AmateurRadio.com

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!

The Toupee Fallacy is a logical fallacy in which one thinks something is of poor quality because they only notice poor quality instances of it. People can always detect a bad toupee, but good toupees are hard to pick out because they look like real hair.

I used to think all CW bugs and bug operators sent lousy code. They’re easy to identify on the air, often with something like a 10:1 dah to dit length, rather than the standard 3:1 ratio, and a dit speed seemingly 15 WPM or more faster than the operator can handle. Now that I’ve be playing and practicing with my Begali Intrepid bug, I’m convinced the good bug operators are hard to detect on the air because their code is so good it sounds like it’s coming from a CW keyer or a skilled straight key operator.

The Begali Intrepid is a little intimidating at first. It has almost as many adjustments as a color cathode ray TV from the 70s, but once you read the documentation and play around with it, it’s fairly easy to tune the instrument to your liking. With the dual pendulum weights, it’s easy to slow down the dit speed for new bug ops like me.

This article was originally posted on Radio Artisan.

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.

If you’re a workbench ham, you like to measure things. Some like to just get a rough cut while others like to be “nuts” about it. There are groups, like Volt-Nuts and Time-Nuts, who focus more on what’s formally called Metrology. Me? I’m somewhere in the middle but tending toward more precise and reliable measurements, although I do get the Cal Lab magazine each month. Perhaps it’s because I taught classical measurement theory to PhD students for over 30 years and understand true-score theory (e.g., every observed measurement is determined by the “true score” plus some error). Adding multiple observed scores and modeling the errors is something I taught and used for a few decades. Reading Bob Witte’s books from HP as well as Joe Carr’s various texts helped me transfer over the statistical base into electronic measurement issues although clearly I have a lot to learn in this realm.

Building out a good test workbench has been one of my priorities over the past few years. I’ve been inspired by many others, mostly on Youtube, but the IMSAI Guy channel is one of my favorites.

The Soldersmoke Blog says his identity is Michael Cassidy W6UAB in Oakland California. He doesn’t exactly say on his Youtube Channel. Whether this is his real name or not, he is very educational in his videos. I have learned a lot but he’s cost me money! He is a clear workbench Elmer to me. I’ve acquired a couple of professional lab-grade test pieces on the used market for far, far less than what they cost new because he first went through them thoroughly on his Youtube Channel. The first was the HP 4735a LCR meter. Here’s my latest one.

The HP 8714ET VNA is a two port VNA. Yes, I have a few NanoVNAs. In addition, the SDR-KITS VNWA 3SE Automatic 2 Port Model with their MagiCal calibration device. Plus, I picked up a LibreVNA with their LibreCAL device. I recommend R&L Electronics for LibreVNA products. Why would I need another VNA? If you are seriously asking this question, my friend the Smoking Ape has some Cat Videos for you to watch. Because I wanted it is the simple answer, LOL.

Shown above is the 8714ET connected to the eight-port test set with an old Barker & Williamson Model 425 Low Pass Filter as the DUT. I purchased it at a hamfest for $5 to use the case but have not yet.The larger monitor on the right serves dually as a second screen to my PC (HDMI port) and as the VGA output with customizable color from the VNA. This is the conversion loss measurement shown. Note the USB floppy drive under the monitor.

Plus, it’s a device with a lot of features that raise the bar for bench testing. It is monochrome green in the internal display but customizable colorized in the VGA output. It’s remotely reachable by HP-IB (I use an HPIB-to-USB adapter), LAN (internal web server), and via a 3.5″ floppy disk. I purchased an inexpensive USB-based floppy drive for the Dell Precision 1700 PC that runs my workbench. And, yes, the 8714ET will indeed format a 3.5″ floppy to DOS. I suspect that I will retrieve screen images, the underlying data, and Touchstone files via the web interface but, heck, I’m kinda digging having a floppy disk in my Lab. In time, I will use some of the many IBASIC programs written for this line of VNAs. The PS/2 keyboard that I just ordered plugs into the rear of the VNA, making editing or writing IBASIC scripts much easier as well as entry for some features on the VNA.

I’ll let IMSAI Guy’s video playlist on his earlier model (HP 8711C upgraded to an 8712) give you the fuller run down on all the things it will do, especially with IBASIC programs that automatic a lot of testing, storage of calibration data, and so forth. But I added something to mine, the Agilent multiport test set, 8-port, 50-ohm model. I found it for $200 on eBay and it is pristine, almost as much as the 8714ET that I found there from a “junk shop” vendor. Very lucky it seems on this set of purchases.

An engineer friend (N5WDG) gave me some high quality test cables when he built a new house and cleared out some extras from his workbench. Good ones can cost almost as much as the used test gear scored online so I’m grateful for the crate of “stuff” that Thomas N5WDG, a WAN Engineer for AT&T, handed to me a couple of years ago. The connections between the VNA and the multiport test set require a standard DB25 male parallel port cable plus two specific firm metal connector jumpers. I found these new-in-box on eBay for $25 each. So with the $1500 price of the 8714ET VNA added to the multiport test set and cables I purchased, I have about $1,750 in this “like new” lab grade VNA from the 1990s.

