Originally published in the October 1986 issue of the Collector and Emitter.
Ah, that Q. R. Zedd. He’s a sly devil. You never know what he’s going to be doing next.
The world’s greatest DXer and holder of our only 1×1 callsign, A5A, left Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town, and went on a quick fishing trip last month. It seems the Walleye were running in Lake Erie — site of the Perry Monument (who was another of Zedd’s ancestors on Momma Zedd’s side) — and he not only limited out every day he was there; he got in some DXing of an unusual nature.
Zedd chartered a boat out of Port Clinton, on the southern shore of Lake Erie west of Cleveland, and was out on the lake every morning by 7:30, when the drawbridge goes up. He cleverly planned his trip to coincide with both the end of the Walleye season and the start of the perch season, so he could catch a lot of both.
The fish naturally were overjoyed, and we are happy to report that the great man released his limit catches in both categories with the exception of record trophies for each.
More to the point, however, was Zedd’s wonderful DX work while on the lake.
“I didn’t want to drag along a bunch of bulky ham gear,” the great one told us, “so what I did was, I had Tondelayo cob up a QRP hf rig and a little tuner. I carried the whole thing in my lunch bucket. Power was supplied by my nuclear-energy wristwatch.”
Once on the lake, Zedd cleverly combined his fishing and DXing in a unique manner. Using a fine wire line for trolling operations with a Ryobi reel and six-foot Shakespeare rod, he alligator-clipped his antenna lead to the fishing line every time he had his bait at full depth and distance. Then, using a boom mike, he called CQ DX and worked the world underwater.
“It was pretty successful,” said Zedd, “I believe it is safe to say that I am now the only holder of the underwater DXCC loading a longwire terminated with a Mepps spinner, QRP.
“In addition to working 288 countries, I also worked seven nuclear submarines and the Andrea Doria.”
Zedd said his expedition illustrates his long-held belief that a man, to be a man, has to be well-rounded. He hunts as well as he fishes, and of course everyone knows of his world trophies in ballroom dancing and canasta. He has not missed a Sooner football game in 29 years, with the exception of the time not long ago when his DXpedition to southeast Asia got caught in the middle of a war. His abilities with a 35 mm camera are legendary, under his professional name of Ansel Adams. And everyone knows how he helped Willie out with Farm Aid 2.
Still, radio is his first love and we are happy to report that he was back at Honor Roll by presstime, firing up the linears and creating interesing endfire coronas off the big Yagis. He was last heard on the low end of 20 CW, working Russians even W5NUT couldn’t hear.
“I had to get back to one of my true loves, Charlie Whiskey,” Zedd told us. ‘My code speed had fallen off real bad from non-use. Why, I worked a computer out of Spokane the first night I was back on, and I almost had to call the operator and asked him to QRS the controller chip a mite. “I mean, it was humbling, boy. I was having real trouble getting solid copy, and that sucker was only pumping out… oh…sixty, seventy words a minute.”
— KU5B