ACURA began with Tony Giardina (WE2D) and Nick Atmos (KY2I). A couple of like-minded friends who had been a part of other Radio Clubs over the years. They had some good times but also saw drama, politics and power struggles taking over clubs and ruining a good thing. They wanted no part of that sort of thing and decided to go their own way and create something better.
They had no formal meetings but held weekly nets that at one point reached 350 nets. Tony made up milestone certificates and mailed them to many hams that checked in weekly. Many of us met randomly and sketched out projects for better communication systems. Tony Giardina personally organized and operated Christmas Parties and dinners where he gave away many radios and affiliated prizes out of his own pocket. Everyone still talks about those parties.
Tony put up a wide range of repeaters ranging from 6 meters, 2 Meters, 70 centimeters to 220 MHz. He built, programmed, and gave away dozens of all-star nodes connected to an assortment of radios. He developed different gateways to connect all-star to many other platforms. He aided the developers of the first digital MMDVM digital repeater boards with note on the interfacing of different repeaters, especially the Motorola MTR2000. Tony has people all over the country reaching out to help them with different technical facets of the hobby. Tony was the guy all the other clubs called when something broke and they didn’t know how to fix it, even though he was not a member.
Fast Forward to January 2026:
The movement Tony started 20 years ago has grown to include a lot of people with a wealth of knowledge to share. Our goal is to take this club to the next level with some great people with diversified skillsets. Mix that in with our public safety experts that are currently involved with ACURA, and we will now be able to aid the public even better through this club’s efforts. We feel the time is right to take what began as a great idea for some friends to have a reason to play Ham Radio and make it even greater. We have expanded into GMRS, the First Responder and Emergency Management Communities.
Many of us have expanded our knowledge and now serve in one or more of these capacities. We strive to take what we have built and what we have learned and share it. We want to not only protect and serve our communities but to educate them and invite them to join us. We want to share our knowledge and teach our neighbors what to do when disaster strikes and infrastructure fails. We want to share our knowledge of great and fascinating technologies that make up Radio Communications and have a whole lot of fun doing it.