Cover the Earth

 

The power of advertising – I think most of us would agree, many of our earliest memories involve some sort of advertising. Long before I had any inkling what valves (intake and exhaust, in an IC engine) were, or how important it was to keep them clean, I knew how good STP motor oil was at it. Likewise, from an early age I knew what a powerful tool women wielded, manipulating their husbands’ behavior through judicious selection of coffee brand.

The above pic, or rather an older version thereof, was painted on the wall of a building in Sault Ste Marie, MI, in the 1960s. How long it had been there, and when was it painted over, no idea, but it was there during my early childhood. The building was next to that of my grandmother’s apartment, where mom would drop us kids off in order to do laundry and shopping every week. So, I saw it frequently, and had various “engineering” opinions about it.

Mind you, I knew it was fantasy, and completely unrealistic in terms of physical possibility, not to mention that all life, and pretty much everything else of value on Earth would be destroyed, were the paint company to succeed in carrying out its diabolical scheme. And of course, I comprehended that the idea was to sell enough paint to “cover the earth,” or something like that.

The mid-20^th century, those of you who were around then may attest, was a time of big ideas, and preposterous measuring systems to articulate them. Enough of this could reach the moon and back, enough of those, lined up end to end, could go around the world umpteen times, etc. etc. So the idea of an equivalent amount of paint to “Cover the Earth” was not too far afield.

The other thing that my hyper-analytical young mind stuck on was the size of the can relative to the Earth. I knew that in the graphic, that amount of paint would be far more than you actually needed for the job, or alternatively, if you were to dump that amount of paint on the earth, it would be so thick that it would take the better part of forever to dry.

So, for today’s installment, let’s delve into 3 important questions:

1)     How much paint would be needed to cover the Earth?

2)     How big would the can have to be?

3)     If you dumped a can of paint as large as that in the graphic, how deep would the ocean of paint be?

First, a few practical considerations: The surface of the Earth is not flat, although it’s flatter than you’d think – Mt. Everest and Death Valley notwithstanding, it’s about as smooth as a lightly-used billiard ball. Also, the Earth is not a perfect sphere – it’s a little wider at the equator. & despite the overall smoothness, there are quite a lot of geological features everywhere, not to mention plant life and buildings, roads, bridges, etc. which would consume a lot of paint in their own right. So, let’s do what most engineers and scientists do when confronted with an impossibly complex problem – simplify it through wildly unrealistic assumptions:

1)     The Earth is a perfectly smooth ball

2)     Its surface is drywall, as that’s Sherwin Williams’ main target

3)     Flat vs. spherical – we’ll just ignore curvature

Feel better? I sure do.

Home improvement contractors estimate that a gallon of house paint covers about 400 square feet for a single coat. If you want more detail, you’ll have to ask the exquisite wife of Bruck (EWOB) – she does all the painting. She has rather exacting standards, and through early experience in that endeavor, knows that I don’t. I’ve been accused of strategic incompetence, to which I say au contraire, it’s just good old fashioned incompetence. I am good at a number of things, some of them useful, but painting is decidedly outside of my Venn Diagram.

Let’s say we’re not going to settle for one coat, you need two (that much I do know). So, a gallon will be good for 200 square feet, commensurate with EWOB standards. So, how many square feet are on the surface of an Earth-sized sphere? Geometry!

The radius (r) of the Earth is ~3959 miles (we’re sticking with English units – ‘Murica!).

The surface area of a sphere is 4*pi*r^2 (I’m not using formal mathematical notation because blogspot will almost certainly mangle it).

Thus, the surface area of our drywall sphere, in square miles, is 196,961,284 and change. Converted to square feet (5280 feet in a mile; multiply by 5280^2), it’s (warning: really large number coming!) 5.490965469E15. For those of you who slept through high school math, the E15 means times 10 to the 15^th power. So, five and a half quadrillion, more or less.

In mid-20^th century terms, if square feet were dollar bills, you could make four stacks of them from the Earth to the sun. Of course they’d burn up once you got about halfway there, so I’m not suggesting you actually try this. Side question – when you’re in outer space, which way is up?

Getting back to our little painting project, at 200 square feet per gallon, we’d need 27.45482735E12 of them, so, ~27 and a half trillion. That’s over 41 million Olympic swimming pools! 2 and a half trillion tanker trucks! Equivalent to the amount of water that flows through Niagara Falls for over 14 years! And many more absurd comparisons!

First question answered, onto the next one, i.e., how big of a can would you need? Again, we’re going to make a few simplifying assumptions, namely:

1)     The can has the same relative dimensions as a standard paint can, which are 6.6” diameter (3.3” radius) by 7.5” height. This yields a dimension ratio of r=0.44h, the importance of which will be evident later.

2)     The dimensions of the actual can (thickness, etc.) are negligible.

3)     We’re also going to ignore the fact that paint cans aren’t completely full – they leave a little room for stirring.

