The Young Ham of the Year for 2025
Katie Campbell, KE8LQR
July 4, 2025
CONTACT: Mark Abramowicz, NT3V, YHOTY Chairman, Amateur Radio Newsline (newsline@arnewsline.org)
NEW YORK – Katie Campbell, KE8LQR, of Columbiana, Ohio, has been selected as the 2025 Bill Pasternak WA6ITF Memorial Amateur Radio Newsline Young Ham of the Year.
Katie, 17, is the daughter of Robert Campbell, KE8LYZ, and Colleen Campbell, KB8VAQ.
Katie was introduced to ham radio at the age of 10 when her school started an amateur radio and electronics club. She was a fifth-grade middle school student at the time and quickly became licensed, advancing her way to an Extra Class ticket by the age of 11.
An honor student heading into her senior year of high school, Katie is president of the Columbiana High School Amateur Radio Club (K8LPS).
She said she was introduced to Morse Code early on and it became her favorite operating mode.
“I learned CW through the Long Island CW Club,” she explained. “I’m pretty sure I found out about that just through my mom being on Facebook and seeing a posting about it right when they started.”
Katie became an instructor for the group and still teaches classes on sending and receiving Morse Code over Zoom as well as to members of her school club.
Katie attended Youth on the Air camps in Cincinnati in 2022 and Ottawa in 2023. Since then, she has been part of the planning staff for subsequent YOTA camps, and serves as a mentor to campers and handles public relations and social media postings for YOTA.
She was part of the K3LR IOTA Dave Kalter Memorial Youth DX Adventure in 2023 and returned in 2024 to the K3LR site to lead the CW operations.
Katie is very active on the HF bands and operates in the ARRL and CQ DX SSB and CW contests, ARRL Sweepstakes and CQ WPX, as well as Youth on the Air events.
Katie has made presentations on the role of youth in amateur radio and contesting at the Dayton Hamvention, Orlando Hamcation and SEAPAC.
Katie received the Radio Club of America’s Young Ham Lends a Hand Award and the Young Amateur Communications Ham Team Friendship Recognition Award.
She also was selected as the ARRL Great Lakes Division Young Ham of the Year and has been serving as the ARRL Assistant Youth Section Coordinator for Ohio.
Katie is the net control for the Ohio Section Youth Net, which she started four years ago.
She also has served as the Young Ladies Radio League youth chairwoman and is a regular contributor to DX Engineering’s “OnAllBands” blog.
In her Columbiana school life, Katie has served as class president, student council member, various honor societies and has participated in speech and debate, theater, academic competitions and the school band.
Katie is the recent recipient of the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholarship. She will spend her senior year of high school studying abroad in Germany.
The YHOTY award will be presented to Katie on the “Ham Nation” program on July 30, 2025 , by host Don Wilbanks, AE5DW.
Amateur Radio Newsline 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.
