Originally published in the April 1985 issue of C&E.
Back from his epochal DXpedition around the world in eight days, Q. R. Zedd was relaxing at Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town, when he considented to an interview the other day.
For those who have been unconscious, Zedd, the world’s greatest DXer and holder of the only lx1 callsign, worked 88 K from all the countries on the current DXCC list during a whirlwind world tour in a highspeed aircraft of his own design last month.
The aircraft has been taken to a special Air Force research facility in California for structural analysis, and the Pentagon has already announced that it plans to copy Zedd’s design for production of a new fighter.
Zedd, however, was allowed to keep his logbooks and radios after the epic journey.
“It wasn’t really too hard,” Zedd told the C&E, “except parachuting in at Clipperton, getting mixed up with those guerillas in Laos, losing my way for a few minutes there in Africa,, and of course the little tiff with the Russians.”
The “tiff with the Russians” that Zedd mentioned was, of course,, his arrest when he swooped in for a landing in Zone 19 and found Russian DXer Boris Badenov waiting along with contingents from the KGB. Vadenov alleged that Zedd was a spy, and Zedd was detained for almost four hours. He might have been held longer if a worldwide outcry from deserving DXers around the world had not forced the leaders in the Kremlin to change their tune and let Zedd out to operate.
Zedd got back on his whirlwind schedule by working Africa and Europe the same day, instead of on following days, as originally planned. He finished, up the Arctic in four hours and worked the last existing DXCC country at 0400 on the last day of the planned tour, making 11,230 contacts out of Cuba.
Fidel Castro gave Zedd special permission to operate, along with fifty fine cigars.
“I was glad to do it, and make so many people happy,” Zedd told us. “It isn’t everybody that can be great, and if working me made a lot of little fellers FEEL great, why, then I have been repaid in full for my effort.”
Tondelayo Schwartz nubile, blond, 20-year-old QS0 secretary and constant companion to the great man, reported adoring crowds in most of the nations of the world. She said only weight limitations on the special aircraft prevented Zedd from coming back with tons of loot given by admirers.
“It was a great effort,” said Bill Blast, operator of the famed Blast Off DX Net. With By help and great operating skills, we managed to let a lot of people work A5A. I was truly “great in there, and I hope everyone appreciates how hard I worked to make this effort a success, and all.”
Zedd announced at the conclusion of his press conference that he felt he had now done everything, and could retire from radio. A number of correspondents promptly fainted at hearing this, of course, and the ARRL sent two special envoys down from Newington to beg the great one to say it wasn’t so.
After chuckling a bit at our discomfiture, Zedd relieved all our hearts by pointing out that he had only been making an April Fool’s joke.
“How could I ever retire, boys?” he asked us, laughing heartily. “What would Amateur Radio be without me?
There was clearly no way to answer that. And with any luck we shall never have to try.