AmateurRadio.com

Change has pulls and tugs toward the past and forward into the future

We hear the word culture bandied about all the time. It means different things to different people. Social scientists define it as follows:

As a sociologist and statistician, one thing I’ve observed about amateur radio in the U.S. is that culture has a strong pull towards the past. We often hear this coming out when hams begin some comment with their “tenure” in the hobby: “Well, I’ve been licensed X years and I know…” Substitute your own number of years for X in this sentence. The listener is supposed to genuflect toward this tenure in the hobby as containing superior knowledge and wisdom. Social linguists call this “indexicality” to indicate what reference is being used in the argument. (For bench testers, think “reference plane” in VNA calibration.) So many amateurs “index” their understanding of the hobby relative to when they were first licensed, especially if it was during their teen years. That understanding “indexes” everything that comes afterwards and results in much of the verbal conflict on the air and on social media. Or, in person, to the astute observer at hamfests, lol.

The power that such indexicality has on the hobby is related to the demographic composition of amateur radio at this time. The demographer Ron Lesethage documented how the age composition of a population is related to the values for having children, a predicate for population replacement. In most all developed countries, child-bearing age women no longer see giving birth as an important part of their future. This is a clear historical change with respect to how they define what is important in their lives as women, unlike their mothers and women in most previous age cohorts. This “index” by women in developed countries is an example of the power that these belief benchmarks have on society. With the dominance of Baby Boomers in the hobby, is it any wonder why so the view of many hams in terms of technology is much closer to the Spark Gap than it is, say, using digital modes like FT8?

What does this have to do with a Spark Gap transmitter?

It is a metaphorical reference point to the technological origins of the wireless which, by definition, was amateur in nature. If we consider an automobile as the ham collectivity passing through time, at what point should the Spark Gap transmitter leave our rearview mirror as a guidepost? Is that vision a stifling tug against our speed toward what is visible through our front windshield? Many historians and innovators say yes it is. Here’s an AI-assisted image to illustrate what I mean.

So many new innovations are before us. But so many index our progress against the earlier periods more adjacent to the ancient Spark Gap transmitter. This is a continuum, of course, but listen to the naysayer commentaries on recent innovation. Why are they “bad” for the hobby? Are they “killing” amateur radio? I’ve noted previously that change is often labeled as pending death to those whose indexed standards are in decline. Right now, it’s those of the Baby Boomers as they hold positions of power and influence in the hobby while they progress toward Silent Key status.

Remembering the cultural origins of an activity like ham radio should become history at some point. That is, every new initiate shouldn’t be held to norms of beginning at the beginning. It is thought that an overemphasis on history can stifle innovation. This doesn’t mean that history should be forgotten. This is not a binary argument. Quite the contrary, there is a balance and a place for history. New initiates into the hobby shouldn’t be pushed toward the historical beginning but acquire it as part of the present and immediate future’s innovation. The latter is often what draws newcomers to the hobby space.

What does an emphasis on the past do for progress?

There are several elements to the detriment of an over-reliance of early history as a main part of the culture of a group like amateur radio. An article on this by the Thought Lab says the following about it.

How an overemphasis on history reduces innovation

• Risk aversion: When experienced professionals rely too heavily on “how we’ve always done it,” they become hesitant to venture into the unknown. The fear of failure can stop the pursuit of unconventional, and potentially groundbreaking, ideas.
• Limiting frames of reference: Extensive experience and historical precedent can create a mental model of what is possible, making it difficult to conceive of entirely new possibilities. In this environment, alternatives and fresh perspectives are often overlooked.
• False confidence in expertise: A deep knowledge of the past can create an “illusion of expertise” that leads to overconfidence. This mindset can close people off to new information and different approaches, stunting creative growth.
• Subconscious bias against novelty: Research has shown that many leaders have an unconscious bias toward familiar, established solutions, especially when motivated to reduce uncertainty. This bias can cause them to reject new ideas, even if they outwardly claim to want creative thinking.
• Misguided strategic choices: As seen in Soviet technology policy, an incorrect assumption about the historical trajectory of innovation can lead to big, irreversible bets on the wrong path. Instead of building on existing strengths, leaders may shift their focus toward an ineffective strategy, weakening their own sector. 

How a balanced understanding of history promotes innovation

• Learning from past successes and failures: By studying the history of an industry, innovators can see what has worked and what has not. This prevents the repetition of past mistakes and allows for the identification of successful strategies that can be applied in new contexts.
• Understanding complex origins: History reveals that modern innovations are often built upon a long lineage of prior technologies and discoveries. This understanding gives innovators context for where to focus their efforts and avoids a simplistic or misleading view of progress.
• Questioning assumptions: Historical perspective allows innovators to question entrenched narratives and conventional wisdom. It helps them re-evaluate their beliefs by comparing them to a wide range of past scenarios, which can lead to new insights.
• Gaining resilience: Studying how past innovators and companies overcame challenges can inspire a more resilient approach to obstacles. Instead of seeing setbacks as reasons to give up, they are viewed as a necessary part of the journey.
• Revealing long-term impacts: History helps put the ethical ambiguities of new technologies into perspective. By observing the unintended consequences of past innovations, creators can better consider the potential long-term risks and societal impacts of their work. 

Readers can identify these issues within the hobby by just reading and listening for a bit. National and local organizations are legion for this “we have always done it this way.” Witness the ARRL Sections which arose when one of the Founders (Maxim) was organizing regional bodies to pass messages. Is this not a Spark Gap in the rearview mirror today? This geography to serve amateur radio in the United States is almost ludicrous. See also Onno’s article on changing the current culture in amateur radio. I could go on but this is a family-rated blog, lol.

What can we do about this demographic transition in our culture?

How can amateur radio more effectively deal with the shackles of a fossilized culture where tradition rules innovation? Do we need the Spark Gap in our rearview mirror as a guidepost? Let’s just acknowledge that no amateur could sit down at a workbench and design and build a modern transceiver! Take a Kenwood TS-590SG. It’s far from the leading edge. But could you design one? Then build that design? I couldn’t. Why would we? As Rob Sherwood has written (and I have analyzed), we have the best receivers that we have ever had in the current market. Even though purchasing semi-homebrew radios, like the BitX variety (and I have), push hams toward tinkering, they are not “production” quality for many ham radio activities—like contesting, DXing, and so forth. Yes, some do spend most of their time in tinker-mode rather than production-mode. What we know from Canada is that we have strong segments in “production mode” activities as well as segments in experimentation where homebrew radios have a better use-case for the population. Should we pressure all newbies toward the past when getting them interested in the present and future? My friend, Dan KB6NU, just wrote about this same topic.

Yes, I built a crystal radio as a young teen, using the Fox Hole model with a pencil lead, razor, toilet paper roll for the coil, and so forth. Led the building of an FM and AM station as well. Learned a lot. I still build a lot of things. These activities are highly useful as educational tools. But we must face that we are appliance operators today due to the sophistication of the technology. At best, we are appliance enhancers by homebrewing accessories, modifying “appliance” radios, and so forth. Yes, some do build and operate fully homebrew rigs. Bill Meara N2CQR of Solder Smoke comes quickly to mind. Nothing detrimental with that per se but should we have a norm that every ham should follow suit? When we get the Spark Gap out of our rearview mirror as a guidepost for the future, we will make much more progress with post-Baby Boomers for reasons I’ve outlined above.

My bespoke portable HF antenna, called the EiffelTenna, is featured in the October issue of Practical Wireless. I was inspired by a video of Jim W6LG on his Youtube Channel as well as the further work of Jason VE5REV via Twitter (X). It’s a fun build, inexpensive, is very portable, and works 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters. I use Faraday Cloth for the counterpoise and place the tripod directly on it.

The 40 meter operation works as a center-loaded vertical, something I posted on regarding the inductor coils recently. If you intend to build the EiffelTenna, check out that article too. The EiffelTenna base alone would be good for Technicians since it works on 10 meters without a whip or coil. A stainless steel whip on top of the tripod makes for a solid vertical with its own mounting base. For windy conditions, I use some 1lb ankle weights attached to each tripod leg using the built-in velcro straps.

Shown below is the EiffelTenna deployed for testing on my driveway. (Click for full image) It is setup for 40 meters using a JPC-12 inductor coil. Others work as well or better so this was just the option used here because it’s adjustable. The RF sweep has the coil bypassed using KB9VBR’s trick for use on 20 meters. Nearly 50 ohms with SWR of 1.06 at 14.154 MHz. Note how relatively small the counterpoise cloth is in this picture.

