Jim Breakall

Biography:

Prof. Jim Breakall, Life Fellow IEEE, Fellow RCA

Dr. James K. Breakall received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and has over 50 years of experience in numerical electromagnetics and antennas.  He was a Project Engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA, and an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPGS), Monterey, CA.  Presently, he is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering after retiring in December, 2022 with 33 years on the faculty at Penn State.  Dr. Breakall began his career at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico working on antenna analysis and radar probing of the ionosphere. In 1977, he was a NSF Resident graduate student at the Arecibo Observatory on his Ph.D. research on antenna analysis and radar probing of the ionosphere using the 430 MHz incoherent scatter. 

At LLNL, he and his group worked on the development of the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC), the first sophisticated antenna modeling program.  Other significant projects that he has worked on were the designs of the HAARP facility in Alaska (patent received), both HF facilities at Arecibo (Islote and the recent Cassegrain sub-reflector design), and multiple feeds for inside the Gregorian Dome.  He received a patent and the R&D 100 Award for the Kinstar low profile AM broadcast antenna.  He has been and is a consultant to the Army, Air Force, and Navy, and Industry on antenna design and radio propagation.  He also has designed many Amateur Radio commercial antennas including the very popular Ham Radio Skyhawk Yagi antenna, and he is the inventor of the Optimized Wideband Antenna (OWA). 

Dr. Breakall is also a Life Fellow of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, Eta Kappa Nu, International Union of Radio Science Commission B, IEEE Wave Propagation and Standards Committee, has been an Associate Editor for the Radio Science journal, and served as an Arecibo Observatory Users and Scientific Advising Committee Member. He has been a frequent speaker at the Dayton Hamvention Antenna Forum.  He has graduated numerous graduate students and received many awards over the years.  In 2017, Dr. Breakall was awarded the prestigious Sarnoff Citation from the Radio Club of America (RCA), the oldest wireless society.  He was elected as a Director to the Board in 2018 and 2021 and is the Chairman of their Technical Symposiums.  He also serves on the RCA Scholarship Committee.  He is also a Fellow of that society.  In May, 2023, he was awarded the Technical Achievement Award for all of Amateur Radio for his innovative contributions to that community.  His callsign is WA3FET.