That is, we’re going to see how big of a column segment, of the above relative dimensions, would contain 27.5 trillion gallons.

To do that, first we need to convert gallons to cubic linear measurements: 231 in^3 / gal, divided by 12^3 in^3 per cubic foot, yields 3.67E12 cubic feet.

The volume (v) of a column segment is pi*r^2*h, and from the relative dimensions above, that would be pi*(0.44h)^2*h, so h^3=v/(pi*0.44^2), or h=(v/(pi*0.44^2))^(1/3), which resolves to h=18,205.8’, or 3.45 miles. So, a paint can 3.45 miles in height would contain enough paint to cover the earth with two coats. And to complete the visual, the can would be a little over 3 miles wide.

For you east siders, that means such a paint can would cover most of the area between 13 Mile and Big Beaver, from Dequindre to Van Dyke. If you prefer a west side perspective, the area would be between 12 Mile and Maple, from Farmington to Inkster. For those of you not from the suburbs of Detroit, picture any 3-mile square, and how long it would take to circumnavigate it, seeing just about nothing but paint can on one side of you.

Pretty danged large, no? But then picture that against a map of the world, or even North America. Now it seems downright puny. How could that little amount of paint be enough? A huge can to be sure, but it’s still way shorter than Mt. Everest, and you could put it in the Mariana Trench with plenty of room to spare (slowly – we don’t want any tsunamis in SE Asia). How could a can of paint, which would appear as a tiny speck against the backdrop of the entire planet, be able to cover the same, twice?

The answer is our perception of thickness, or rather, relative thickness. Picture yourself placing a gallon of paint in front of a 10’x20’ wall, emptying its contents thereupon in two even coats, and then giving it a good kick down the road (the last part is optional but an important qualification for civil service). When dry, the coating will be about 3 mils (0.003”). Then mentally scale the can size up to a larger wall, then a larger one, etc., until you have a can that would cover the earth. It’d probably be much bigger than 3.5 miles tall (although still not quite the size of the one in the Sherwin Williams ad). Why the disparity? Because unlike the other dimensions, thickness does not scale. Whether you’re painting the spare room or a drywall planet, it’s still 3 mils, which “shrinks” relative to the other dimensions. That probably didn’t help much, did it? Okay then, just trust the math.

Onto question 3, how deep would the deluge be, should a higher power dump upon us the contents of a paint can the size of that in the advertising graphic?

The height of the can looks to be about 1/3 the diameter of the Earth, so, about 2639 miles. Assuming the above relative dimensions, the radius would be about 1161 miles. Recall v=h*pi*r^2, so its volume is about 11.1 billion cubic miles, or ~1.645E21 cubic feet, or ~2.84E24 cubic inches, or ~12.31E21 gallons.

Let’s stick with miles number to compute the depth of the paint deluge. 11.1 billion cubic miles divided by 197 million square miles (note, this is where the importance of ignoring curvature comes into play) yields ~57 miles.

That’s pretty deep, and would easily cover all relief on the Earth’s surface. To picture what this would actually look like, I would first advise, don’t be misled by the graphic. The amount of paint splashing off the North Pole, cascading thickly over the northern hemisphere and equatorial regions, and then falling off in huge droplets below the Tropic of Capricorn (note, the artist was playing fast and loose with gravity here), would require far more paint than that little container could possibly hold. Were you to behold a good-sized classroom globe, about 18” in diameter, 57 miles would add about an eighth of an inch.

Anyway, there’s your answer, 57 miles is the depth of the theoretical ocean of Sherwin Williams paint.

And the final question, not mentioned above, but I’m sure by now it’s burning a hole in your prefrontal cortex: throughout its history, has Sherwin Williams actually sold enough paint to Cover the Earth?

According to cypaint.com, ~16 billion gallons of paint are sold worldwide per year. And per various annual reports, Sherwin Williams, a company that’s been in business since 1866, has a market share of approx. 8.5% in recent years, so, we can presume that they’ve been selling about 1.36 billion gallons of paint per year recently. Disclaimer – don’t hold me to these numbers; just piecing them together from random bits and pieces of difficult-to-find information. In order to estimate the company’s historical paint sales, I’m going to make the wildly irresponsible assumptions that (1) its market share remained constant throughout its history, and (2) total worldwide paint sales has been consistently proportional to population. I realize that this is exceedingly generous, but at least it provides an upper limit. I won’t trouble you with the math this time, but the grand total, under these assumptions, would be about 82 billion gallons, a far cry from the 27.5 trillion needed.

THEREFORE:

1)     We’re all gonna die!

2)     But happily, not by drowning in paint!

First You Cry / Brass Management

 We said goodbye to Gordon* for the last time in late June 2025, and we won’t soon forget him. I say “we” as I think I’m speaking for all of us who knew him as a colleague, friend, family member, or some combination thereof. A colleague at our former mutual place of employment once asked someone who worked for Gordon’s preceding employer, do you remember Gordon, to which he laughed and replied, nobody who’s met Gordon can ever forget him. Amen.