This full antenna system packs down into an inexpensive camera tripod bag ($16 via Amazon). A RigExpert antenna analyzer is underneath the Faraday Cloth for matching in the field. Coax from RG-316 with a ferrite bead choke is wound on a wire winder printed by my public library for the cost of resin ($4). Blue ankle weights were purchased at Academy Sports while on sale.

The EiffelTenna uses traditional vertical antenna concepts with unexpected objects serving as both a ground mount and a radiating element. Thanks Jim W6LG and Jason VE5REV for the inspiration!

Blog Author Note: This is a paper written with Dr. Scott McIntosh of Lynker Space. A PDF of this article is available by clicking here. Reproduction with attribution is permitted.

Sunspots to amateur radio operators are central to daily operations, especially on the HF bands. Ever since Schwabe began counting and plotting daily observed sunspots in 1826, the leading perspective has been that sunspots follow a given, time-ordered, sinusoidal pattern of rise and fall, largely around an eleven-year cycle. The pattern of differences among cycles has been the topic of much speculation, generally without any actual empirical observation of those factors. Until recently, the sunspot cycle is virtually just a given construct based largely on daily sunspot counts, summarized to each month.

There is almost no theoretical discussion of sunspot cycle antecedents, only their effects on propagation. For instance, Nichols (2015) exclaimed, the “top experts” are unable to identify the peak or trough of the solar cycle or the timing of the transition from one cycle to another. Previous work, especially in amateur radio, has focused almost wholly on atheoretical “curve-fitting” style models of the sunspot cycle with observed sunspots gathered for almost two centuries being just a given phenomenon (see Howell and McIntosh 2022a).

With the open acknowledgement that previous predictions have not been very accurate, it is puzzling as to why better theoretical explanations have not been sought by amateur radio experts on propagation patterns (e.g. Luetzelschwab n.d.). This devotion to the theoretically unexplained eleven-year sine wave function as a sterile paradigm in the face of the empirical anomalies reduces scientific progress in understanding the sunspot cycle. Here is why.

Philosophers of science have long debated the role of prediction and explanation in scientific progress. Douglass (2009) summarizes the debate as follows. “Prediction is important because we can be surer that the scientist generating the theory has not fudged or somehow subtly made his theory inconsistent or less clearly applicable to certain contexts by virtue of some torturous, ad hoc accommodation. Prediction also allows for the generation of new (hopefully supporting) evidence. Explanation is important because it helps us think our way through to new predictions.” To make progress in the scientific understanding of the sunspot cycle, we need both theoretical understanding coupled with better predictive capability.

This was the thrust of our 2022 article series in RadCom. We published papers in the July and August issues outlining the long prevailing scientific paradigm on the sunspot cycle, noting that it was largely devoid of a formal theory predicting its rise and fall. We outlined a major challenging theoretical paradigm, led in its creation by the second author, on not only predicting Cycle 25 but offering the beginnings of why the amplitude and modulation of such cycles behave the way they do. In essence, this marked a change from mere prediction toward explanation, a cardinal sign of growth in any area of science. As we have reached the midpoint of Cycle 25, it is time to see how this argument is faring.

Competing Sunspot Cycle Paradigms

The expert panels convened by the NASA/NOAA/ISED organizations (hereafter, NNI) over the past several sunspot cycles have published their own forecasts of the next one. They have done this without any disclosure of the specific model used or the specific substantive theoretical perspective driving them. They do not disclose their methodology but state that it is the consensus opinion of an expert panel reviewing more than fifty various models submitted to them for consideration. Unlike most all peer-reviewed scientific work, the official sunspot cycle forecasts are a theoretically unexplained given resulting from an expert opinion panel whose deliberations are not open to public inspection. Their forecasts have largely failed to be very accurate when later compared to the observed sunspot numbers in the predicted cycle (see Howell and McIntosh 2022a,b for a full discussion).

The second author’s team, hereafter called the McIntosh team, developed both a theoretical foundation and empirical forecast of Cycle 25, publishing the methods they utilized and what substantive concepts shaped them. Unlike the official NNI forecasts, the McIntosh team’s work is public for all to read. We strongly encourage the readers of this paper to review our 2022 articles for details as they are indeed nuanced arguments.

Suffice it to say that the competing McIntosh paradigm emphasizes not the mere curve-fitting exercise that so many amateur radio prognosticators subscribe to in their forecasts (e.g., Cohen 2020) but two new key conceptual elements of the Sun’s dynamo. This was new ground. As we illustrate below, much of the scientific community resisted an open consideration of these ideas at the beginning.

One concept is the Terminator, a landmark event in the sunspot cycle delineating the start, end, and overlap of sunspot and magnetic activity cycles. This event does not correspond to the statistical minimum or maximum in the number of sunspots but to an underlying shift in part of the sun’s dynamo that shapes the entire cycle’s behavior. It arises from the famous Hale Magneto Cycle (Howell and McIntosh 2022a).

A second concept is the timing of the Terminator within the approximate eleven-year period. Taken from our earlier paper:

“This variability, when viewed through the lens of an insular sunspot cycle, lends itself to the anomalies noted by prominent amateur radio propagation enthusiasts. The delay in Termination frequently leads to the forecast of a poor cycle approaching, even another Maunder Minimum, by hams. More critically, the longer the time between terminators, the weaker the next cycle would be. Conversely, the shorter the time between terminator events, the stronger the next Solar Cycle would be. This is the cornerstone thesis in the new competing paradigm which successfully addresses several anomalies observed by Nichols (2015), Nichols (2016) and Luetzelschwab et al. (2021).” (Howell and McIntosh 2022a: 40).

We suggested in 2022 that the key question is whether we are indeed in a crisis stage of a paradigm shift, using the perspective of the well-established Kuhnian model of scientific revolutions (Kuhn 1962). The evidence of such a crisis state would include the following two elements. Firstly, if the competing McIntosh team’s model produces a better empirical forecast than the official NNI’s forecast does, then the theoretically-based paradigm that is a better forecast pushes toward a crisis state. Secondly, what further shapes a crisis state is if other scientists flock to the empirically-superior, theoretically-explicated one. This pattern of behavior, measured largely through citations of the competing paradigm’s exemplars, propagates the new paradigm to the field. If scientists use the competing paradigm’s exemplary papers to shape their own work, then the revolution is taking shape through the collective behavior of other scientists (Kuhn 1962).

We offer a narrated illustration in Figure 1 of the stages and processes of Kuhn’s classic explanatory model applied to these two competing paradigms. We begin on the right side of the wheel of paradigm change. Effectively, the initial “boundary maintenance,” or resistance by adherents to shift from the traditional paradigm embedded in the NASA/NOAA/ISED predictions, eventually gave way to peer reviewers’ objectivity. This occurred through reviewers and editors evaluating the increasingly massive empirical evidence based upon all sunspot cycles for which there were data constructed by the McIntosh team as they revised their initial 2012 work. This was not accomplished very quickly or very easily. As Kuhn (1962) stipulated, this is not at all unusual for a competing set of ideas which threaten the “normal science” embedded in a reigning paradigm.

Nevertheless, the existing normal science “puzzle solving” produced many anomalies in the prediction of both the amplitude and the timing of adjacent sunspot cycles. This acknowledgement that we just do not have a sufficient understanding to produce very accurate forecasts created increasing doubt in adherents to the current paradigm after facing the massive amount of evidence from the original McIntosh team’s paper.

The “boundary maintenance” from 2012 when Science Magazine rejected the initial paper on the new theory began to give way some years later. This occurred through the McIntosh team’s surprising Cycle 25 prediction of a far higher peak in sunspots than the NASA/NOAA/ISED (NNI) official predictions and why they made this forecast. Remember, the official sunspot forecast for Cycle 25 contained no explanations of how they were derived, only that a panel of experts came up with them. This “exemplar” article was published in 2020, some eight years after the initial “boundary maintenance” rejection in 2012. As these results are compared to the errors in previous expert panel forecasts by more and more scientists, this set in motion increasing collective doubt being attached to NNI’s undisclosed methods. This behavior is shown as “model drift” in Figure 1.

Once this model drift occurred after the McIntosh team’s Cycle 25 forecasts were published (2020), the empirical race was on to see which forecast would be more accurate. Modern website technology made this a monthly comparison with the release of each new count of sunspots (shown in Figure 2 below). When the second “exemplar” paper on the timing of the Terminator event appeared in 2023, this undoubtedly significantly enhanced the motivation of other scientists to read and consider the competing paradigm’s exemplars to use as a basis of their own work.

