Mr. George Lane is currently working as a consultant in the design and operation of HF radio systems. He retired after 29 years of experience as an electronics engineer working for the US Government. His career was devoted to improving the operational planning and the design of both strategic and tactical HF telecommunication systems. He has specialized in system performance model development for ionospheric propagation prediction and assessment. The internationally recognized and widely used programs: IONCAP, VOACAP and NEC were developed under the technical review of Mr. Lane.

Beginning in 1967, George Lane worked with the first US Army agency ( USA STRATCOM) to use modern HF radio performance prediction computer programs. He applied this technology to systems being built throughout Southeast Asia. His work resulted in considerable cost savings, higher reliability and changes in operational planning for HF links.

In 1975, he led the effort to define and modernize the prediction techniques for application to lower power, tactical HF operations. This work was funded by the US Army and was accomplished by the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences. Mr. Lane was instrumental in establishing the use of this program, IONCAP, as the standard for the Department of Defense. From 1978 until 1983, Mr. Lane worked closely with the Special Forces in the development of accurate prediction methodology for long distance burst communications.

For twelve years before his retirement, Mr. Lane was employed as a senior HF propagation engineer with the Voice of America. He was the lead engineer in the conversion of IONCAP to an area coverage prediction model, called VOACAP. In this process, he found and corrected numerous errors in IONCAP and devised several enhancements for the program. The Voice of America Coverage Analysis Program, VOACAP, is now in worldwide use by international broadcasters, the military, commercial enterprises and the amateur radio community.

Mr. Lane is the author of 94 technical articles and reports. He also has been asked to serve as a technical advisor on numerous US Government committees and as an editor of a international newsletter on HF propagation models.

At the present time Mr. Lane is consulting in the specification for a commercial broadcast station and in the real-time forecasting of system performance. He is also devising methods for use of ionospheric predictions for use with Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) Systems as well as comparing measured performance of HF links to predictions at very long ranges. These efforts will be reported as technical papers at the Ionospheric Effects Symposium to be held in Washington, DC on May 4-6, 1999.

Mr. Lane retains a large library of documents (over a ton!) detailing the history of HF radio development and enjoys corresponding with individuals and firms having an interest in the history of HF radio.