*rule 17 doesn’t apply here, i.e., I think in this case it’s okay to use someone’s real name without their prior consent; see his obituary for more detail: https://storkefuneralhome.com/storke-funeral-home-obituaries/?id=2283

I could write a lengthy tribute to Gordon, but I won’t tire you with that – his obit did a perfectly good job. Instead, I’d like to offer a few unique encounters from which we might all gain something. But first, I’ll ask Percy Sledge to help set the mood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCMdjgaTLDs

I played this for Gordon once at the office when we were testing the audio on a computer. He loved it. During his military career, he had a side hustle as a DJ at the officers and enlisted clubs, and therefore was familiar with a wide range of pop music, but he said the old school R&B that he grew up on was his favorite genre.

Brass Management

Many firearm enthusiasts at one time or another entertain an interest in handloading ammunition, i.e., assembling their own cartridges rather than buying commercial ammo. Various motivations may apply, including, (1) saving money, (2) customizing for accuracy, (3) recycling, (4) a hedge against commercial ammo shortages, (5) the satisfaction of craftsmanship, (6) making ammo for obscure calibers, for which ammo is expensive or difficult to find, and (7) there are probably other motivations that haven’t occurred to me. Let’s discuss 1-6 for now.

1)     Saving Money – somewhat valid but for most calibers it would be at least a few years before you break even.

2)     Customizing for Accuracy – this is valid, but again, you won’t see results overnight. Takes a while to get good at assembly and experimental techniques.

3)     Recycling – not really valid; the only thing that gets recycled is the brass. More on this later.

4)     Hedge Against Shortages – somewhat valid but handloading supplies and components, and equipment as well, suffer the same economics as ammunition. The only winners in this game are those who stocked up on components when they were more readily available.

5)     Satisfaction of Craftsmanship – this is my big motivator, i.e., a creative hobby with practical application. Plus #2 and #4 above apply for me as well.

6)     Obscure Calibers – valid for some handloaders. Ammo for vintage or obscure calibers can be expensive or hard to find. I only own/shoot the “normal” calibers myself, but I do know guys who have some esoteric ones.

Back before Gordon retired, he picked my brain clean on reloading (BTW, reloading means assembling cartridges with used brass; handloading just means doing it with new brass). He had, among scores of other firearms, a 50 BMG sniper rifle which was prohibitively expensive to shoot at ~$5/cartridge. So he wanted to learn to reload, thinking he was going to make inexpensive cartridges for that behemoth. I offered what paltry wisdom I could supply, which was basically, you’re going to spend way more on equipment than you could ever hope to save, and you don’t have the borderline OCD personality necessary to succeed at such an undertaking in the first place.

The other siren song for Gordon was the production rate of the progressive presses (I use single-stage presses myself, for reasons I won’t bore you with). In a progressive press, several things happen with each pull of the ram, and a complete cartridge pops out the end each time. With single-stage, only one or two operations happen with each pull. My point here for Gordon was OK, the progressive press does assemble ammo very efficiently compared to single-stage, but that’s only a tiny percentage of the time you put into the overall process. The biggest time suck is brass management.

Let’s step back a bit for now. Gordon was a retired Army E9 (Sergeant Major), with experience mainly in infantry. Therefore, he was around guns and firing ranges a lot, with a couple of key outcomes: (1) he suffered hearing loss and (2) he loved guns.

Due to the hearing loss, Gordon spoke rather loudly, which initially unnerved me. Apprehension abated when I discovered that the voice was not accompanied by the anticipated overbearing personality. He did have a strong presence but not to anyone else’s particular detriment.

He once asked me, why do people say I’m intimidating? Is it because I’m black? (We were rather candid with each other; my office was unofficially designated the non-attribution zone.) I said no, I think most people around the office are pretty level-headed about race; I think it’s your loud voice and command presence (Gordon was once a drill sergeant in military life as well). We discussed what he might do about it; my general guidance was to just be aware of it and try to not scare people.

Speaking of race, it came up in a different context in 2016 during the presidential campaign. Politically, Gordon was a staunch republican/conservative, but said to me, I don’t think I can vote for Trump because he’s a racist. Personally I tend to avoid politics around the office, but I could see he was distraught, so I advised him to research the topic himself, as the only things I’d heard about Trump’s supposed racism were from the DNC and the media, neither institution being reliably objective during a heated political race. About a week later he came back and said, you’re right, Trump’s not a racist. He’s had many senior-level black employees, and supported black businesspeople. And a bunch of other things – he really did his research!

Getting back to brass management, there are several steps between picking warm brass up off the floor and assembling a cartridge from it.