Modern technology speeds up scientific awareness of new works as compared to periodic print journal publication. So, this social network technology makes the process identified by Kuhn back in the 1960s as a “revolution” in paradigm-change an even more valid metaphor today. Should a growing number of other scientists base their published work on the exemplars of the McIntosh team, then direct “model competition” sets in. These collective acts by others in the scientific community are behaviorally manifested through increasing citations of the exemplars in the competing paradigm. If the competing paradigm’s empirical superiority continues, it is only a matter of time before the full model revolution occurs, quickly resulting in a rapid change to a new accepted paradigm. It is our assessment, as illustrated in Figure 1, that we are clearly in the model competition stage as we stand today.

Where Is Paradigm Competition at the Peak of Cycle 25?

In this paper, we evaluate the status of this potential revolution in our shared understanding of the important sunspot cycle. This is based on the two elements described above:

1. Empirical superiority of the McIntosh team exemplars which introduced their paradigm to this field of science. Is the McIntosh team forecast for Cycle 25 demonstrably more accurate than those offered by the NASA/NOAA/ISED Panel of experts?
2. Does the pattern of citations of the two exemplar articles published by the McIntosh team show that other scientists are adopting them? If this adoption is considerable, then the evidence compounds in favor of their new paradigm.

We now provide evidence on both elements of the issue at the approximate middle of Cycle 25. It will show that the results underscore our assessment of where things are in Figure 1.

Statistical Comparisons of the Two Cycle 25 Forecasts

Using the Austrian Space Weather Office website, we produce in Figure 2 the smoothed monthly sunspot numbers for Cycle 25 and for the two competing forecasts. We use the approximate peak time in Cycle 25 to delineate our comparisons. In other words, if this were an athletic competition, what is the score at the end of the first half of play?

In Figure 2, the vertical line is this demarcation as of August 2024 in the time series. Note that the NASA/NOAA/ISED (hereafter NNI) forecast had somewhat of a “false start,” to borrow a track-and-field metaphor, in that after their first set of numbers went public (light blue line), they released another revised forecast. This one shifted their forecast start back some six months (dark blue line). No public explanation was given by the NNI group. We use this revised NNI forecast in our analysis. The McIntosh team forecast is in the red line.

For comparative illustration, there are four other data series. The average monthly sunspot cycle number since 1750 is in green. The three observed sunspot numbers include the daily sunspots (light green line) and the key smoothed monthly sunspots in black. (There is a short series of estimated daily numbers in orange, shown after the final monthly figure.) This represents a visualization of the forecast and observed monthly sunspot numbers. The series includes 32 months of data, our approximation of the first half of Cycle 25.

In this graph, the NNI forecast does appear consistently lower than the observed monthly sunspot data after the summer months of 2022 while the McIntosh team numbers appear generally higher. The exception is near mid-cycle where the observed sunspots spike above both projections. Neither set anticipated this sharp rise in monthly sunspots. But are these two forecasts just a random walk around the observed monthly sunspots? Statisticians have addressed questions like this for some time because time series graphs are somewhat subject to various interpretations. We make statistical comparisons using standard methods for this in Figures 2 and 3.

In our 2022 RadCom paper series, we presented the McIntosh team forecast for a complementary index of solar propagation influence, the Solar Flux Index (SFI, abbreviated as f10.7). We use the NNI forecast for SFI to further compare the statistical accuracy of an atheoretical expert opinion forecast versus the theoretically-driven McIntosh team model.

We use the standard text by Theil (1966) for the analysis of forecast comparisons. One measure of the statistical accuracy of two time series is the mean absolute error (MAE) represented by the formula of

where yⁱ and xⁱ are the respective data values for each time series compared at the i^th time interval. That sum is divided by the number of points in the time series (or n) to yield this average absolute error in numbers of monthly sunspots.

Another test that is metric-free is the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) which is the percent version of MAE. It is the sum of the actual minus forecast divided by the actual which is averaged over the number of temporal observations:

The third consideration we make is to test for the equivalence of the two forecasts (i.e., are the different forecast series just random walks?). In this part, we use the Diebold-Mariano test or D-M (Diebold and Mariano 1995) which compares the mean difference in the squared-error or absolute error of each forecast to the observed data. This S₁ test is applied to both the MAE and the MAPE (Theil 1966). The D-M S₁ test can use alternate kernel densities in this computation. To safeguard our comparisons, we compute tests using both a uniform and a Bartlett kernel for the standard error estimation. Each produced similar results so the uniform kernel is presented in our results. See Diebold and Mariano (1995) for details. We used Stata 17 software for our computations using the dmariano script (StataCorp 2017).

As shown in Figure 3, the McIntosh team series results in an average monthly forecast error of 26.8 sunspots. For the NNI forecast, the average monthly error is 45.3 sunspots. The McIntosh team forecast is 18.73 sunspots more accurate on average each month. The D-M test shows that this is statistically significant: the McIntosh forecast is significantly more accurate than the NNI prediction for the first half of Cycle 25. The most recent surge in monthly sunspots during 2024 was predicted by both forecasts but the McIntosh predictions were more on track in the graph with those observations.

The second panel of Figure 3 contains the percent form (MAPE) of the forecast errors for each group’s projections. The McIntosh forecast averaged a 25.4% monthly error, lower than the NNI expert panel’s 38.3% error each month. This is a 12.9% difference between the two, reflecting a statistically more accurate forecast (p=.0000).

The Solar Flux Index (SFI) is also a critical index for propagation. It rivals the SSN in importance for daily HF operations. We use this forecast to complement the ones for monthly sunspots. The SFI graph is in Figure 4. For NNI, all monthly errors are on the high side whereas the McIntosh team’s hover on the low side of zero (i.e., matching the observed SFI). Both anticipated the rise upward during the summer months of 2024 but were off in their respective predictions. Over the first-half of Cycle 25, the McIntosh forecast averaged 25.65 Index points closer to the observed SFI (17.2 vs. 42.9). The D-M test suggests that this is a significant edge in favor of the McIntosh prediction (p= .0000).

Putting the SFI forecast errors in percent form, the lower panel illustrates a consistent over-prediction of the monthly Solar Flux Index by both. The NNI’s numbers are visibly off-base by 20 percent or greater in the graph. Some segments of the McIntosh predictions are also off by 10 to 20 percent. Overall, however, the average percent error is 27.8% for the NNI forecast and some 16.6% less for McIntosh at 11.2%. As with the MAE metric, this difference in percent form is statistically in favor of the McIntosh series (p = .0000).

In short, the McIntosh team has empirically superior forecasts for both monthly sunspots and the Solar Flux Index, two leading indices for propagation used by amateur radio and many other spheres of radio transmission practice. They are uniformly statistically significant in favor of the McIntosh theory-driven approach as compared to the expert panel forecasts from NNI.

Evidence of Paradigm Change Through Bibliometric Analysis

To examine evidence on other scientists adopting the new McIntosh team paradigm, we used methods of bibliometric citation analysis (De Bellis 2009: Chapter 8; Prabhakaran et al. 2018). This is a set of methods used to measure the impact and influence of scholarly works through the patterns and frequency of citations in various contexts (Andres 2009; Alphasoft.com n.d.). This set of metrics measures the behavior of the scientific community toward the competing paradigm which Kuhn (1962) shows is the key to paradigm change.

Traditional citation counts from the print medium tend to be much slower than scientific discovery is actually produced because of the circulation of print media (De Bellis 2009: Chapter 8). Because of this, alternative metrics were developed to measure how Internet-based tools enhance the sharing of scholarship. These tools include paper pre-print servers, online exchange of papers, and other discussion networks that are in daily use to stay abreast of the latest emerging knowledge. These “alternative metrics” including social media and online publishing are used in this part of our analysis through the Altmetric system (see Astrophysics Data System).

Following Kuhn’s approach to paradigm-change, we studied the two papers that the second author identified as the exemplars (Kuhn 1962) introducing and illustrating his team’s competing paradigm. The Astrophysics Data System (or ADS) maintained by Harvard University on behalf of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant was the source of our citation analysis. The ADS system (available at (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/) facilitates meta-analysis of papers in astrophysics with both bibliometric computation and visualization of results. We utilize this system to analyze citation and discussion metrics for both exemplar papers as well as all publications for the leader of this scientific team (the second author here). While we do not report a full bibliometric analysis (for example, see Prabhakaran et al. 2018), the compilation of citation metrics does suffice to gauge the initial attention and influence that this competing paradigm is having on the field of solar physics and amateur radio itself.

