Originally published in the March 1988 issue of the Collector and Emitter.
That sound of distant thunder you may have heard in early January could have been real thunder as some of the ice and snow storms went through. But if it sounded like it was just a hoot and a holler south of town, it might have been two tons of aluminum coming down at Honor Roll Ranch
Honor Roll, for the uninitiated, Is the home of Q.R. Zedd, A5A, the world’s greatest DXer, inventor of radar and the plastic milk carton, holder of our only 1×1 callsign, only member of the WAS (Worked All Stations) club with the 2-meter simplex endorsement, and all-around inspiration to us all.
We just suspected that the great man might be having problems when we turned on the rig that night and he was only 80 db over 9. He was racketing right along on 20-meter CW, working stations split – Europe and Africa on one frequency with his left hand and Asia and the Pacific on another frequency with his right hand, listening to return calls on one VFO while transmitting with the other on his other frequency and memorizing everything to write down in the logbook later.
Zedd didn’t say anything about antenna problems in the parts of his transmissions that we could copy, but we start missing a lot at about the 50 WPM level, and he was cruising comfortably at about 82, probably blowing chips on code reader computers around the globe.
Still, the signal was very modest for a man of Zedd’s ability, so the next day we saddled a yak and headed south out of town across the tundra.
What a sight it was when we approached Honor Roll Ranch!
The sun was trying to break through, and here and there some rays slanted through glassed-over broken trees and holihocks to reveal Zedd’s array of towers standing – empty!
As we got closer, we saw that the earth, extending for miles around the sprawling ranch homes, shone with a color different from that of the ice-encrusted trees and snowbanks. Then we figured it out. The ground was covered to a depth of about two feet with busted antennas and coax.
It was a sight calculated to make a grown man cry. Gone was Zedd’s 10-over-10 at, 1,550 feet for 75 meter operation. Gone were the phased 1,000-foot verticals, all eight of them. Gone was the 20-meter array, all 44 elements, along with the 15-meter stack, the 16-element 10-meter quad, the 800-foot backup multi-bander, both 6-meter howitzers, and the 160-meter beam with a railroad roundhouse drive motor mechanism.
All of It!
The storm had devastated Q. R. Zedd.
“This storm really devastated my stuff,” said the great man himself, trudging out to meet us beside a snowdrift encapsulating more broken aluminum. “This is really sad.”
“How did you operate last night?” we asked. “I slung a piece out of my noodle soup over the back of a chair and loaded it through a super-tuner of my own design,” Zedd replied. “It worked real good, except Tondelayo had to keep coming in and pouring more broth on the noodle because it didn’t load worth a flip when it dried out.”
The great one paused thoughtfully, remembering. “Durn thing wouldn’t stay on the back of the chair once it got hard from drying out, either. Every time it fell, the alligator clips came off.”
We asked if anyone was hurt when the aluminum started to fall.
“Almost,” Zedd replied. “Homer was outside someplace end my 28-element fell right on top of him. No problem, though. He didn’t, get hurt.”
“But,” we gasped, “how was that possible?”
Zedd fired up his oom-Paul. “Stuff fell on his head.”
Did Zedd plan to start restoring the antenna farm right away?
He pointed skyward, “Already working on it. See?”
We peered painfully up into cloud glare. There on the 3,000 footer, just below the level of the clouds, we made out a tiny figure, belted in, cranking an end wrench on the boom fitting of a gleaming new 13-element beam.
Even at such a distance, and shivering badly, the figure looked darling. Which made identification easy. “Tondelayo?” we asked.
“Yep,” Zedd said. “But I’m sure worried about her.”
“Because of the altitude?”
“Because of the time.”
“The time?”
Zedd looked at his special hf monitor quartz crystal chronometer. “She’s running way behind the work schedule. If she don’t get that beam up there in the next two hours, I’m afraid she’ll be doing the laundry long after midnight.”
That was a terrible thought – that A5A might not have enough clean underwear and socks.
“What kind of antennas are you putting back up?” we asked.
Zedd yawned. “I’ll have to tell you about my new antenna designs another day, boy. Right now it’s time for my nap.”
And he trudged back toward the ranch house, noble soul that he is, stoic in the face of mother nature’s adversities. I mean, how great can one man be?
— KU5B