Originally published in the February 1983 issue of the Collector and Emitter.
Members of the South Canadian Amateur Radio Society were thrilled out of their minds in January when the post-business meeting program was given by the incomparable Q. R. Zedd, A5A.
Zedd, who holds the coveted Worked All Stations award with a 220 handheld endorsement, brought along Tondelayo Schwartz, his blonde, nubile, 20-year-old QSL secretary from the Harvard Business School who recently celebrated the birthday that took her out of her teens forever. As has been noted in earlier reports, Tondelayo was seldom taken for a teen-ager in recent years, especially since being featured in the Playboy centerfold midway through 1982.
For the SCARS meeting, Zedd came with only four radios, two walkies on his hips, an FT7 under his left armpit, and the usual TR7 attached to his South Padre Island tee shirt with the customary velcro tape. Tondelayo, smashingly attired in a pink hotpants outfit with black leather boots and matching whip, handled the computer logbook operation while Zedd, operating on battery power to his inductively tuned Oklahoma oilman belt buckle, worked a hundred countries in thirteen minutes to show how easy it was for one of his talent and prestige.
As Zedd explained it, “Boys, any nerd can work a few hundred countries, but it takes a good op to work a few hundred every day. You have to stay right with it.”
Among the questions asked by SCARS members, and the answers given, were the following:
(From W5MCN): Is it true you can send and receive CW at 135 words per minute?
ZEDD: Lee, I don’t like to brag. No sir, I sure don’t. All I can say for sure is, the last time I got in a ragchew with a computer, I was still going strong when its little Z80 started sending out smoke signals. Seriously, I am purty fast.
(From W5SQJ): What was the most memorable QSO you ever had?
ZEDD: I would have to say it was a few years ago when I got in a three-way with Bill Blast and Mao Tse Tung. You know, Mao Tse Tung only ever made one QSO after he licensed himself. Bill arranged it and when I came up on frequency, old Mao said he was going to send me a copy of his red book and he was going permanently QRT because after talking to me in his first QSO, everything would be anti-climactic. I thought that was real nice of him and said so at the time. Henry Kissinger was impressed.
(From N5DWN): Why aren’t you ever on our local repeater?
ZEDD: Linda, I would like to be, shore would. But so many people are always after me for another QSO, I just would tie it up all the time, so I just stay off most of the time and work DX and stuff.
(From KU5B): Would you like to clarify the situation b2tween yourself and Tondelayo? We keep hearing that you might be engaged.
ZEDD: Well, let me say this about that. Tondelayo and I, I think we got a right to a personal life just like everybody else, right, boy? Okay, then. If that’s true, what we do when we are away from the rigs is OUR business, right, boy? Okay, then. I guess I could best answer your query by saying none of your beeswax.
(In a separate interview, the darling Tondelayo later said that any romance between herself “an’ that DARLIN’ man” would have to her confirmed by Zedd. She turned a darling pink when someone suggested that nuptials might be in the offing.)
(In Moose, Okla., however, where Tondelayo’s parents live, it was reported that the precious girl had taken “a tall, handsome, graying, marvelous-looking man, with a radio stuck on the front of his shirt,” home to see momma and daddy. This clearly could only have been Zedd.)
In other highlights of his appearance at SCARS, Zedd —
Revealed that his bust will be unveiled in the science pavilion of the Smithsonian on February 16;
Announced plans for a DXpedition to Sumatra in April;
Said he would pay for the doughnuts.
Nothing further about his possible romance with Tondelayo could be gotten from the great man. Meanwhile, as all amateurs know, the subject has now become a constant preoccupation of all hams on the airwaves.
We can only hope that Zedd will honor SCARS more often with his august presence (even in January) … and that he and Tondelayo will either go ahead and announce some sort of significant plans, such as engagement or wedding, or else cool it. It’s getting — if we may be allowed an editorial note — to where a man can’t even have a decent QSO on the bands about antennas or the rig or weather or things once the QTH has been named; everyone else will talk about nothing but whether Zedd and Tondelayo are going to get hitched.
Listen: WE DON’T KNOW EITHER, SO SHUT UP ABOUT IT!
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