Figure 5 summarizes these metrics for the two exemplars. The first paper, introducing the overlapping Hale magnetic activity cycles and the relationship they have to sunspot amplitude, has 73 total citations. The bar chart on the upper right shows the trends in citations for this paper (note that 2025 is not yet fully realized). The scientific output analysis by Altmetric gives it an “attention score” of 858. This ranks number one of almost two thousand articles in the journal. Among over one-half million articles published during the same period, it ranks 813. It is in the top 5% of all research ever tracked by Altmetric.

The second exemplar introduced the Terminator timing construct, illustrating it using all the data on sunspot cycles in existence, by associating it to patterns within the 22-year Hale Cycle. This paper extended the first exemplar’s idea of potential causes of the amplitude by adding a conceptual basis for what “kick starts” the next cycle. This paper has 18 citations, moving up quickly in the year after publication as shown in the bar chart. It has an attention score thus far of 654. This article is ranked number one of almost 1,600 articles in this leading journal, Solar Physics. By comparison to about one-half million articles published in the field at the same time, it ranks 999. More importantly, it too ranks in the top 5% of all research articles scored by Altmetric.

Turning to all papers published by this scientific team’s leader, Figure 6 summarizes the same type of citation analysis. Emphasizing the period of 2020-2025 for when the competing paradigm was introduced, there are 457 papers considered in this figure. There are 5,901 citations of these papers, only a thousand of which are self-citations, necessary to build and continue a line of scholarship. The citations by other scholars are the key element for exemplar adoption. There are about two thousand citations, “normalized” to the volume of other articles published around the same time. This puts the citation patterns into the context of the scientific problem as a comparison to numbers of citations per se (see the ADS website for details). The bar chart extends the scope prior to the year 2020 to check the scholarly output by this team’s intellectual leader. The result is a steady increase in citations by other scientists in peer-reviewed papers, an indication of a very productive scholar growing in a career that is being recognized by other scientists in their own work.

The H-index is the most popular one in use for scientific comparisons. A value for H means that the author has that number of papers that are each cited by a minimum of the same number. The H-index number in Figure 6 increases prominently in 2020 to about 45, continuing through 2025. Note that an H-index value of 40 is outstanding and over 60 is exceptional (Hirsch 2005).

The read10-index reflects a decade swath of readership citations of the author’s publications. It shows the works published in 2010 (pre-paradigm introduction) and 2020 (paradigm introduction) as having the highest values, well over 100. This trend line shows the immediate interest in the author’s works over a long period of time (a decade), a sign of prominence in science.

The i100-index, however, might be the most illustrative for our purpose to ascertain how the paradigm is being adopted by others in this field of science. It illustrates the number of publications with at least 100 citations, a challenging hill to climb in science. The growth in the (purple) i100 line shows that a minimum of 100 citations for papers by McIntosh steadily increases after 2015 but especially after 2020, the year of publication for the first exemplar paper. This is also indicative of movement toward paradigm-adoption by others. The tori-index corroborates this trend as his papers become central citations by other scholars. The i10-index began to also spike when the 2020 paper came out and continued after the second exemplar appeared. This index surpasses 130, suggesting that many papers by the author have been each cited by a minimum of 10 other authors.

The bibliometric portion of our analysis shows strong evidence that the peer scientific community is heavily engaged in the competing paradigm. The two exemplars have been substantially growing in peer citations to a level of prominence. They have garnered the top attention in the respective scientific journals where they appeared, no small feat for any scientist. The H-index score shows that the lead scholar producing this new paradigm has reached an outstanding region, further evidence of movement toward direct model competition in Kuhn’s model of paradigm change.

Is There Demonstrable Progress in the Revolution?

Our goal has been to determine if there is Kuhnian movement (Kuhn 1962) toward a revolution in the long-standing paradigm for the sunspot cycle at the midpoint of Cycle 25. We identified two elements of evidence: the empirical superiority of the NNI versus the McIntosh team forecasts and the degree of scientific adoption of the competing paradigm’s exemplary papers.

Using long-established methods in forecast comparisons, our results leave little objective doubt that the theory-driven forecast by the McIntosh team is superior. For smoothed monthly sunspot counts covering the first 32 months of the Cycle, the McIntosh team forecast is 19 spots more accurate, a 13 percent and statistically significant improvement over the NNI numbers. (Note that we used the NNI’s revised forecast after they adjusted to some six months behind their original Panel’s predictions.) We included forecasts for the Solar Flux Index (f10.7) over the same time horizon. The McIntosh team’s SFI forecast is 26 index points or 17 percent more accurate. The empirical superiority, at least at mid-cycle, clearly favors the McIntosh paradigm.

The bibliometric analysis we presented on how the two exemplary papers have been received by the scientific field showed strong evidence of engagement and adoption with the competing paradigm. The overall standing of scholarship by the lead scientist was a second element surrounding this new paradigm. It too demonstrated a clear upturn in citation metrics after the publication of the two exemplar papers.

The citation numbers have been continually increasing since the first (2020) and second papers (2023) appeared in peer-reviewed journals. We noted in Figure 1 the boundary maintenance by keepers of the long-standing paradigm who rejected the original paper in 2012. It took nearly a decade (from 2012 to 2020) of continually increasing the amount of scientific evidence involving the linkages between the Hale Cycle to the sunspot cycle’s behavior to reach a successful peer-reviewed publication. With the observed rapid increase in citations of the two exemplar papers, Kuhn’s concept of a non-linear, revolutionary adoption of a competing paradigm appears indeed to fit the bibliometric results.

To underscore Kuhn’s notion, the more contemporary “attention” metrics for the two exemplars show that each is the number one ranked article in the respective publishing journal. Each is also in the top five percent of all research articles ever tracked by Altmetric. The two exemplars have clearly captured the attention of the field and the associated reporting on it challenging the status quo paradigm.

We find the bibliometric citation results to also be strong evidence that the competing paradigm is indeed now within direct model competition as illustrated in Figure 1. It may well take until the end of Cycle 25 to determine the extent that a paradigm revolution has occurred. It will depend on the continued reception of the McIntosh team’s published results as they continue their research program. This adoption would be spurred along by a continuing forecast superiority during the second half of Cycle 25. Those monthly comparative results are available on the Austrian Space Weather website for all to see.

We likened this study to that of checking the score at half-time of an athletic event. However, we must wait until this cycle is compete to render a full assessment of who wins the scientific competition. We plan to revisit this analysis at the appropriate time. The available evidence at half-time, nonetheless, clearly favors progress in the revolution involving our understanding of the critically important sunspot cycle.

References

Astrophysics Data System (ADS). Online resource [https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/].

Alphasoft.com n.d. “Exploring Bibliometric Methods: Citation Analysis in Research.” Online resource:  https://alfasoft.com/blog/products/scientific-writing-and-publishing/exploring-bibliometric-methods-citation-analysis-in-research/.

Andres, Ana. 2009. Measuring Academic Research: How to Undertake a Bibliometric Study. Oxford: Chandos Publication.

Cohen, Nathan. February 14, 2020. “Are You Ready for the Next Solar Cycle?” https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/are-you-ready-for-the-next-solar-cycle.692443/.

De Bellis, Nicola. Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis: From the Science Citation Index to Cybermetrics. 2009. Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press.

Diebold, Francis and Roberto Mariano, “Comparing Predictive Accuracy,” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 13:3, 253-263, 1995.

Douglas HE. “Reintroducing Prediction to Explanation.” Philosophy of Science. 2009;76(4):444-463. doi:10.1086/648111).

Hirsch JE. (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. PNAS 102(46):16569–72.

Howell, Frank M. and Scott W. McIntosh. 2022a. “On the Cusp of a Scientific Revolution: Part I.” RadCom July: 36-43.

Howell, Frank M. and Scott W. McIntosh. 2022b. “On the Cusp of a Scientific Revolution: Part II.” RadCom August: 76-77.

Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

Luetzelschwab, Carl. n.d. “A Look at All Twenty Three Solar Cycles.” Retrieved from http://k9la.us/A_Look_at_All_Twenty_Three_Solar_Cycles.pdf

McIntosh, Scott W., Sandra Chapman, Robert J. Leamon, Ricky Egeland & Nicholas W. Watkins. “Overlapping Magnetic Activity Cycles and the Sunspot Number: Forecasting Sunspot Cycle 25 Amplitude.” Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. 295 (12), December 2020.

