Originally published in the August 1985 issue of the C&E.
As faithful readers know, the summer of 1985 will go down in radio history as the epoch when the greatest DXer the world has ever known, Q. R. Zedd, decided to experiment with QRP operation.
Zedd, A5A, is of course known internationally (if not interplanetarily!) for his DX exploits. While Zedd has never been known to approach legal power limits while operating worldwide, he has on occasion caused brownouts in the Norman area when he turned on his big linear, and once bested the great Bill Blast, of the West Coast Blast Off Net, in a head-to-head confrontation over the airwaves. Zedd has also repeatedly whipped the fanny off Boris Badenov, famed Soviet Dxer, and once won out in a pileup over W5NUT.
This summer, the great man got all het up about high-power rule violations, and decided to go low-power as a symbol for all the faithful and deserving. After a short period when he policed the airwaves, he finished work on his first QRP transmitter, and began testing it in early July.
This is a report on how it came out when he started feeding the signal to his antennas.
“I had me some trouble at first,” Zedd told us recently, sipping a mint julep on the porch of his home, Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town.
“First thing that happened, I didn’t have an SWR bridge sensitive enough to register my QRP signal because when I go low power, I go low power. So I had to stand by while I designed up a more sensitive bridge, but that still didn’t work too neat because every time I had a sody pop, the changes in the PH of my mouth and gums caused my gold fillings to transmit more power than the rig was doing. So what I had to do was build me up a little linear to switch into the SWR bridge when I wanted to check it… get the power up to a quarter of a milliwatt or so, so the bridge would register somepin.
“Well, I got all that done and checked things out, but my barefoot QRP signal was so low I couldn’t use any of my tall antennas — I mean, that signal was so durned QRP that more’n about six feet of coax would just sop up the whole thing, and nothing would be left for the yagis atall. So I had to run me some open-wire feed, and put in a couple of boosters on the way up, and then calculate things out so I would have just the right amount of power into the antenna, and all.
“It was hard, even for a person of my electronic genius.
“But anyway, boys, I done it, and a few nights ago I got on the air and hollered QRZ, and of course everybody heard me right away, especially in Oklahoma and Texas, because I used the W5MCN method of raising my voice enough so I could be heard in a range of 400, 500 miles even if the power gave out.
“It was a lot of fun. I worked about 220 countries, plus my pal N5BEW and old WA5MLT down in Dallas, the latter contact being real interesting because he still ain’t got his rig fixed. Then I played some radio chess with WA5RPP and beat him in six moves, which made him sulk quite a bit, but not as bad as when N5IAA whups up on him at bridge, and then I went QRT because it was suppertime and I’d been at it nearly four hours already and my grounded diode transmitter was getting kind of hot.
“Later I worked my momma over in Mena, and the king over there in that near Eastern country I can’t never remember the name of and had a real nice pileup going again. So I decided it Was too easy, and I had to go QRT again for a while to stick in a swamping resistor in the rig because obviously I wasn’t getting no challenge.”
Zedd shifted his lanky legs on the porch railing, making scuff marks on his lavender boots with the .biodegradeable brown trim. “When I got back on a day or two later, I had it cut down real strong. By my calculations, I had exactly sixteen electrons flowing around in the circuit, which is pretty low power, I can’t tell you exactly how low because I haven’t found me a computer yet that will cipher out to that many decimal points.
“But it’s real low power, boys.
“It’s such low power that if you just sort of squeeze the feedline with your fingertips, changing the skin effect a little, no power will flow through at all.
“It’s such low power you got to leave your digital wristwatch in the other room someplace, because the near field of your watch battery might mess up your output calculations.
“It’s such low power, if you ain’t careful, the darn thing will go negative power and start thinking its a receiver, and taking stuff in instead of putting something out.
“I know the advanced theory behind that phenomenon is fax beyond you boys. But think about it.”
Zedd fired up a cheroot with the aid of his friend and constant companion, Tondelayo Schwartz, the blond, nubile, 20-year-old QSL secretary and graduate of the Harvard Business School whose recent trip to Norman in her topless candyflake Toyota Land Rover caused such consternation (not to mention 103 accidents) on Norman’s Main Street.
“If you old boys would like a demonstration of all this new fun I’m having,” the great man added, “come back after nightfall tonight. I’ll fire the rig up and we’ll work a few thousand.”
Naturally everyone wept a little at the joy-filled prospect of actually getting to walk into the sanctum sanctorum, Zedd’s shack. We promised we would be back.
And we were.
Little did we know that we would witness the full fury of Zedd’s righteous indignation that evening.
(To be continued.)