Originally published in the July 1985 issue of C&E.
Q. R. Zedd’s concern about illegal power on the ham bands has become well known. As the world’s greatest DXer as well as the holder of the only 1×1 callsign, A5A, and being a really nice guy, Zedd — as we reported in earlier issues — took it upon himself this spring to do something about the problem.
Spurred by a report that the FCC had gotten nasty with some DXer for running about 35,000 Watts, Zedd took three historic steps:
ONE — He began preparing for a personal experiment in 4RP operation.
TWO — He decided to publish his own views on the subject of illegal power. (This document has now gone into the Congressional Record under the heading, “Great Moments in DX.”)
THREE — He got onto the airwaves personally in his own enforcement operation.
Your reporter has been kept so busy reporting on items two and three, as well as chopping his dandelions, that he has not yet had time to fill in the world on the results of Zedd’s own QRP experiments. Of course many tens of thousands of amateurs around the globe already know what happened, and have the QSL cards to prove it.
We will try to update readers on the QRP operations in a future issue, just for historical record-keeping purposes. In this issue, however, we must report on how Zedd completed his courageous, one-man fight against illegal power on that fateful day last May when someone had the temerity to challenge him.
Of course it happened on 20 meters.
Zedd, you may recall, had just quieted 75 for all time with his calm and rational intervention during a squabble between some frequency hogs running high power.
He then tuned to 20, and promptly got a few boys in a Zone 19 pileup to calm themselves and cool their tubes a little.
All was going well, and those of us honored to be in the radio shack at Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town, were wiping our eyes of the tears brought by the overwhelming emotion of witnessing such greatness.
But then Zedd swept down in frequency to the CW portion, and a signal blew the needle clean off his signal strength meter, knocking a hole in the side of the metal case and impaling itself in the left elbow of onlooker W5MCN.
Zedd gave Leland a bandaid, then sighed in exasperation and went to his dummy load, through which the incoming “CQ DX” call was only twenty over nine.
The signal was out of 2-land, and the operator was going along about 35 words a minute. Zedd of course can copy up to 100 in his head, but fortunately for those of us of lesser skill he also happened to have a personal computer in line and it displayed, the Morse on a VDT.
The first time the Dxer in 2-land sent a couple of Ks, Zedd reached to his Bencher and dropped his callsign a couple of times, hoping for a reponse. We report the next portion of the contact as seen on the screen.
A5A, QSY QSY. CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX DE (deleted) K (Deleted), A5A A5A
LID IDIOT MORON (deleted) QSY USER IN USE CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX CQ DX DX KN
(Deleted), A5A … REDUCE POWER REDUCE POWER UR OVER LEGAL MAXIMUM ES SPLATTERING SO PLS
FREQ IN USE FREQ IN USE. QSY LID QSY
Zedd’s face started to get a little red.
“Well, boys,” he sighed, “there are times when direct action of a more dramatic nature is clearly called for.”
With that, in a gesture that struck chills to the marrow of our bones, the great one slowly turned the control which rotated his big array onto the azimuth of the offending station. With his other hand, he slowly adjusted the loading on his big linear amplifier.
The lights dimmed. All over central Oklahoma.
The guy in 2-land was finishing up another transmission.
Zedd checked his DX direction-finding program in the Epson he got for a Christmas present last year, then touched up both his beam heading and linear loading.
He poised his hand over his key. The Dxer sent a K to his wonderful contact in England, or maybe Germany.
“RIP,” Zedd said, and depressed his key.
Bolts of lightning screamed off the beam array. Clouds rolled, sort of like in “Close Encounters” when the big ship was finally coming in.
Somewhere — or was it only our imagination? — we thought we almost heard the scream.
Zedd got off the key and listened to the frequency again.
The British station, was trying to raise the DXer on the east coast.
The 2 was QRT, or worse.
Subsequent investigation by the proper authorities on the east coast revealed that an amateur radio operator on the outskirts of a major city was rushed to a local hospital shortly after Zedd’s retaliation. The police reported third-degree burns over most of the operator’s body.
He was found sitting near a window beyond which there was a great puddle of melted aluminum, as if ferocious heat had somehow melted not only a Yagi but a 70-foot tower.
As for the amateur’s rigs, police found two smaller puddles of molten metal on the charred operating table, and a smoking black clinker that might have once been a D-104.
The operator will live.
Zedd had Tondelayo send flowers.
Twenty meters is nice these days, isn’t it.