Nichols, Eric P. 2015. Propagation and Radio Science: Exploring the Magic of Wireless Communication. Newington, CT: American Radio Relay League.

Prabhakaran, T., Lathabai, H.H., George, S. et al. Towards prediction of paradigm shifts from scientific literature. Scientometrics 117, 1611–1644 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2931-3.

StataCorp. 2021. Stata: Release 17. College Station, TX.

Theil, Henri. 1966. Applied Economic Forecasting. Chicago: Rand McNally.

With the copyright terms used by The Spectrum Monitor, my cover article in last month’s August issue is now freely available. I’ve put a PDF of the article with cover page and table of the issue’s contents over at FoxMikeHotel.com. I hope you will take a look at it if you do not already subscribe to TSM. Ken Reitz publishes a highly informative magazine in a reasonably priced PDF-only format. It’s more than singularly focused on amateur radio but the hobby sort of drives the car. At $24 a year, it is very, very reasonable.

An Op-Ed piece that I’ve written by invitation from Editor Paul McLane is scheduled to appear in Radio World soon. That is the industry magazine for radio broadcasting and associated technologies and activities. I’m sure that not everyone will agree with my assessment of where both the AM and FM radio industries are on the “death and dying” spectrum. My argument is based on publicly available data from the FCC, Edison Research and Nielsen, plus some thoughts about the industry from various outlets on the Internet. But all are publicly available.

As Paul McLane of RW and I have discussed privately, we do not have a key leading indicator of local media market prosperity available publicly. That is ad-revenue to AM stations in that market. One can license the data at some expense but not publish it. These data are indeed a bread-and-butter product of the collector. Thus, that is that caveat to my findings that this leading indicator is simply not available…unless the vendor releases it.

My argument is that even with this omission, the outcomes of AM ad-revenue within the local media market are not (yet) manifested in levels of annual shutting of AM stations or audience reach to warrant a prognosis of the death of the industry. It may be worthy to state that this might be a valid prognosis in some local media markets as my analysis shows. The famous author Stephen King’s closure of several AM stations appeared in the New York Times as a sign of the death of AM radio. As Allan Wiener, owner of WBCQ shortwave and several AM stations in Maine wrote me, this is a very struggling local media market. It is not a national issue.

The annual percent change of both AM and FM stations from my article is reproduced here. Yes, there has been about a 1% annual decline in station licenses since 2010. One percent per year. It has also been apparent that FM station licenses have been in a similar pattern of decline. Thus, whatever the local media market ad-revenue to AM stations is, FM radio is also suffering some small annual decay as well. Things are not unique to AM radio, regardless of the myriad of statements that AM is “dying.”

The alternative thesis that I show evidence supporting is consistent with Wiener’s observations. It is not a national trend but a “shake-out” in some local media markets. As I show, even after market size and audience reach is controlled, the absolute number of AM stations is a better predictor of the number of station licenses relinquished over this period of time. This also holds true for FM station closures, something that adds stronger support for the shake-out interpretation since it not unique to AM broadcasting in local media markets (called DMAs).

One question that arose to Editor Ken Reitz of TSM after my article appeared came as an e-mail letter from John Schneider W9FGH. He questioned whether the numbers were skewed by “licensed and silent” AM stations. I produced the map of L&S AM stations below using the FCC LMS for licenses tagged as such. My narrative response appearing in the September 2025 TSM issue is reproduced verbatim below in italics. I greatly appreciate thoughtful questions like this from John W9FGH, a long-time contributor to TSM and its predecessor, Monitoring Times.

My response to the Editor, published in the September 2025 issue, with a note that Ken sent me some National Radio Club information on listener reports on “licensed but silent” AM stations:

As you know, it’s important to have some basis for comparison when focusing on one narrow phenomenon so as to avoid siloed thinking. If ‘licensed and silent’ status AM stations are an indicator of ‘dying’ markets, then the FM broadcast industry is in as much or more trouble than is AM! According to the FCC’s Licensing and Management System (LMS) as this is written, there are 130 Full Power AM stations in the LMS status. But there are more (148) Full Power FM stations in this license category. These include 101 Full Power, 43 Low Power and 9 Booster stations. The upshot to me is that ‘silent’ stations have an unknown basis. Temporary financial issues, death of owner while license is active, storms putting them off the air, and so forth.

My market ‘shake-out’ thesis, which Allan Wiener seems to also embrace from his experience in a challenging media market [author’s note: see Allan’s letter to me reproduced by TSM in the September 2025 issue], would actually be buttressed if the LMS AMers are in DMAs where more outright cancellations occurred (they may be on the skids but have not lost or turned in their license yet). I produced the map which has a base of DMA-level number of AM cancellations for the years 2010-2025. The 130 AM stations that are tagged ‘Licensed and Silent’ in the FCC LMS as this is written are overlaid as points, symbolized by blue stars.

I’ve not done a tabular summary but here’s what I see here. There are few ‘silent’ AMers in DMAs with the lowest number of cancellations over the 15-year period. Most are in markets with the higher numbers of AM cancellations.

On the NRC reports, these may well be very prescient. But note that a listener report that s/he hears nothing on a given date gives preference to close-by listeners as these stations aren’t likely the Clear Channel occupants. It may be an indicant of full non-operation but it could also be temporary until it reaches the FCC list as shown above. We do not know.

Without doing the extended analysis, my take on these data is that, should I add them into the officially cancelled AM licenses, it would only make the results stronger with regard to the ‘market shake-out’ interpretation as well as point to the FM sector as having as much of a problem as does AM. The totals of another 130 AM stations would change the absolute numbers by about 3 percent, but not the conclusions.

So I hope you take the time to read the TSM article in full. We need less heat and more light on issues like this. While no study is complete enough to reach closure on the issue, it is enough to state with care and reason that there is no public evidence that AM broadcasting is dying. Rather, it is changing with several local media markets facing serious challenges to remain profitable. The same goes for FM broadcasting as my analysis illustrates.

The Departments of Communications and Continuing Education at Georgia College & State University are hosting me for a public talk on this study during their Student Media Day on October 17, 2025. We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the college FM station I founded back in 1975 as WXGC, now WGUR. If you are in the area of Milledgeville GA, you are invited to attend.

CHOTA 2025 is nigh!

Here in the U.S., Churches and Chapels on the Air is a new concept. I was fortunate to play a leading role a couple of years ago in herding a few cats on this side of the pond to get on the air in this very special event. It’s led, for over a half century now, by WACRAL, The World Association of Christian Amateurs and Listeners.

Even though most US operators will grouse about the propagation over the past few months with all of the solar storms, we are at the high point in Cycle 25. And this makes the opportunities to jump the Pond from the US to England possible! Let’s give it a go…

This year, I’m activating Covenant Presbyterian Church on Ridgewood Road in Jackson, MS. This is in partnership with Jim Armstrong AK5J, President of the Jackson ARC. He and I will work with Chris AF5OQ and Wanda (KC5IBO) Dunn as a team using my portable contest station (see below).

I am not sure of which antenna we will use. It’s likely that a 31′ vertical will get us 40M and up (see below). We shall see as Jim and I scope out the church grounds for a place in the shade (lol). In 2023, my church got front-page coverage on the state’s largest newspaper as well as a human interest feature on Jackson MS TV. It’s worth a shot to get the word out about ham radio on the church grounds this year. It could pay off big time for you, your club or other group.

We will likely hang out on 20 meters, although most of the Brits settle on 40M and some 80M. Our team will monitor 40M and QSY when we hear some CHOTA calls. I’ll suggest to John G3XYF who coordinates the event to encourage those operators in England to check the 20M calling frequency at the top of each hour and call the US. John usually posts some suggested frequencies near the date for each band. It’s important to recall that the English hams are about 5-6 hours ahead of us in the day. Our team plans an early start to try to jump the Pond if conditions permit!

Here’s a screenshot of the CHOTA Rules…and don’t forget to “register” by sending John [email protected] that you’ll be operating in the event. I’ve just done that myself.

Ground-mounted verticals are all the rage these days in portable HF operations. This is particularly true in POTA activations. We all like to get extra mileage out of our verticals in terms of their frequency range and efficiency, no?

