Originally published in the November 1987 Collector and Emitter.
Q.R. Zedd, A5A, world’s greatest DXer and holder of the nation’s only 1×1 callsign, was named last month to chair a special department in the University of Oklahoma’s school of electrical engineering.
Zedd, who has worked all stations on all bands, all modes, will henceforth be known in academic circles as Dr. Zedd, chairman of the new Miraculous Discoveries Dept. at OU. The university immediately announced that it will build a new engineering center annex to house the Zedd project just as soon as Campus Corner can be condemned and the necessary $88 million can be raised from private donors.
Norman’s South Canadian Amateur Radio Society started the ball rolling with a contribution of $15. OU President Frank Horton used the funds to make a down-payment on a shovel for the ground-breaking, tentatively scheduled some time in 1996.
“Boys,” assembled members at a conference h Honor Roll Ranch, and a holler south of town, “this is going greatest thing for Oklahoma since Ringling announced the was going to bring his circus here. I predict a lot of great stuff, and I plan to have lots of long hallways in the new building so we can hire a lot of football players to sweep them out and thus also help Barry some with his recruiting.”
“But let me explain why research into superconductors is going to be one of our top priorities in the new department. “I,” Zedd told the reporters, “discovered superconductors, of course.”
The great one’s announcement caused a certain degree of shock and consternation, because, while Zedd is well known as the inventor of radar, SSB and the plastic milk carton, it is not as well known that he discovered the principle of the superconductor.
Because not everyone understands how superconductors work, we asked Zedd’s protoge, Homer Klott, to explain.
“Superconductors,” Homer told us, “are called superconductors because they conduct real super. There used to be more superconductors than they are now, but that is only because there ain’t as many streetcars as they used to was. You see, the conductor stood on one end and the other guy, I forget his name, stood at the other. When the streetcar was going north, the conductor stood on that end, or maybe the other way around. He drove. The other guy collected the money and shoved you in the back door if it was crowded or if you wanted out he shoved you out.
“Superconductors could make your streetcar go so fast it swayed back and forth a whole lot and sometimes almost hit your cars in your track, and he made sand squish out in front of them steel wheels when he wanted to stop, for making the wheels grip, don’t you know. On a real good day, a superconductor could go so fast around them corner that the trolley was flang clean off, and while the other feller clumb down to go hook it on the wire again, you could if you was lucky slip into the back seat and whang your foot on the metal pedal and make the bell clingclang, which excited people no end.”
At this point, Zedd, wearing a Eureka Springs tee shirt, Levi’s and cowboy boots with the rowels on the spurs painted red, had somebody take Homer off someplace.
“Superconductors,” Zedd explained, “conduct current Without appreciable resistance. They work at super-cold temperatures. How all this happens is beyond the scope of your small minds, but here is the point: if you get enough superconductors going just right, you have computers that compute a jillion times faster, and you can shove enough power into a circuit to make magnetic trains and such work.
“Take my word for it.”
Zedd paused to shove some latakia tobacco into his oom-Paul. “I discovered superconductors on my DXpedition to the arctic some ten years ago. That was the year they still refer to up north as the year even the sunshine froze.
That was the year it was so cold in the arctic, and even around Ardmore, that people sold snowballs for handwarmers. That was the year that in the arctic the polar bears all bought tickets for Miami Beach, with the result that the Bears and the Dolphins played in the Super Bowl.
“It had been a slow winter for me up until about this time of year that memorable year about a decade ago, and so I decided to mount me a little DXpedition to the North Pole. I couldn’t find anybody to go with me, so I fired up my Cessna 172 and set out by myself.
“I will not bore you with details about how I got there, but a few days later I found myself flying through freezing fog and snow somewhere near the North Pole. When my engine quit, I just set her down on an ice floe and pulled out my tent and other stuff and prepared to start working some stations.
“Well, the first few hours it went just fine, and I was clicking off about 3K contacts an hour, CW, when the weather began to get a lot worse. Within two, three hours, the thermometer went clean off the bottom of the scale and my batteries all froze solid, and so did the gasoline for my generator. It was so cold that the rf from my last twenty contacts just hung there in the air, frozen solid around the Yagi.
“Frozen rf is real pretty. It’s sort of red, with blue edges to it.
“But the world was waiting for more contacts, and I had a reputation to uphold, and this was serious.
“I tried everything to get them batteries thawed. I breathed on them. I packed them with ice because the ice was so much warmer than the air was that night. But nothing would work.
“It was at that time that I noticed my battery wristwatch was still working fine. That was because my bodyheat was keeping it comparatively warm. Well, boys, that was when I got my inspiration.
“What I did was, I strung me out some wire and other substances which are still secret, and I hooked them up to my body-warmed watch battery.
How cold were them conductors I hooked to my rig? They were so cold, they not only conducted that little current from my watch, they amplified it. Before I knew what was happening, almost, my rig was working again, my high-speed CW had melted the air all around the antenna and let the rf go out again, and I had to open the flap of my tent because it was getting so warm all around me.
“I did 77K the rest of my stay there, and generated so much heat that the polar ice cap melted some, which is why the Great Lakes are a lot higher than normal to this very day. I had so much hot air left over that I sewed up my tent and made a balloon, and sawed me off a chunk of the trusty old 172, just before it sank beneath the waves, and made me a gondola. And after eating my last can of beans and Spam, I took off for the south, and that was how I saved myself and my logbooks.
“One bad thing I learned on the trip south about ballooning was that beans and Spam make you sort of uh flatulent, and when you’re in a hot air balloon, you are drifting along at the same speed as the surrounding air mass, so when the inevitable thing happened out of me along about Edmonton, it just stayed right there with me until I had smelled it all up near Hays, Kansas. But other than that it was a great DXpedition, one of my more memorable ones.
“And of course I kept researching superconductors when I got back here to Honor Roll, on the theory that anything that is super just must be ordained by the almighty to have something to do with me. And as soon as I have everything perfected, I will let you know.
“In the meantime, just remember: when you hear the word “super,” think of Zedd. And when you hear the word “Zedd,” just think of super. And when you are going to go riding in a hot air balloon, never eat beans and Spam. I thank you.”
— KU5B