One thing that the multiport test set provides is a much easier way to tune filters like repeater duplexers and such. The reference materials for the device lay out the wiring diagrams and how to tell the multiport device to configure the ports remotely from the VNA itself. The 100 db dynamic range will help a lot for tuning the standard 2M and 70cm duplexers that are in common use. Covering 300 khz to 3 Ghz, the 8714ET has up to 1600 data points which allows a more thorough sweep for a given frequency span. Nice.

There are always multiple documents to study on new “old” test gear. Each one has a design theory to the things it claims to measure. There are always quirks that support communities (e.g., HP Test Equipment Groups.io; EEVBlog Forum; Youtube) can education you on to more fully utilize gear like this. I also read the archived HP Journal for articles published announcing the release of gear like this. It’s very instructive to have one or more of the design engineers to outline the theory of the device, detailing how they approached the critical aspects of implementing the instrument. Lots of reading and study ahead!

The “goose and the gander” idiom is well-integrated into American culture. It means, of course, that what applies to one person should also apply to another, essentially stating that everyone should be treated equally. This article uses that metaphor with respect to how the ethics of consistent Bylaw adherence play out at the American Radio Relay League. The goose reflects the hoopla over elections of Board members at the ARRL. The gander is Bylaw 35 and its application to the League employment rules for the Chief Executive Officer.

I received an email from one of my blog readers of the CEO compensation analysis I recently published on this blog. He was really up in arms about the results of an online search. This was done after a local group of hams was heatedly discussing how the League headquarters is managed and Division Directors are selected. This included the proposed changes to that mechanism which some think will result in Directors just being appointed by the CEO. I’ll note that this person has been involved with the ARRL for many years now so he is no stranger to the ARRL’s actions over a long period of time. He sent me two online links that caught my attention as well as his repeating Bylaw 35 from the League website. Let me share what he discovered and why it matters to the membership.

To preface what he found, nonprofit Board members have several fiduciary obligations. We hear a lot about this from the League’s legal counsel and the President explaining various actions by the Board of Directors: the duties of Board members require some action, and so forth. In other words, we “must” take this action because our lawyer says it is legally required of us to do so. Well, that’s a sound argument, if it’s true and not just a cover for intended action otherwise.

One is the Duty of Obedience. This means that Board members must:

• Ensure the organization complies with laws and regulations
• Ensure the organization acts in accordance with its policies
• Ensure the organization carries out its mission
• Avoid unauthorized activities

Thus, Board members must make sure that all Bylaws are followed by the organization and that unauthorized activities are avoided. Sounds simple enough, right? But is the Bylaw policy emphasis involving elections the same as for the others? Is it, as my reader pointed out to me, the same emphasis and due diligence as for the stated employment rules for the Chief Executive Officer? This reader doesn’t think so but decide for yourself after reading below.

It seems clear that the two sets of Corporate Bylaws should be treated as equally important for the governance of the ARRL. The Duty of Obedience seems indeed to fit the goose-and-gander principle specifically. If not, are the fiduciary responsibilities of the Board of Directors being breached? If they do not ensure that the corporation operates in accordance with the policies (Bylaws) — especially given all of the heat on Division Director elections — are they not allowing unauthorized activities? To “look the other way” is a breach of this, no? Well, it would be up to the IRS or a court to officially decide but it surely appears so to any common sense reading.

Should not the legal counsel for the League respond to this inconsistency, if asked? Perhaps the League attorney hasn’t been asked as I am told by a sitting Board member when I inquired about the inconsistency. I am also told that Board members are not allowed to seek counsel from the paid-for attorney for the ARRL but must go through the CEO or President. Hmm. Is that really the best practice for situations like this? What does the whistleblower policy stipulate for an employee to report this violation of the League’s legal Bylaws? Well, we don’t know since that policy isn’t available to the membership.

Should the two sets of Corporate Bylaws be treated as equally important for the governance of the ARRL? If not, are the fiduciary responsibilities of the Board of Directors being breached?

Regarding the goose, there has been a great deal of consternation about electing of Board of Directors in recent years. It has been very heated, indeed. The League has a committee to pass judgment on the existing standards for election to the Board and how each candidate passes muster in their nomination and campaign. They have been busy in recent years, with one Board member exiting the position after a quandary over ethics rules and the practice of them by staff at HQ and by Board members.

The League Bylaws are available at their website. The current Ethics & Elections Committee, appointed by the President, consists of:

• Scott Yonally, N8SY, Great Lakes Division Director (Chair)
• Brent Walls, N9BA, Central Division Director
• Tom Frenaye, K1KI, New England Division Director

There is no need here to repeat the details but the reader may well be fully aware of many of these ethics issues regarding election candidates. (If not, check the embedded links I’ve provided or just do an online search.) The point I raise here is that with all of the heat, and only modest light, over how to operate ethically just to get Division Directors elected through a democratic voting process, shouldn’t similar emphasis be placed on the remaining Bylaws? Is it legitimate for the Board to ignore some Bylaws without formal action taken on the Bylaws themselves?