1)     Cleaning

2)     Inspecting / sorting

3)     Annealing

4)     Resizing

5)     Depriming

6)     Trimming

Cleaning – some reloaders consider this unnecessary; I do it to remove the toxins (part of the attached soot is lead fulminate from the primer), to facilitate inspection, and aesthetics. Two methods for cleaning with which I’m familiar are vibrating and tumbling. Vibrating happens in a hopper filled with crushed walnut shells or similar media with a light coating of cleaning goop. I used to employ this method, but switched over to tumbling when I started getting concerned about lead exposure. Tumbling basically uses a rock polisher filled with water, soap, and polishing agent. Tumbling doesn’t work as well for aesthetics, but is better for removing lead residue, as you rinse everything away at the end.

Inspecting / Sorting – the reloader should inspect every case for cracks or deformities, and of course discard the offenders – you can’t repair a case. Sorting – if you’re trying to maintain optimum consistency, some reloaders will just use one headstamp (brand of brass) per batch.

Annealing – brass becomes harder and more brittle when worked. The neck of a rifle case, from continued expansion and contraction, will stiffen and lose its ability to be crimped to grip the projectile. To restore its strength, it must be annealed, which takes the form of heating it up (just the neck, not the whole cartridge) to a faint glow, and letting it cool slowly. This doesn’t have to be done very often; full disclosure – I’ve never had to do it.

Resizing and depriming – treating these together as they’re usually done with a single die. The ram of the reloading press pushes the brass up into the die to restore it to the proper diameter and squeeze out any nonuniformities. A pin in the center of the die pops the old primer out the bottom, at the top of the ram motion. The reloader should then clean (scrape or brush) the primer pocket with a handheld tool.

Trimming – brass is a “soft” metal, relatively speaking. During the firing event it expands and stretches within the chamber, and then shrinks upon cooling, but not necessarily completely or consistently. Sometimes it stays a bit long (it rarely gets shorter) and needs to be trimmed to a uniform length. A tedious detail beyond the scope of today’s discussion – the importance of trimming depends on the type of crimp you intend to use, which depends on… well let’s stay out of that rabbit hole for now.

Note – some (most?) reloaders do resizing and depriming last; I do trimming last, as the process of resizing can lengthen the brass (the extra metal from squeezing the sides has to go somewhere).

After all this, the brass is ready for reloading.

I won’t go into the rest of the reloading process in this level of detail but will instead just mention the basics: install a new primer, charge the case (put in the powder), install the projectile, and crimp the neck around its base or crimp groove. Voila, a shootable cartridge!

 

Is that all there is to it? Yes. So how do you get “good” at it? Good ammo is safe, has the correct ballistics, and is consistent. To get there, you must (1) get it right, and (2) control the variability. (1) means use a recipe within safe tolerances; (2) means understand the sources of variability introduced by each step of the process, and endeavor to control it.

Needless to say, when I dragged Gordon through all this detail, I think I pretty well talked him out of attempting to reload ammunition. He was plenty intelligent, but attending to the above details was definitely not in his temperament.

One more Gordon story: he worked for the US Army as a civilian, after retiring from active duty, and had a passion for developing a certain type of system for use in the field. He did not succeed at the time, and came to our agency to continue to pursue this goal. He and his team worked valiantly on it for years, but alas he was aging out. He wanted to retire, and had the means to do so, but really wanted to get this system fully developed and fielded. He expressed this frustration to me, and was essentially conceding failure. I said no, you’re not a failure. Your contribution was developing people, not systems. I proceeded to enumerate all the team members and colleagues that he coached and mentored, both in professional and life skills, and how much they had grown as a result. I further advised that others will pick up where he left off, and they’ll get the system fielded. With this, he said thanks, he could now feel good about retiring.

Which he did in March, 2023.

The big tragedy was that after decades of hard work, saving, and investing, he only got to enjoy a couple of years of retirement. His family is well taken care of, but I’m sure they’d rather have him around, as we all would.

So my message to Gordon, if they’re allowed to read the internet wherever he is: don’t worry, your team members and former colleagues will continue to pursue your legacy, and I’ll take care of the reloading. For the rest of y’all I say this: it’s good to have life goals, but don’t let them get in the way of living!

Dear reader: did you know Gordon, and if so, do you have any good Gordon memories to add? Please leave them in the comments. Note, your comments won’t appear immediately; I have to filter them for spam first.

The Monty Hall Problem

 “It’s easier to fool people than convince them they’ve been fooled.” – tenuously attributed to Mark Twain

Anchor bias: the tendency in decision-making and related cognitive processes to unduly emphasize information obtained at a certain point in time over any newly-discovered information. This bias tends to take the form of sticking with an initial position, and is likely informed by avoiding the mental effort and presumed risk of changing one’s position from that which is currently held.

Or something like that.

Note, much of the background information for today’s column was derived from a Wikipedia article on the subject. You could read that, but this dispatch is way funner!