One method is to add an inductor to the radiating element to extend what its length looks like for RF resonance. Some versions of this are to bottom-load the vertical (Wolf River Coils does this with their Sporty Forty coil) as well as center-load it (as does Chelegance does with some of their JPC line of verticals). There are top-loaded designs, too.

An issue the portable HF operator might face if they create their own vertical antenna system is determining the value of the inductor coil. I’ll walk through this briefly to illustrate one problem that many vendors create for them in their product offerings.

Shown above is a center-loaded vertical that I’ve designed. It’s called the Eiffeltenna because of the similarity to the Eiffel Tower from the tripod legs. The details will be forthcoming once it is fully tested but the focus in this article is is that it is center-loaded as the inset photo illustrates.

What inductance value should I use? It all depends on the band, height before the coil’s insertion, and the total height of the vertical itself. Oh, and the ground and counterpoise element can play a role as well. Here, I’m using a 42″x35″ sheet of Faraday Cloth on a washed gravel driveway next to my garage. While this is far from good ground conditions, it functions very well as shown in an RF sweep below.

There are a number of calculators to help hams answer these questions. One is from 66pacific.com. I’ve placed a screenshot of the calculations for this test antenna below. The design goals are for the 40 meter band (7.0 MHz). But I also want to get 20 meters available, too. The total height of the antenna is specified as 16.75′. The coil is inserted at 7.5′ so what is the value of the required inductor to make a 20 meter vertical resonant on 40 meters here? According to this calculator, we need a coil that measures 12.1 micro-Henries.

One option is to simply build a fixed (non-adjustable) coil for this value. There are many online coil calculators for this. It is a desirable option unless there might be another band or the ground counterpoise system is very different or something else that changes things here. The other option is to purchase a coil from a number of vendors. One gotcha: very, very few actually tell the customer the inductance value for their coil (or the range if it’s an adjustable one)! They usually just say it’s “for 40M” referring to their own commercial antenna product for which it is an accessory.

Since I have several coils like this, I used one of my calibrated bench LCR meters (HP 4275a @ 200 KHz) to measure the value or range of values for several commercially available inductor coils. The results are in the table below. I have included three adjustment settings for the variable coils and the Q value. One definition of Q is “The quality factor (Q factor) is defined as the ratio of reactance to resistance, indicating efficiency at a given frequency.” For us, the importance of Q is “A higher Q value signifies lower losses and better suitability for high-frequency applications, as it implies a smaller ratio of resistance to inductive reactance.” So Q is an additional measurement about that inductor’s value that shapes how effectively it works.

While the MFJ open-air coil is no longer being manufactured, it is in wide circulation in the amateur radio community. It has a wide range, from 0.4 to 17.1 uH with corresponding Q values of 0.5 to 5.8. While the Mad Dog adjustable coil (sturdily built, I might add) has a wider range (0.73 to 28.3), it has somewhat low Q values (0.3 to 0.6). The Chelegance JPC-7 also has a wide range of inductance settings, from 0.5 to 22.8. Like the Mad Dog coil, the JPC-7 Q values are not great at 0.33 to 0.18 (double checked this figure). Here’s where one coil, larger than the rest, shines in this table. The Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet 1000 has values from 2.73 to 80.3, allowing a larger frequency range for loaded vertical antennas. Equally impressive is that the Q values range from 4.3 to 13.5 at the same time. All of these adjustable coils would fit the requirement of adding a 12.1 uH value at the center point of the vertical antenna shown above.

I included another coil from Wolf River, their fixed value Sporty Forty. They don’t tell the buyer what value it is, just that it’s an accessory for their ground-mounted whip antennas to get them to also work on 40 meters. I have two and they’re well built. Their value is 8.3 uH. There is a clone from China that is also 8.3 uH. Perhaps because of different manufacturing processes, the WRC coil has a much higher Q value at 8.6 than the clone from China has at 2.5. For these fixed value coils, it is key to realize what inductance value they have because neither would work in the center-loaded vertical example used here.

There is a very neat “bypass” trick created by Michael KB9VBR, published on his Youtube Channel. My version is shown at left. It’s simply a set of pigtails attached at the top and bottom of the coil with Power Pole connectors on each end. Plug them together, the coil is bypassed. Unplug them, and it’s in the driven element. Takes about 15 minutes or so with materials that you likely already have it you’re an antenna builder. If not, these parts are very inexpensive via online vendors.

This bypass trick can be used with any inductor coil so keep it in mind if you build a center-loaded vertical like I’ve done here. I don’t have to bring down the full vertical whip by unscrewing it, physically removing the coil, and replacing the whip. I can just reach up, plug or unplug the pigtails, and the vertical is either on 20 or 40 meters. This assumes that I’ve already done two things in the case of the Eiffeltenna center-loaded vertical.

Getting it tuned spot-on for 20 meters is fairly easy using the Faraday Cloth for the counterpoise field. It is a precursor for switching in the adjustable coil, such as the JPC-7, as shown above in my driveway. This is so that the coil can than then be adjusted to the correct uH value to load the antenna for 40 meters using an antenna analyzer. Once this is accomplished, marking the coil makes the process almost automatic during setup in the field. Checking it with an antenna analyzer, though, is always a good thing (ask me how I know, lol).

These vertical antennas can be configured in many ways but I hope that this article is useful to the portable operator who wants to operate with multiple band options using a quick setup vertical antenna. The Eiffeltenna, inspired by a tripod experiment published by Jim W6LG on his popular Youtube Channel, and further work by Jason VE5REV, fits that bill. Extend the tripod, add the coil and whip, placed it on the Faraday Cloth rectangle, connect the ground wire to the Cloth and the coax, and you are largely ready to go.

I’ll be publishing more about this very portable antenna once I’ve completed testing it. However, getting a load of the principles in this article applies to many, many vertical antennas. Get a the load of the coil you’re buying before the purchase!

If this kind of personal nostalgia article triggers you, consider watching some cat videos on Youtube instead.

If you were fortunate enough to attend college, think about what you were involved in while there. You could have been an athlete, but the sports team was likely already there when you got your uniform. You could have been a thespian, but the theater group was already performing plays when you arrived. You could have played in the college band, but it was already making music when you got there. I could continue but for the vast majority of my readers, you were likely participating in a group that existed perhaps long before your enrollment. Consider though something you may have organized or created during your college years.

Is it still there and a going concern?

If you’ll pardon my trip down memory lane in this column, I’ll tell you the story of what happened during my undergraduate years involving radio. It shaped the rest of my life. My picture during college is shown at left. I fit right into the style-of-the-day. I didn’t spend much on haircuts. I had two pair of blue jeans and a single pair of dress pants my junior year. Sears had a sale on “moon shoes” for $10. I bought two pair (or $5 per foot!). I was running on thin margins…

This experience helped me greatly during my career in securing grants and contracts, building teams and budgets to support them, and efficient spending to maximize the return on deliverables. But I had no idea back then. I was just trying to get by as a prospective first-generation college graduate.

During my freshman year at Georgia College (Milledgeville GA), I was at a dining table in the basement of Terrell Hall. It had a dungeon-like atmosphere with the carnival-like scene that the Viet Nam/Hippie era provided. It still does have the dungeon aura, I’m told by a current student, even after the massive renovation a few years ago. A conversation I had one evening with Keith Jones, a student a year ahead of me who would later become President of the College Government Association. GC had been an all-female school just six years earlier so the administration had a “college” rather than a “student” government association. They changed their mind a few years later. Over dinner, Keith and I were bemoaning that “suitcase college” meant little action on the weekends. What would liven things up? We need a college FM radio station to create a sense of community on campus! He laughed. I didn’t.

As I reflect, I think I was like a dog with its first bone, just not letting go of the idea even with some other students treating it like a light-hearted joke until it was actually on the air. I was fortunate that enough others did not. That was over 50 years ago now.

It wasn’t there before I arrived but the four years of developing WXGC-88 Rocks taught me so much more than I learned in the classroom. But I did put classroom learning to work. And I made lifelong friends along the way.

Getting Through by Working..and Working

I worked several jobs to pay my way through college, like running the John Milledge Motel during the overnight shift. It was then a notable 1950s and 60s style motel, even a landmark of sorts. I ran the desk from 10pm until 6am. That meant I ran the place as the only staff on duty. Yes, I seemed to always have an 8am class on the “quarter” system of scheduling. Like Professor Ed Dawson’s very challenging English Literature class. He pushed the hell out of me but only he saw what I was gaining at the time. I sure as hell didn’t, until later. He helped set a standard for excellence for my own activities…and those of my future students. He is one of my undergrad profs who still looms large in my mind but especially in my heart because he expected things of me I did not realize I could do. Professor Dawson was an indelible imprint for me later as a professor myself.