Turning to the gander, the reader of my blog pointed out some specific Internet search results regarding the CEO. He read through the publicly available information on the ARRL website and on the Internet to see that the CEO’s previous company, Talentrian Partners, was still in business, or so he thought. Here’s the website he sent me:

I checked the State of New Jersey’s corporate database but there is no mention of this company. Perhaps it’s just a stale website that, after three years, has just slipped Mr. Minster’s mind about taking it down. Easy enough to clean up very quickly. if the Board directs him to do so. It does give a clear misimpression that he’s still in the “talent training” business. But, that’s just an oversight as long as there is no further business being conducted there. Nonetheless, it should concern the Board that this public impression isn’t a good look for the League, especially with all of the ethical nuances being established for Division Director candidates.

Why would it be important if there is a side-business operated by the ARRL CEO? With all of the thunder-and-lightning over electing Division Directors, the Bylaws of the Corporation must be followed, no? Let’s look at the one pointed out to me by my blog reader.

I have put a red block around the key sentence in Bylaw 35, pages 9-10, in the Bylaw document as amended through January 2025. It shows a fairly standard employment statement that the CEO shall spend his or her “entire time” devoted to the duties of the office as paid for by the ARRL. In other words, the corporation wants this person’s full-time attention and focus on the job! That’s reasonable and appropriate, isn’t it? If Directors have to run such an ethics gauntlet to make certain that they do not gain any undue advantage with respect to any competing candidates, shouldn’t members expect that the Chief Executive Office follow the Bylaws that are plainly stated? As a former Vice President used to say, You Betcha!

The email from one of my readers, however, went on to point out that he also found a current business that the CEO operates, as a realtor for the famous Berkshire Hathaway firm. I’ve placed a screenshot below from the website address the reader sent to me. Yep, that seems to be the same name and cell number as listed on the Talentrian Partners website, now a defunct former business according to the State of New Jersey.

Moreover, the State of Connecticut shows that he is indeed an active licensed real estate salesperson with a broker he works for in Connecticut. Seems like a “real” real estate salesperson from all public appearances.

It is also very clear that being employed elsewhere is at variance with ARRL Bylaw 35 where he is supposed to devote all of his time to his duties there.

I asked a couple of current Board of Directors about this. They both gave awkward answers to what this blog reader sent me. They said they were never told about this outside employment of the CEO in terms of it happening. It was all after the fact and not anything formal. “Rumors in the hallway,” it was described as being. An associated rumor was that he was simply providing security to his spouse who is also a real estate salesperson. I get that as a husband, for assaults on real estate agents during open houses or other private showings are a known risk. The NY Times (paywall) published a story highlighting the risk, especially for female agents. There is a real estate safety education program, too. It is understandable that someone would have significant concerns about a spouse’s safety in a job setting.

It is also very clear that being employed elsewhere is at variance with ARRL Bylaw 35 where he is supposed to devote all of his time to his duties there.

It is thoroughly confusing, however, as to why the CEO needed to get an agent’s license and be listed as a paid sales agent for Berkshire Hathaway just to accompany his spouse to showings out of safety concerns. Has he been paid sales commissions? Has his wife handled real estate transactions for ARRL HQ members? I don’t know but, if so, it would represent a clear ethical issue, would it not? The Board members I asked about this say it has come up after the fact with the argument by the CEO that “everyone knew about it.” OK, so what? Did the Board modify the Bylaw to allow this? It does not seem so in the January 2025 version on the ARRL website.

The Board members I communicated with on this also mentioned that previous CEO Howard Michel was given permission by the Board to retain his consulting job with an Asian technology company. This was mentioned such that the Board had precedent for giving such permission. But the Bylaw has remained in force! Such “look the other way” actions by the Board do seem at variance with the Duty of Obedience that is legally required for them. There’s little “looking the other way” in some of the Division Director races in recent years with social media being searched for negative comments about the League or the other candidate. Hear that goose honking? This is what it’s about.

Well, is it ethical or not? Can the Board just waive Bylaws without formal action? Since the League and its lawyers have pushed such clear and explicit concerns over the elections process Bylaws, why hasn’t there been a similar concern over Bylaws governing the employment policies of other Officers, like the CEO? Does the CFO also hold a side-gig? We do not know.

This appears to have been an open secret to the Board, the facts of which though are fully public (a blog reader found them in a simple Internet search). Is the Board of Directors failing their fiduciary duty to the corporation by effectively rendering Bylaw 35 null and void if and when they wish to by just looking the other way? Why is there such a different emphasis on election ethics while allowing a clear and specific violation of Bylaw 35 to go unchecked? I believe that inquiring minds would want to know. If you are an ARRL member, let your Division Director know your sentiments. But thus far they have looked the other way.