The Monty Hall Problem was first posed in American Statistician by one Steve Selvin in 1975, and later in a 1990 magazine column by Dr. Marilyn vos Savant, great-granddaughter of the famed idiot Cletus Savant. JK about that last part, but she is descended from noted 19^th and early 20^th century physicist Ernst Mach. Side note – you’ve really made it in science if your name is used in lowercase, i.e., a unit of measure is named after you. In this case, mach is the ratio of an object’s speed relative the speed of sound.

Marilyn vos Savant was, among other things, a rather brainy columnist in Parade Magazine.  Those of us with a degree of superannuation will remember the roto gravure magazines and ad flyers that accompanied the colored Sunday comics in the rainforest-killing newspapers of yesteryear. Parade Magazine was one such, and in it, vos Savant wrote “Ask Marilyn,” an intriguing Q&A column on brainy topics.

On September 9, 1990, vos Savant posed her most controversial column, on the Monty Hall Problem. It’s not the problem itself that’s controversial; it’s based on the (at the time) popular game show Let’s Make a Deal, a show with which most of her readers would be familiar, with only 3 or 4 VHF TV channels to choose from, and even worse pickings on UHF. The controversial part was the solution, and the rigorous and often contentious debate that followed.

First, let’s lay out the problem. The game show contestant is presented with three closed doors: A, B, and C. The contestant is informed that behind one door is A NEW CAR! Behind the others are goats.

A few assumptions are in order at this point:

1) The doors all look alike, are the same size, etc., i.e., not a garage door and two goat pen gates.

2) The car is not a Rivian and is therefore preferable to a goat.

3) The contestant is sufficiently urbane as to prefer the car over a goat.

4) The goats remain quiet and do not emit any telling odors.

And some game rules to remove any bias or other chicanery:

1) The a priori selection of which door conceals the car is assigned at random with a uniform probability distribution, i.e., it’s completely unbiased.

2) The assignment of door to car or goat does not change throughout the game, although the goats may discreetly trade places with each other.

3) Which door conceals which prize I s known to the host.

4) …and is not known to the contestant.

So much for the setup, now the game:

The contestant chooses a door, hoping it conceals a car. Monty Hall does not immediately open the door. Instead, he opens another door, revealing a goat. Remember, Monty knows where the goats and the car are. At this point, Monty offers the contestant the opportunity to change his or her initial choice to the other closed door.

The contestant then opts to stick with the original door choice or switch. Monty then dramatically opens the other doors to reveal the contestant's fate, car or goat, euphoria or despair, that's show biz! And speaking of show biz, I have no idea whether or not any contestant actually kept the goat. I know I would, and my next stop would be a halal butcher, but that’s beside the point.

So... what’s the problem?

The problem is, should the contestant stick with the initial choice, or, when given the opportunity, choose the other unopened door? Answer: switch!

vos Savant explained why in her famous column, and the controversy was that most of her readers, including some real brainiacs, didn’t believe it. That’s because, although we encounter hands-on applications of it on a daily, if not hourly basis, most people are not comfortable thinking consciously in probability space. But if today’s discussion goes well, you will be, at least more so than you are now.

I’m sure you can appreciate that the initial choice has a 1/3 probability of being correct. Therefore, the car has a 2/3 probability of being behind one of the unchosen doors. Then Monty supplies more information by revealing which of the unchosen doors conceals a goat. Maybe both unchosen doors conceal goats, or maybe just one did; in any case the contestant now sees one of the “wrong” choices.

So, of what value is this information? Note that information was added about the non-chosen doors, not the chosen one. The chosen door still has a 1/3 probability of being correct, but the new information assigns the 2/3 probability all to the unchosen but still closed door. 1/3 odds of winning by staying with the initial choice, 2/3 by switching. Therefore, switch!

Get it?

No? Consider this: instead of three doors, the contestant has 1000 from which to choose. Let’s say for simplicity that he or she picks door #1, and we can all agree that the odds of winning the car are 1/1000. The odds of the car being behind one of the unchosen doors is 999/1000, i.e., a near-certainty. Next, Monty opens up 998 doors revealing goats (the studio must be getting rather redolent by this time, and probably a bit noisy as well) – remaining closed are door #1 and door #637. Now, you and the contestant can see, of all the bad choices available earlier, only one (of the two closed doors) remains, and he or she would be exceedingly lucky not to have made one initially.

vos Savant’s column generated over 10,000 letters (that’s how people flamed before the internet), with only 8% of the respondents agreeing with her. Note, this does not mean that only 8% of readers agreed; probably more did, but would be less inspired to lick a stamp to make their case. The debate raged on for many months, in and out of the “Ask Marilyn” column, among academics and laypeople alike, accompanied with much acrimony and a side order of sexism. Numerous proofs and explanations failed to move the needle, and the controversy was ultimately resolved by schoolteachers across the US volunteering their class time to conduct simulations with their students (crowdsourcing before crowdsourcing was cool), empirically proving the point. In the end, only 70% (up from the initial 35%) of academics agreed with her. Not stated was what kind of academics – there may have been some Harvard faculty in the pool.

