Originally published in the June 1987 issue of the Collector & Emitter.
Sweating out the last days of wife Tondelayo’s maternity leave from her duties as his QSL, manager and tower-painter, the great Q. R. Zedd was looking for some new world to conquer.
Mrs. Constance Wilhemina Zedd, widow of the legendary Zap, Zedd and fondly referred to in these parts as “Momma,” was visiting Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town. Momma looked at her famous son, A5A, greatest DXer in the history of the galaxy, and made a suggestion.
“When I was blasting over here from Mena on my big Kawasaki,” she observed, “I made some nice CM contacts with some fellers who told me about something called packet radio. Why don’t you try packet radio?”
“I got packet radio,” Zedd retorted. “That Yaesu I fixed for N5ALG is in a packet there by the door right now, waiting for the UPS man.”
Momma finished the enamel touchup on her three-inch crimson claws and closed the lacquer jar with a trill of amused (if not condescending) laughter.
“Q,” she said, “Sometimes you are beyond my understanding. You have been so busy working the world and worrying about the darling girl’s pregnancy that you haven’t been keeping up.”
Zedd’s chin shot up like a fly ball at EightyNiner Stadium. His pride had been piqued. “Keep up? Keep up? What do you mean, keep up?”
“Packet radio,” Momma told him, “is a new technology. Some of the boys at the last SCARS meeting, or maybe it was at Red’s, told me all about it.” Then, if a few thousand carefully chosen words, she explained about packet.
“I got radios,” Zedd fumed. “I got computers. Gawd knows I got antennas. All I need is one of them TNC thingamadoodles. Where do I get me one, or have you got a schematic on you?”
“Well,” Moses said, “the world expert on all of this, if you can’t find K5JB, is right up there in Norman, just a hoot and a holler from here, and his call is N5HZU.”
“1 know him!” Zedd replied. “He holds the North Flood Street donut-eating trophy two years running!” And he sprang to his two-meter rig and found Howard on the air.
Within a few hours, Zedd’s new pal had visited Honor Roll and delivered an extra MFJ unit he happened to have handy. He helped the great one hook stuff together, and then showed him how to set CALL, DA, BEAC, CTEXT, FRAC, and all that other neat stuff.
“Non what do I do?” Zedd demanded, sweat drooling off his forehead as he stared at all the two-meter calls streaming across his monitor.
“Now,” N5HZU explained, hitting some keys, “you get the command prompt like this, and then you type a C like this… and then a callsign of somebody you want to work, like here I’m calling Randy in Dallas via OKC, RUSH, and well, you can see the rest of it.”
“Then what?” Zedd asked.
“You hit Return and it sends it. There! You see the transmit light flash? You see the DCD light up? There! You see the Connect diode on? Pretty neat, huh?” And Howard had a nice QSO with his pal in Big D.
We could tell Zedd was pretty impressed when Howard disconnected. “Can I play now?”
“Sure.” Howard vacated the chair in front of the keyboard. “Just type in a C and then the station you’re calling and then the path. You can even connect with yourself if you want.”
Zedd’s fingers flew over the keyboard:
C A5A V OKC,ADA
And then he hit a return. Packet collisions being what they were, with about 90,000 stations calling him, he had to wait a couple of tries before his screen changed:
CONNECTED TO A5A —
Zedd stared at it a little sadly, and then disconnected.
Pulled the plugs out of everything.
Handed the TNC back to N5HZU.
Went back to the hf station.
“What happened?” Howard asked those of us in the bleachers. “I thought he was having fun!”
It was WA5RPP who explained it:
It had been a terrible mistake to tell Zedd he could connect with himself. Because after he had worked A5A, what new thrills could packet possibly hold for him?
Well, packet’s loss is DX’s gain.