Originally published in the June 1989 issue of the Collector and Emitter.
(Special to C&E)
HONOR ROLL RANCH — The greatest DX operators of America convened here recently in the first annual DX Greats’ Reunion.
The reunion was sponsored by Q. R. Zedd, A5A, the greatest DXer of them ail. Zedd, holder of the only lx1 callsign in the United States and inventor of radar and the plastic milk carton, along with many of the world’s other most important things, set up the reunion to bolster area morale, battered in recent months by a series of devastating setbacks.
The reunion was held at Honor Roll Ranch, just a hoot and a holler south of town.
And what a scene it was! All Zedd’s towers had been freshly painted by Tondelayo, Zedd’s nubile, blond bride, ace Dxer in her own right, cutest graduate in the history of the Harvard Business school, world record holder in tap dancing and the maringue, and of course the mother of his child Zepp, who is another story entirely.
The first RV pulled in at Honor Roll on the evening of the tenth, and by next afternoon almost everyone was there. Dingfod Armstrong, Texas’s greatest, was there in his 80-foot Airstream with the foldout rhombic and drag-along linear. Hiram Tikitoki of Hawaii flew in moments after the C5A landed at the Honor Roll strip and began unloading his portable gear. Bill Blast, his 68-foot trailer drawn by a blue Rolls Royce pickup, popped up his eighty-foot towers and had six stations on the air within ten minutes of his arrival. Ohio’s Bill Buckeye flew scarlet and gray banners from his longwires, and when Harley Mincemeat arrived from Arkansas, the sweet smell of rendering lard soon perfumed the territory.
Blast quickly worked all Japan, while Mincemeat talked to everyone in South America who spoke either English or Spanish. Tikitoki worked all Pacific. Legendary Surf, the California ace, worked all Russia and the Beach Boys on 75. Banners flew. Special planes began to arrive in a steady stream with reports from around the world and the first bags of QSL cards.
Zedd, inspired by the activity, worked K5JB on packet and attempted to contact N5MS on phone.
By the end of the second day, there was so much rf in the air that an entrepeneur from Dallas moved in and began cutting it up with chainsaws and packaging it in thick plastic trashbags. If I can figure out how to hook terminals to the bags,” he said, “I think we have found an alternative to nuclear energy.”
The high-power signals going around the world destroyed all the fluorcarbons in the atmosphere, and a side-benefit of all the flying electrons was the refurbishing of the ozone layer in a 24-hour period.
“This only goes to show what radio amateurs can do when inspired by the greatest, namely me,” Armstrong said.
“It’s wonderful to see these guys learning from me,” said Buckeye. It is a heavy burden to great ones like me, but as Woody often liked to say, ‘George Patton never gave up. If he could slap soldiers, tired and busy as he was, the least the rest of us can do is press on!”
Blast operated his famed Blast Off DX Net without letup. He estimated that he had helped 2,000 lesser souls make good DX contacts through what he called “my mastery of the DX art and intrinsic greatness.”
Even Zedd’s momma, the legendary Constance Wilhemina Zedd, rocketed into town from her home in Mena, Ark. Driving a newly customized Honda Interceptor with booster rockets and long range radar, she made the trip to central Oklahoma in one hour and eleven minutes. “The damn rain slowed me down,” she explained, and then went right to work, dishing out QSOs to everyone who could copy her 80 WPM CW.
The evenings were as fun-filled as the days. While some operators manned the multiple stations, Zedd staged CW contests, transmitter hunts, a QRP contest and patent competition. All results are not in, but the U.S. Patent Office at last report had granted 107 new patents for what it termed “wonderful new electronic inventions sure to change the way we all live.”
Tondelayo treated the DXers to a tap dancing show. Young Zepp yodeled and played keyboards. Homer Klott, Zedd’s erstwhile protege who can’t learn Ohm’s Law, kept all the San-O-Lets spic and span.
“Boys,” Zedd said at the close of the third day, as towers were being stowed and engines warmed for departures, “it has been a memorable event. I want to thank all of you for coming, and doing your durndest, and confirming for me what I already knew.
“You are great, but I am clearly the greatest. You are smart, but I am smartest. You are fast, but I am fastest. You are something, but I am something else. You are modest, but I am the most modest of them all.
“Thank you again, boys and girls,” Zedd intoned maganimously as the sun set slowly in the west, “I will remember this always. History has been written. And I remain a legend in my own mind.”
For the record, all stations were worked on all bands, with the exception of just one or two that did not get on the air.
If you happen to be the one who did not work the DX greats, you may still be able to get on the list for some of the long-delayed echoes likely to circle the globe for another year. To get on the list, just send your callsign to LIST, Box 73, Norman, Okla., 73070. Be sure to enclose one Ovaltine lid and 300 greenstamps.
— KU5B