For today's little statistics and probability lesson, we'll let Clint Eastwood have the final word.

Upstairs Virginia

Hello and Happy New Year!

For an intellectually broadening experience, I’d like to share a private dispatch, with identifying info and specific location names obfuscated, otherwise as-is. What follows is an after-action report (AAR) for a Summits on the Air (SOTA) activation, which doubled as a Parks on the Air (POTA) activation, as requested by a good friend, to whom I will henceforth refer as BAC*, and with whom I normally do SOTA and POTA activations. BAC was unable to join me for these activations due to family obligations and he requested an AAR, as he was planning to activate the same summits/park the following weekend.

*…which stands for bitch-a$$ cracker, long story J

OK Bruck, what the Sam Hill are you talking about and why?

You’ve probably correctly deduced that “on the air” refers to radio communications, and in this case, ham radio. “Summits” are mountain peaks; SOTA is a program for tracking and logging (and collegially competing with) ham radio contacts from mountaintops. The program (or should I say programme) started out in England, hence the usage of “summits” for mountains. “Activation” means going up a designated mountain (there are scores of them within a day trip of Bruck’s and BAC’s home stations) and attempting to make radio contacts; a successful activation requires contacts with four or more unique stations.

POTA is essentially the same thing, but with state and national parks rather than mountain peaks, and one needs ten contacts for a successful activation. SOTA summits often reside in said parks, in which case SOTA activations can also be logged for POTA, providing that at least 10 contacts are made.

On 9 December, 2023, I activated Whistler and Smoke Bluff, in central Virginia for SOTA. These peaks are both within the Zinc Hill Wildlife Management Area (WMA), which is a designated POTA park, therefore I was able to combine the SOTA contacts for a POTA activation.

And just to forestall any misguided assumptions, Lucille is the Black F150 of Bruck (BFOB). Another illuminating note which will come in handy at the end – my photographer Ansel (not his real name) occasionally accompanies BAC and me on activation trips. On one such occasion, while BAC and I were activating a peak on a popular hiking trail, Ansel was chatting with a couple of young high school or college-age women. Henceforth we bestowed upon him the honorary callsign K4DOM, the suffix of which abbreviates dirty old man.

A couple of nomenclature notes for you: QSO means radio conversation, and S-S means summit-to-summit contact, i.e., contact with an operator doing SOTA on a different peak.

On to the next question: why?

Just thought I’d share some cultural insights into corners of the world that few people are aware of but exist all around us. And now, without further ado:

AAR for today's activations:

BLUF

Successful activations on Whistler and Smoke Bluff + made sufficient contacts for Zinc Hill WMA POTA activation. Did all SOTA activations on 2m FM and two POTA contacts on 10m SSB, one in Venezuela. Several S-S QSOs as there were a few other groups on the hills, mostly people we know.

DISCUSSION

The drive down and back were pretty long. I recommend that if/when we do it next year, we also tie in one or two other local summits to make it worth it. Or perhaps make it part of a camping trip. I worked the 10m contest a bit on the way down – made new friends in England, France, and Spain.

Riddell Rd. was NP for Lucille and would be manageable for any respectable 4wd vehicle, all the way to the top of Smoke Bluff. Most of it could be done in a regular SUV or perhaps a Subaru Forester, but I wouldn't take a normal car on it. Wouldn't be a problem for a mountain bike, aside from the effort. The road gets dicier as you approach Smoke Bluff, but still nothing like the Tuscarora Trail.

There's a yellow gate at the entrance to the WMA, prior to which either side of the road is private property. It was open of course. It's abt 3 miles from the highway (620). Then it's about another half mile to the point on the road adjacent to Whistler. GPS coords are in the file I sent you the other day; pls advise if you need me to resend.

Although the road appears to be in the activation zone, it's actually a fair bit below the ridge, so that estimation may be incorrect. Anyway we (Ansel tagged along and took most of the photos) climbed up to the top. The climb is all bushwhacking, first thru a laurel thicket, then clambering up a layer of scree. Fairly challenging but not quite as bad as Pyramid. As with Pyramid, there may be a better way – we just walked up and down the road a bit looking for what appeared to be the least unclimbable section.

At the summit, there’s plenty of relatively flat space. There are trees but they’re not very tall. Pix of scree and summit are attached. BTW I reduced all the pix but can send you the full res versions if you’re interested.

Got a few contacts on the way up the hill with the V8 as SOTA was pretty active today. When we got situated, I started with the RS 2m mobile attached to the hanging j-pole. That worked fine, got a few more contacts with it, but then it started to rain (wx forecast LIED). So I didn’t bother setting for HF and just packed up.

