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Professionally, Iā€™m a retired professor of accounting and former chair of the School of Accounting at the University of South Carolinaā€™s Moore School of Business. My academic work explored how people make decisions in complex systems, especially when information is imperfect or overwhelming. Iā€™ve published in a fair number of journals that few people read voluntarily, and I spent decades thinking about how technology shapes human behavior. These days, my time is divided between managing a small flock of chickens, herding goats, chatting on amateur radio (KO4LMP), and living just on the edge of the gridā€”literally and metaphorically. Iā€™m a father to five daughters, a grandfather to 17, and a great-grandfather to three. Somewhere along the way, I realized that what I enjoy most is simply talking about the world we live inā€”and how to make sense of it.

šŸ“»92-Year-Old Tunes a DIY GMRS J-Pole Antenna

Morning text from dad says (6:16 a.m. his time): I added 12″ to the long element, elevated and taped the pole to the outdoor patio post. I did a better job of laying out the coax and got 1.09 on the SWR meter.

ChatGPT said:

Thatā€™s excellent news.

1.09 SWR is very good, especially for a temporary patio-post setup. Iā€™d tell him:

Stop cutting. Stop changing. Mark everything.

The big improvement probably came from some combination of:

  • getting the antenna vertical and outdoors
  • getting it away from the window/house effects
  • improving the coax layout
  • lengthening the radiator

A 12-inch addition is surprisingly large, so before making it permanent, Iā€™d have him check SWR on:

  • GMRS channel 1 / 462.5625
  • a mid GMRS channel
  • repeater input / 467 MHz, if heā€™ll use repeaters

If SWR stays under about 1.5:1 across what he uses, call it a success.

Given heā€™s 92, Iā€™d especially say: take the win.

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