BCC Member of the Year 2024: DJ0ZY

Im Rahmen des diesjährigen BCC Buffets am 29. Juni 2024 wurde die Auszeichnung „BCC Member Of The Year“ an Franta Bendl, DJ0ZY, verliehen. Hier ist die Rede unseres Präsidenten Chris, DL1MGB:

For around a quarter in its history, the Bavarian Contest Club is awarding the “BCC Member of the Year” award to honor members with outstanding dedication and commitment to the BCC.

Based on my experience with ChatGPT in helping me to write an introduction speech last year (I tested it again; the machine didn’t improve over the last 12 months) I knew I had to rely again on analogue sources to get some background about the nominee. It still works and results in a much more personal touch. Though this time, it was a bit harder.

The story of our Member of the Year begins around 50 years ago behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia. A young guy started to study Electrical Engineering in Prague at the Czech Technical University (abbreviation CTU). He immediately came in contact with the university’s club station OK1KUR. Fascinated by Amateur Radio and its playing fields, he trained for his license which he received at the age of 22. For sure motivated by Amateur Radio and its possibility of worldwide communication without any frontiers, Czechoslovakia soon became too small for him, and he successfully fled to Germany after he finished his studies. Of course, his desire of freedom resulted in several journeys around the world – including back packing tours starting from Germany to Japan or Indonesia. But he also wanted to stay free at his work. For the rest of his life, he stayed a freelance software engineer.

30 years ago in 1994, he found the way to the Bavarian Contest Club. Together with Ben, DL6RAI, he wrote the DX-Cluster software for Linux “CLX” which was very popular at that time.

Since around 10 years, he puts a lot of his spare time and effort into software solutions for the contest log-checking within the team of the DARC contest committee.

In his local club DOK C01, his major contributions to organizing and taking part in different contests of the national club competition “DARC Clubmeisterschaft” led to two victories and many top rankings.

Over 20 years ago, he followed another passion. He was a referee. With his long-lasting experience in Nation and Europe leagues he seemed a perfect match for a job as a WRTC referee. But I never saw him applying for one of those events. Maybe because WRTC normally happens during the heat of July, and he was a referee for … ice hockey. But when we were looking for volunteers for WRTC 2018 in Germany, he was more than happy to help us in the log checking team with his extensive experience in this field.

Since many years, his software helps the BCC Contest Managers to extract the claimed scores of the BCC members out of the contest report mails. A priceless help for our internal club competition.

When contesting from home, he uses a quite modest station with one triband yagi, dipoles for the low bands and 100 watts. But due to his discipline, strategy and flexibility, he manages to achieve top scores in Germany and in Europe in a lot of contests. I am sure he shows up in the contest logs of all of you with his call DD5M.

Without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a great honor for me to present the

BCC Member of the Year 2024
Franta Bendl, DJ0ZY