We then got back to Lucille and proceeded to Smoke Bluff. Easy enough to find – there’s a fork in the road shortly before it; the right side takes you toward the summit. Then there’s a closed green gate, at which point a left turn takes you up to the top. Overall it’s about 2 more miles from Whistler. GPS coords for the fork are in the file I sent you.

Smoke Bluff is pretty broad and flat, with no trees in the middle. There are some around the perimeter, but they’d be a little inconvenient to get at. Pix attached. There are some handy seats – foundations from the old fire tower. I just did 2m FM with the V8 and floppy antenna as it was still raining. While Ansel finished his sandwich in Lucille, I worked the 10m contest a bit and made 2 more contacts, one in Arizona and one in Venezuela.

…and it’s a darned good thing I did! I failed to “do the math” earlier – I figured, 7 contacts at Whistler and 6 at Smoke Bluff, why, that easily exceeds the 10 required for POTA. Except I neglected to consider that most of the latter activation were dupes of the first, so they only added up to 8 uniques. I activated the park by the skin of my teeth.

I won’t be running 10m mobile for a while. On the way down the hill, my antenna mount snapped. Antenna and feedline are fine but I have to fab up a new mount. And next time remember to remove the whip when I’m bouncing and jouncing on the 4wd roads. And dangit, the Ace hardware that replaced Rice does not carry 1/8” Al stock, and my supply is depleted.

Just north of the WMA we stopped at the Riddell Fire Tower. It’s open to the public to climb (at your own risk, it disclaims). So of course we did. Highly recommended. Pix attached.

CONCLUSION

A good set of activations, and a fine day in upstairs Virginia, somewhat dampened by the wx. We should definitely add these two to our annual rotation, but make them part of a larger combo as I mentioned above.

AFTERWORD

One of the SOTA pals asked if I was doing a solo trip this time and I said no, I had a muggle with me. Ansel found this humorous and countered, “I’m your emotional support muggle.” Perhaps that’s a better sobriquet than “dirty old man.”

Time Travel

 You may be excused for not knowing the name Jim Weatherly. He was an SEC champion quarterback for the University of Mississippi in the early ‘60s, and went on to a successful career as a singer/songwriter in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, his style was pop-country crossover, which during the ‘60s and ‘70s was dominated by the easy-listening Tyrannosaurus Rex Glen Campbell. Everyone else in that genre during that era operated under Campbell’s massive shadow.

Okay, you might not remember Glen Campbell either but I bet your mother or grandmother, or maybe great aunt, had a crush on him at one point. Look up some of his work on the youtube or spend some time in an elevator or a dentist’s waiting room and I predict you’ll find something you recognize.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard of Lee Majors, star of the wildly successful and penultimately corny TV series “Six Million Dollar Man.” (Yes, I know the meaning of the word penultimate, which is second ultimate; TV viewers from that era would have to vigorously agree that “Hee Haw” carried the standard for ultimate corniness.)

Don’t remember any of that stuff? Not to worry, hang on, we’re about to do a little time traveling, so you’ll get to see it firsthand. But first some background – it all comes together!

Although he didn’t make it into the NFL, Weatherly didn’t completely let go of his sporting interests. He played in an amateur flag football league in LA, and happened to be on the same team as the Six Million Dollar Man. Seems like an unfair advantage, LOL. Anyway, at one point in the late ‘60s, Weatherly called Majors on the phone (landline, one per household, no caller ID y’all), and Farrah Fawcett answered. Nothing too extraordinary here – Fawcett and Majors were dating at the time and would later marry.

Just a little reminder of who Farrah Fawcett is. She was, among her other contributions to the humanities, the numero uno Charlie’s Angel in the original series.

During the brief conversation preceding Fawcett’s summoning Majors to the phone, she made the offhand comment that she was packing her luggage to take a midnight plane to Houston, to visit family. DING DING DING went the bell in Weatherly’s creative brain. There’s a good song title in that! Later that evening he plied his trade and spun out the story, lyrics, and melody for “Midnight Plane to Houston,” which remain largely intact in the song we know today as “Midnight Train to Georgia,” popularized by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Through music marketing contortions I couldn’t hope to unravel, the song ended up in the hands of the producer for soul/gospel singer Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney Houston, and, incidentally, aunt to Dionne Warwick but not related to Tina Turner. Houston purportedly recorded three versions, experimenting with different levels of R&B vs. pop-country, went with the slightly more R&B version, changing the title and lyrics to train/Georgia, and reversing the genders.

Weatherly’s publisher later pitched the song to Gladys Knight and the Pips, who picked it up and in 1973 transformed it further to its full R&B version, and with it, achieved their first #1 hit on the charts and their first gold record (1M sales).

Let’s go multimedia now – since I’m sure you’re reading this on your computer or electronic tether, fire up youtube and dig up the song. There are many covers (including a particularly strained one by Garth Brooks), so do find a Gladys Knight version, and try to attach an original/non-remastered version. Otherwise, our little plan won’t work. Also, you’ll probably need some decent headphones or earbuds as we need the full audio spectrum.