I did a lot of homework during the overnight, in between getting truckers back on the road at the odd hours they asked for a wake-up call and wives calling with a demand to know if their #$*) husband had a room there. I’d check-out the cash drawer to the manager at 6am, run back to my apartment right across the street from campus for about an hour’s shut-eye, then listened to the news from Radio Australia on a Hallicrafters S-108 shortwave radio while I got cleaned up to make it to my first class at 8am. Radio Australia always gave a fresh perspective on the world news, especially for stories covering the United States. I learned later that the propagation path from the States to AussieLand was best during that time of day. Milk and a warm donut (I favored the ones with shaved coconut, chocolate and nuts, still warm) were eaten in a brief pass through the dining hall. There are many stories from that job, few of which I can convey explicitly here and keep a family rating. But here’s the flavor of it.

The motel was featured in the novel Fatal Flowers by Rosemary Daniell. Her book was circa 1974. I could have rented her the room she describes in this excerpt but I do not remember her from that time. Besides, she wasn’t famous then, not that I would have known since that was far from my reading genre.

Somehow, the author’s rendition of the room she was staying in still rings a bell, as do the “eight-dollar an hour” rooms that I rented, located in the rear of the John Milledgeville Motel. The first name is an authentic metaphor for the — ahem — target market for that segment of the property. Getting cussed out by a trucker when I forgot his wake-up call helped fill out my vocabulary, so to say. If you’ve ever seen an old hotel clock with pegs to set alarms every fifteen-minutes, you know how I could occasionally screw this up. When you’re responsible for the schedule of others or the security of their hotel registration, you learn how to take better care of your own.

I also worked in the campus bookstore for Bob Thrower, one of General Patton’s jeep drivers during WWII. Patton went through jeep drivers like heavy smokers got through packs of cigarettes. But Mr. Thrower was kind, taking a liking to me. I learned a lot about the retail book business by ordering all of the textbooks for faculty courses. The used book market was just heating up with a new text being sold 3.5 times on average after the original sale. The profit margin was far higher for the used copies than the new ones since all of the initial cost-to-print had already been invested. Storage and resales labor were the main input costs. I knew the Follett Book Company’s regional rep by first name.

Little did I know then that I would later work as an editor for both the oldest academic publisher (Taylor & Francis; 1798 founding) and the largest scientific publisher (Springer Media). This retail experience kept me grounded in how the business side of publishing houses worked which fostered the editorial side’s ups and downs. While I had been writing for print since I was a teen, continuing until today, becoming an editor gave me a different perspective on the writing and publishing process. But Patton Jeep-Driver Bob Thrower, always with his pipe nearby, showed me what the boots-on-the-ground of book sales was like. The bookstore is now outsourced to Barnes & Noble.

There were a few other jobs along the way, like being a summertime factory floor fill-in at Lapp Insulator Company in Sandersville GA. They make those discs that are stacked together to provide insulation on high voltage power lines. For extra pay, I got to grind the spurs off of the rejected metal caps that are glued onto the top of the ceramic discs. (That’s helped me immensely today in working with steel and aluminum.) I got that job because the father of a long time friend was in management. The son, Dr. Phil Brantley, is now a professor at LSU. That very physically demanding work, and getting to know the guys whose lives were already molded around it, really taught me that geometry just wasn’t as hard as I was making it out to be. To boot, doing geometry was mostly done in doors where there’s air conditioning, unlike a factory floor where baking insulator caps in sub-floor rooms made steam a full-time environment.

Working at Johnson’s Texaco Station just down the street from the John Milledge Motel for a friend of my family gave me another molding work experience, ranging from changing truck tires and water pumps (with no experience to do either) to meeting the public’s request to “filler-up, please and could you wash my windows and check my tires?” No matter how hot and grimy I was, the most valuable lesson was to give customer service since they were ultimately why I had a job I needed at the time.

I periodically put up stock in the Piggly Wiggly grocery store next to campus, being recommended by my former manager at the store in Sandersville GA where I worked while in high school (now a Harvey’s Supermarket). I was on duty late one afternoon when I heard some murmuring on the aisle opposite the shelves I was replenishing with #8 cans of Margaret Holmes Peas. In a minute, I saw Cher and Gregg Allman pushing a cart down my aisle! Rumor had it that they were renting a house at nearby Lake Sinclair since he lived and recorded at Capricorn Records in Macon GA. I kept my cool and just watched music royalty out of the corner of my eye as they clearly didn’t want attention. The peas were produced in Sandersville at Holmes Canning Company before later being sold but the grandson of Margaret Holmes was my first Elmer (more on Mike Holmes here).

I’m not sure how I found the time and energy to focus on the campus radio station but I did. It was a passion. Moreover, I got my PhD in sociology and statistics so geometry — whether it’s on network centrality of social groups or spatial networks of transportation routes — became part of my professional life as a result, lol. I can thank the factory job making high voltage insulators for that. I also think that the various jobs I had gave me the desire to simply not take no for an answer when it came to getting a campus FM station in place. Just take the next step and get to tomorrow.

Getting WXGC-88 Rocks on the Air

With a lot of help from some other students, a couple of faculty members and two administrators, we got this across the goal line right after I had graduated. Here’s how it went.

The college administration’s Comptroller was against it because he thought it would lead to more financial requests. He who controls the purse strings…well, you know the rest of that story. That was the first hill to climb.

There was a big step each year, like my reconnecting with Roy Lane against whom I’d played basketball in high school. Roy and I became fast friends, him getting elected CGA President with me being highly involved in the CGA Senate. This strategy was all about our getting positions on the Student Activity Budget Committee where we could get money allocated to buy equipment for the FM station. The first strategy was to crack the voting block of an equal split between student and faculty/administration positions. Roy and I got two faculty to agree to block-vote with us, giving us the ability to force funding for the campus FM station on those in the administration who were largely negative on the idea. Bill Eddins, the Comptroller, was so tight he squeaked when he walked down the wooden floors in Parks Hall. (I’m sure they laughed, too, like Keith Jones did in the dining hall.)

However, the Dean of Students Office did back us after Roy and I gave them our pitch and what we thought it would do to create a better campus community. That is their business, right? Roy learned during his internship in D.C. to play to the interests of those whose vote you are courting. I traveled with Dean Carolyn Geddes to Valdosta GA to see WVVS at Valdosta State. The manager later became the voice of WTBS, Ted Turner’s Super Station, before James Earl Jones took over that work when it became CNN. Visiting WREK at Ga. Tech was another trip and one with a double entendre! I’ll leave it there but both college stations were really educational to see what motivated undergrads could do if allowed to. Unfortunately, WVVS was taken over by the school’s administration in 2010, moving the students out of the way for an affiliate of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Later, Assistant Dean of Students Bill Fogarty worked with Gregg Duckworth to get the final license in place to get on the air for good. This was after I left town to attend graduate school.

I now know what the Dean of Students was feeling by facilitating a motivated student who was not going to take no for an answer. I felt it later when I became a professor by opening doors for students hungry to achieve success. That dog bone was held onto even tighter afterwards because of the acknowledgement and endorsement of Dean Geddes. Another lesson learned outside the classroom.

Figuring out how to file a license application to the FCC for a 10-watt station at a higher education institution was the largest, multi-year “term paper” I wrote during college. Roy, who served under MS Congressman Trent Lott as an Intern in Washington DC, was able to get some key intel on the application process. Roy later became City Manager of Spartanburg SC, leading that city’s turnaround before rapidly succumbing to esophageal cancer. Another great friend, unfortunately lost far too soon at age 47. An accolade by the Mayor was true to form for Roy as he honed those skills while a student:

Lane, who was in his sixth year as city manager, was regarded by his colleagues as an innovative thinker who helped foster a new wave of development in the city. “He came to Spartanburg on a mission — to make Spartanburg the most livable city of its size,” Talley said. “He worked hard to make that vision come true. That’s the legacy he left here.”

Roy’s political savvy was a terrific role model for me early in life. His work ethic to never quit in the face of temporary setbacks was contagious. It stayed with me as I worked in Washington myself, lobbied my own congressional caucus, and worked with several congressional offices from around the U.S. As Roy used to say: Don’t let your politics get in the way of your politics.

