moved the family to Needham, Massachusetts, in 1966, a year after Williams was born. She considers Needham her hometown but still remembers, from trips back to Northeast Ohio to visit relatives, one Euclid delicacy that she took into space with her.
Ohio Ham Radio Headquarters
DX Engineering’s roots in Ohio took hold in 200o when Summit Racing Equipment of Tallmadge, Ohio (near Akron) acquired the Oregon-based company. Today, DXE is recognized as a leading worldwide source of everything for amateur radio, with a staff of active operators who provide customer/technical support, produce unique products for better operating, and give back to the amateur radio community.
POTA’s Ohio Origins
First held in 2008, Ohio State Parks on the Air—developed by members of the Portage County Amateur Radio Service (PCARS, K8BF) and still sponsored by the group—served as a forerunner to ARRL’s highly successful 2016 National Parks on the Air program, which, in turn, inspired the emergence of Parks on the Air (POTA) in 2017.
Rock & Roll Royalty
Eagles’ guitarist, Grammy-winner, ARRL Life Member, Amateur Extra licensee, and ham radio’s coolest ambassador (Barre chord none!), Joe Walsh, WB6ACU, was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1947, lived in Ohio for a while (among other locales) and made it back to the Buckeye State in 1968 as a college student at Kent State University, just up the road from DX Engineering. Three years later he would become part of the Cleveland-based James Gang, go on to join the Eagles, and blaze a storied solo career, while turning knobs on his Fender Telecaster and analog ham gear with equal acuity. Check out his song “Analog Man”—his ode to going old-school in a digital world.
Ohio, the Place to be for Amateur Radio in May
Finally, these three annual events make the Buckeye State amateur radio central for a handful of action-packed days:
- Four Days in May (May 15-18), billed as the biggest and best QRP event in the world
- Contest University, (May 15), a full day of good fellowship and insights on boosting your contesting scores
- Dayton Hamvention (May 16-18), three unforgettable days of attending educational sessions, upgrading stations with the latest equipment, and catching up with old friends who arrive by the droves to celebrate the world’s best hobby
What Ohioans would you like to add to our list? Let us know who we missed. 73