“Midnight Train to Georgia,” a popular song from the early ‘70s as we’ve noted, is as much a symbol - a milepost if you will - in history of that era, musically, and culturally. A big turning point for Gladys Knight and the Pips to be sure, but part of the larger convergence of soul/R&B into mainstream pop music, against the backdrop of the growing pains of racial integration (yes, Karen, that’s what they called it back then) in the US. Listeners who were familiar with the original song in its time would have to have souls made of dry ice to not feel the bittersweet nostalgic sentiment it evokes.

The song itself tells a two-part story. The first is of a man who, in a not-totally defined way, fails to make it big in Tinseltown, presumably in the entertainment field. He fails, and decides to sell out and move back home to his simpler, presumably rural, life in Georgia. The second is that of his girlfriend, or maybe wife, who is a successful star, and who is well accustomed to the lifestyle and very much at home in LA. The tension between these two courses is resolved quickly with the latter’s decision to follow her man back to rural Georgia, to a life we can assume she knows nothing about, is not her home, and holds none of the glamour and prestige to which she’s accustomed. It’s a touching story of how a woman’s love for her man trumps material wealth and advantage, how she’ll leave everything behind just to continue to be with the one she loves. Note, in the original version, it was a man who was leaving his success and fame behind to follow his woman back home, so it works both ways.

Do you have it queued up? Alright, let’s have a listen.

Feel the vibe? Feel the story? Okay, now, concentrate on the bass line. This is why you needed to find the original recording and wear some decent headphones. Follow it if you can; let it go straight into your brain. This isn’t nostalgia anymore; it’s time travel. We are now in the year 1973. OPEC, Viet Nam, Watergate, reverberations from urban racial riots, oh, and Hee Haw and the Six Million Dollar Man. It’s all here.

Okay, we’re now 50 years in the past, but that was just to get you out of the starting blocks – we’re about to go back another 3000 years to a by-no-means simpler place in time, Moab and Judah during the time of the Judges, approx. 1200-1100 BC. Here we find a strikingly similar story with many obvious parallels. In fact, I would surmise that, based on his historical and cultural background, Weatherly was familiar with it.

I encourage you to read the book or Ruth, chapter 1, to familiarize or remind yourself of the details; in case this is new to you, I bet you’ve heard part of it a few times if you’ve been to Christian or Jewish weddings.

To recap, Naomi, along with her husband and two sons, all Judahites, are living in Moab. Her sons marry Moabite women, and cruel misfortune strikes, specifically with the death of Naomi’s husband and both sons, and generally with a famine in Moab.

Naomi and her daughters in law are now bereft and desperate. Naomi decides to return to Judah where she hopes to find some sustenance, and advises her DILs Ruth and Orpah (not Oprah, sorry no free cars today) to return to Moab and find new husbands. Ruth 1 chronicles the interchange; ultimately Orpah returns to her people in Moab but Ruth steadfastly clings to Naomi, expressing her complete devotion to the latter:

“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:

Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”

Ruth 1:16-17, KJV

That’s the part you may recognize from weddings – the expression of complete and lifelong devotion which, although it’s between two widows, a DIL and a MIL, translates well to husband-wife. And, since it’s between two women as it does so, there are no dominant or subservient gender roles indicated, so as with the 70s R&B counterpart story, it works both ways.

Let’s remove the VR headsets now and as we return to the 21^st century, ask the all-important question, “Bruck, what did you have for lunch?” Savory pork and mushroom soup, masterfully prepared by the inestimably magnificent wife of Bruck (IMWOB).

Oh wait, the all-important question is, “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

Lifelong and complete devotion to another is a high ideal, but it’s not confined to fictitious love songs or ancient Bible stories. It’s a necessary component of a long and healthy relationship. Note also the time dimension – it’s not just a one-and-done trip to Judah or Georgia; it’s till death do us part (Well okay, we don’t know what happened after Brad and Jennifer got to Georgia). There a magnitude dimension as well – leaving LA for Georgia, or Moab for Judah doesn’t happen every day, but acts of devotion do. Presumably Ruth gleaned and provided for her MIL daily, and the IMWOB prepares fantastic soup and other exquisite meals pretty frequently, and I umm… keep the cars running!

Unfortunately, the Fawcett-Majors marriage didn’t stand the test of time, although by Hollywood standards, it did pretty well at 9 years. Many others among the aforementioned characters parted from their spouses for reasons other than death as well. The widow Ruth, on the other hand, did much better on that front – she went on to marry Boaz, and together they begat the grandfather of King David. This intricate story is spelled out in the remaining chapters of the book of Ruth.

But the real all-important question is: Where are you in the story?

And you can thank me for Midnight Train to Georgia rattling around in your head for the next week and a half!