I’m sorry to say that I received the following email earlier today from Eric’s wife.
He will be sadly missed.
My deepest condolences to family and friends.
Pete
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 3:49 AM, Tamar June xxxxx@xxxxxx.com wrote: Pete,
I am Eric June’s wife.
I found your email address in Eric’s iPad. I wanted to let someone from the SOTA community know that he passed away unexpectedly on January 8, 2016. That’s why you haven’t heard from him in the past week or so. Could you please let the community know that he is no longer with us?
Oh My God!! What a shock! Eric was a big contributor to the SOTA NA community as well as the software author of the SOTA RBN reverse network, an invaluable automatic spotting tool for Activators worldwide.
Eric was significantly involved in the final summits lists and ARM docs for the revised W6 association.
You are going to be missed Eric! My condolences to your family.
Very sad to hear about Eric. I am sure many of us have benefited from his talents in writing the RBN software and would wish to send our sincere condolences to Tamar and the family. I am sure you have sent your own condolences Pete, but maybe you could pass on those of the wider SOTA Community once those that wish to have had an opportunity to express their thoughts here.
I was stunned to learn of Eric’s passing. He was a great CW op and SOTA enthusiast as both activator (80 summits) and chaser (990 chaser QSO’s). He sponsored the Northern Sierra Awards which in addition to certificates, included several items he provided at his own expense.
I can’t imagine the number of times we CW activators uttered “thank you Eric” as our calls appeared on SOTAWatch via his RBN software. Beyond brief on the air QSO’s, my personal contact with him was limited to e-mail exchanges. His e-mails conveyed a sense of warmth, sincerity and humor that made you feel as though you were communicating with a life long friend. Sure will miss you Eric.
Gerald,
Yes, I’ve sent my condolences to Tamar.
I will also collate and forward all these thoughts to her in due course.
Eric will be sorely missed. I’ve had many exchanges via email with him, mostly regarding RBNGate, over the last couple of years.
As Rich (N4EX) said above , “Thank You Eric”
I am speechless at this news. I never met Eric but feel I have known him for a long just from our emails regarding SOTA software matters. Eric will be missed so much.
Condolences to Eric’s family and immediate friends.
I have never had direct contact with Eric, but like many others I have felt the benefit of his contribution to SOTA. I’d like to add my voice to saying thank you, and RIP Eric.
I worked extensively with Eric on the addition of hundreds of Summits to W6, of course all via e-mail. He was always methodical and great to work with. He joined the SOTA summits team and managed the addition of summits to VE7. One of his own projects was identifying discrepancies in SOTA summit data and he created a great list which includes many summits where the height in feet bears no relationship to the height in meters.
He will be sorely missed. His contribution to SOTA was massive. My condolences go out to his family.
Jim G0CQK
What a tragedy. Eric contributed so much to SOTA - in fact I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say he changed the whole face of the activity. He’ll be greatly missed.
Eric’s RBNgate has had a massive impact on my activations. It was quite tough activating with mW of CW at first but wow, with the RBNgate, suddenly I was having pile ups with just 150mW!
Saddened by the news. I had never corresponded with Eric but as above I benefited greatly by his talents.
Wow this is sad news! Eric will be sorely missed. A few months ago he and I verified 106 new W6 summits by contour tracing. I will send the info over to Adrian N6ZA the W6 ARM.
Like many here, I may never have met Eric but I certainly appreciated his work with RBNgate & his work on W6 Summits. He will be greatly missed by many in the SOTA community & beyond!
My sincerest condolences to Tamar & all Eric’s family & friends.
I feel deeply impressed by this very sad news.
Activating SOTA on CW knowing that Eric’s creation would pick my signal up and a spot would be immediately raised was a real pleasure and I want to publicly thank him again for his great contribution.
My sincere condolences to Eric’s family and friends. You can be very proud of your beloved Eric.
Rest in peace…