Gregg Duckworth was my roommate and was a rock-and-roll music nut. Knew all the music, much better than I did. Still does. He became equally committed to getting this application filed, approved and the station built. He gained more of a responsibility than he may have been considering at the time but do it well, he did. I may have been the quarterback but it was Gregg who got the ball over the goal line. Always acknowledge the work of others and your team will likely win if you define the focus as the goal instead of what you accomplish as an individual. I learned that from Roy who practiced it in college and in his career.

Four years later, WXGC-88 Rocks signed on the air. I had left town for graduate school two weeks prior. My voice was never heard on the station I founded. Until recently. My roommate, Gregg Duckworth (picture left), became the first on-air General Manager of the college FM station with all of it’s mighty 10 watts of power after I left for graduate school.

The first music donated to WXGC came from a licensed amateur radio operator, recently becoming a Silent Key. Charles Pennington K4GK owned a bookstore with music in downtown Milledgeville. When I told him about the FM station just up the street from his shop, I told him that we could mention his shop if he donated albums. He thought about it and handed me this light brown album, saying: “Listen to this. He’s gonna make it in rock-and-roll.” It was Jackson Browne‘s first album. Charlie was indeed right with JB becoming one of my favorite musicians. Years later after I became licensed, I reconnected with Charlie, learning that he had moved to my hometown of Tennille GA. He and his wife lived on Main Street, just a couple of blocks north of where my grandparents lived, back when telephone numbers were simple, like “24”. He passed away in September 2024. RIP OM.

But First, Get a Commercial AM Station On the Air

During my senior year and for a few months after I completed my coursework, I helped three local businessmen—an attorney, a car dealer, and a laundry owner—build a commercial daytime AM station (WXLX-1060) on Lake Laurel Road, after which I was named News Director. My advice to the owners was that I should not be the Station Manager. I could help organize the building and licensing application but I suggested that a University of Georgia graduate in Broadcasting be hired as Manager since I didn’t know how to run a commercial station. And it was a lot of money involved, at the time.

I had just completed a successful license application for the college FM educational station. How hard could a commercial one be, I asked myself at the time. Young people have no fear! This is why as a professor, I never told undergraduates that anything was “hard” as they can instinctively swing well above their weight. Another lesson from outside the classroom but later taken directly to the classroom.

 I learned so much from Robbie Hattaway, the RF Engineer who worked for the station as Engineer. (Picture Mr. Rogers with a Simpson Voltmeter.) I had dumb questions. He smiled and had deep answers.

I received my Third Class FCC Commercial Broadcast License at the FCC office in Atlanta. I learned so much from Robbie Hattaway, the RF Engineer who worked for the station as Engineer. (Picture Mr. Rogers with a Simpson Voltmeter.) I had dumb questions. He smiled and had deep answers. I never knew how much copper mesh from the North Georgia copper mines it took to make an efficient ground plane for the AM tower antenna. Robbie also taught me how to make sure the 1KW Gates transmitter was operating within specifications. It was a pure thrill to “light the lamp,” as Robbie called it, when I hit the switch to start the broadcast day for this daytime-only AM station.

Don’t get me started on the care-and-feeding of a paper teletype machine that fed us the then-new AP Radio News feed. And to hell with anyone who forgot to add a new roll of paper to the bail the night before! I kept a roll of quarters in my desk in case that happened or the teletype just jammed, leaving me without any morning news feed. Before sign-on, I’d run downtown to the newspaper racks in front of the Post Office, buying copies of the three papers they sold in the racks there. I’d get back in time to sign-on with a literally rip-and-read newscast.

I became an AP Bureau Chief for the Central Georgia area very quickly, largely because AP had just moved into supplying radio news, competing with the well-established radio service, UPI. I suspect in hindsight it only took being a News Director and the ability to fog a mirror. I had clear plans to remain in the news business as I made the rounds of the Milledgeville Police Department, City Hall, local businesses, and broke stories like the state Women’s Prison takeover by the inmates or the bootlegging scandal at the VA Hospital. I received a regional award from the AP for that thirty-minute special report on the Women’s Prison. But, alas, the AP Editor in Atlanta “took” my story from the wire and it came out under his byline in the leading newspaper, the Atlanta Constitution. He did this again to the naive cub reporter that I was at the time, leading to my accepting a offer to attend graduate school out of state when the call came.

The 1060 News operation is long defunct now, after being sold a few times, but we stole the local market from the beginning by getting all of the surrounding county weekly newspaper editors to be stringers for me. I stumbled into that one but it worked brilliantly. I’ve had the good fortune to continue work with various news outlets, largely in “precision journalism,” including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It gave me a grounded start when I later taught a course on the sociology of news at TCU.

Back to the Future of WXGC

The campus FM station wouldn’t have happened without Gregg getting the ball over the goal line. But I’m not sure it would have happened without me being like a dog with a bone, not letting go of the idea. It was a team effort although I got the plaque as Father of the Radio Station from the school. The fact that we created something entirely from scratch, taking our full undergraduate tenure (and part of Gregg’s M.S. degree), that is still going after a half century now has been very meaningful for me. It’s been a keepsake that remains even after many other recognitions and achievements have faded away. Those who came afterwards have done more than Gregg and I did. Managing the ups-and-downs of student participation, collective engagement without too many splinters in the group hindering things, all contributed to the changing part that this FM radio station has played in a small college town but in a growing and vibrant University.

From the 1975 college Spectrum Yearbook, here is the first picture of the group that signed on to this “joke” of an idea that I had my freshman year in the basement of Terrell Hall. The Maxwell Student Union had opened by the time this photo was taken. We had “practice” to become DJs there by using a mixer board, mic, and news announcements with music over the PA system. Lame, by comparison, for sure but it was what we had so the “Maxwell Mouth” was heard throughout the Union. Oh yea, Gregg and I lived across the street in a roach palace apartment. It meant that the Union was our practical living room most days.

I had another part-time job on a couple of weekends a month working at the desk just on the other side of this brick wall we are standing in front of in the yearbook picture. Heck, I even got to play chess with the college chess team. The other three were nationally-ranked chess players. I checked-out the chess sets from the Student Union desk and just filled-in to have a fourth. We were coached by Ruben M. Shocren who had played Bobby Fischer to a draw in 1959 during a tournament in Buenos Aires. Mr. Shocren was in management for a local textile company, as I recall, and was a volunteer coach for the group. I learned a lot from him and the others but never became a good chess player myself. Everything that comes you way isn’t the path for you. Stay on building the FM station and keep focused. It has helped me say “no” to many opportunities over the years that were off the path I was following. I still follow this principle in amateur radio.

A Half Century Later…

After a few decades, WXGC shifted frequencies in 2012 and became WGUR 95.3-The Noise. Gregg and I were recently interviewed by Ansley Allen, the current GM of WGUR, about how this all started. The campus FM station has been going strong all these years with over 40 employees and volunteers! It wasn’t there before I arrived but the four years of developing it taught me so much more than I learned in the classroom but it gave credence to what I was getting in class for the real world, too. The added task of earning enough money to pay for college, at a time when a student could make enough at part-time jobs to do that, pushed me to be an effective goal-setter and time-manager even more.

Looking back, I wouldn’t do it again with a full-ride scholarship. I learned how to organize people, create a strategic plan to get the critical pieces together, put together ideas that leveraged the vested interests of two key administrators and, finally, get two faculty members on the Student Activity Budget Committee to always block-vote with the students against the administrators on the Committee. Neither were tenured so it was somewhat of a risk to their future to buck the administration, I learned later as a professor myself. They both were at GC a long time because they each cared about students, took time to know them, and put their interests at heart. This was something I carried with me on my journey as a college professor myself.

I couldn’t be prouder of those who came after Gregg and me during the next fifty years. We are both truly touched. I am certain that we will be for the rest of our lives. Here’s to the staff of WXGC/WGUR for all you have done over the years to … make some noise!

When the WGUR-95.3 The Noise management completes their article, I’ll put a link to it here.

Here’s the promo I produced for us for the 45th anniversary:

From the WGUR-95.3-The Noise website:

Today, more than 40 students make WGUR 95.3 possible. Students are given free rein to play a range of music, sports and news. The station now has an audio power of 100 watts and also streams live online.

WGUR believes in the power and voice of Georgia College students, the station itself is a testament to that. One student had an idea and that idea turned into a movement, a thriving organism, an outlet for freedom and creativity for generations of students that would come after him.