By Gus Browning, printed in 73 Magazines in 1965-07 reprint by PA0ABM Gus Browning story, Part 03 Learning to use hands. This little episode is being written while I am in Calcutta, India. I am feeling a little low today because I have just this morning seen my sweet wife, Peggy, leave for the U. S, A, and I am really lonesome, I should be returning back to the AC lands next week where I have a transmitter and at least can get on the air. Right at this moment some fellow out on the street who sells gadgets to passers by is playing a very mournful oriental tune on a flute and he has been at it for the past 3 hours. I am standing by here trying to get my good equipment out of Customs. It has been referred to the Central Government in New Delhi by mail! Boy, I sure hope that Ministry will open my letter when it arrives so I can get my stuff and head back to the high Himalayas and get away from this hot weather here. You would be surprised at all the sounds you hear coming up from the street. The constant honking of those horns on taxis (they use those very old type of horns where you press a rubber bulb and they actually say 'honk-honk-honk") and these fellows just love the sound that they make. My little hotel room is not equipped with an air conditioner but it has one of these old slow turning ceiling fans like you see in the movies of scenes taken overseas. The sweat is pouring from me. The hams here in Calcutta have promised my wife that they will not let me get lonesome and I think a few are coming around to take me out tonight. They are a FB lot. VU2AJ, VU2RF, VU2DK, and many others have met Peggy and me and one or two of them shows up almost every night for an eye-ball QSO. A new sound just started down on the street —one of these snake charmers with his flute and cobra is now at it and going strong. Well, I better get along with my story now I have wandered long enough away from it, day- dreaming here in ray solitary room.— I wonder if the band is open to W land now, it's 1300 GMT -or 6:30 PM Indian Standard time! No rig here, no nothing. You all back home have it made and don't know itl You lucky dogs you Like I said in the last episode, I spent mos of my time during the War building rigs and putting up a lot of rhombics and eating dinner every day with the Draft Board man. Finallly the war was over and the fellows everywhere were getting back on the air— and I was ii there with the boys working 'em right and left. You know, when you get up 13 rhombic —big ones too— that keeping them up starts to become quite a task all within itself. It's practically impossible to walk around to inspect them all each week. I used my Jeep each Sunday after lunch riding and riding looking over all those antennas, and usually at leas one was down, a guy wire broken, a rope broken. Then I would spend all day Monday getting that antenna back up and in operating condition. At times during summertime when thunderstorms were prevelant lightning would completely remove all the wire from a whole rhombic or at times just half of it, but never bothered any feed lines. This sort of thing kept up quite a number of years. Occasionally I would have a QSO with Buck Joyner W4TO over in Atlanta who is a rep for a number of different radio manufacturers. One of them at that time was Telrex. Buck would all the time say "Come on Gus why don't you put up a good beam. You know they are better than those rhombics you have there." I would say to him , "Buck, I can work anything you can and get just as good a report as you get and you know I run just . Well, one day I went out to inspect th antenna farm, and three of them were down. That night here comes Buck again with his antenna argument and this time I said, "Buck, what kind of antenna do you have there that you want to give me?" He said, "Gus I got a brand new 5 element Telrex that’s too long to put up on my place and it's yours for $100.00 if you will come to Atlanta and pick it up. It's still in the factory crate." I said, *'OK, Buck I will try out one of those beams just to see if it's as good as my rhombics," I got in my old beat-up pick-up truck, along with my man Pocket, and over to Atlanta we drove. When I left there I had a 5 element beam. On my way home I was passing through a very small Georgia town and spotted a radio station where some fellows were taking down a nice little tower. I stopped in and ended up buying that 150 foot tower for $100.00, In the truck it went too* When I arrived back home I was all set: a good 5 element beam and a 150 ft. tower all for a total price of $200, I had read lots of books on beams in the meantime and was ready to see how some of those writeups on tuning and adjusting beams worked out in practice. At first I just put it up and tuned it like the book sa*d to tune it, at the factory marks on the elements. The SWR was FB at the exact center of the band but, brother, by the time either band end was reached the SWR was way up— about 3.5 or maybe 4 to l! I decided I couldn't make it any worse by tuning and adjusting by some other method. I had heard about this business of Gamma and Mega matching with small tuning condensers mounted in a weather proof box right up on the antenna, and this sounded fine to me. So they were installed along with a field telephone on top of the tower. Up the pole Pocket went and we started our tuning up. After many trials and errors you kind of begin to see the curious effects turning either condenser has. You plot a curve with the condensers at one setting, then you run another curve with another set of adjustments of the condensers. After a while you began to see which way things are going, and by some slight misadjustments (on purpose— that is) you find that the antenna can be used all over the whole 14 mc band with an SWR of not over 2:1, Of course it never gets at 1:1 on any frequency, but which is best 3.5:1 on each end of the band with 1:1 at the center frequency, or 2:1 at each end and maybe 1,25:1 at the cen- er? I liked the latter adjustment much better. After that 5 element beam was up I began to compare it with my old rhombies and I found that the beam was just exactly as good at the rhombics at their very best direction, but with the beam I could fill in those weak spots between the rhombics! And the nicest part with the beam, I had only one antenna to keep up in the air! And the front to back ratio helped to eliminate a lots of QRM when working DX! So as one rhombic after another came down for one reason or another I just let then stay down! But I did lose my good 40 and 80 meter signal! Since using vertical Hy-Gain antennas on DXpeditions I have a good idea on a fairly good way to overcome a low frequency antenna problem. I want to try this when I get back home again; Run a 40 meter coax feed line to the proper place up near the top of the tower then tap it on the tower and put out the 40 meter ground plane radials (remembering the loading effects of the 5 element beam on top ). Slide up and down until you have the lowest SWR at the middle of the band, then try a tuning coil in series with the coax feed line (to tune out the inductive of capacative reactance— whichever you have to tune out), Then you have a good ground plane that's up high so you drop down the tower and find the right spot for the 80 meter coax connection and its ground plane. (Remember the top loading effects of both the 20 meter beam and also the top loading effects of the 40 meter ground plane wires too,) When you get through with the 80 meter ground plane, I believe you could do the same even with a 160 meter ground plane. When all is finished you then would have up a good 40-80-160 meter vertical ground plane and also a good 20 meter beam. Then put on top (this should be done before you start the low frequency verticals a good 10 and 15 meter beam, and then everything is on one tower! I have found that a good vertical with a low SWR like the Hy Gain that I used on all my DXpeditions is hard to beat, I do know Old Buck W4TO proved his point to me more or less— that is to say, a good 4 or 5 element beam, up high is just as good as a fairly good rhombic, of course only on one band. With these 5 over 5 or 6 over 6 beams, I suppose that they are better than a run-of-the-mill rhombic. These fellow using stacked jobs are very hard to beat. All during most of the 1950's I kept thinking about my very slim chances of going on DXpedition to any rare country. The chance of such a thing ever happening was in my opinion, one in a million. But I did start making some plans just in case something did eventually turn up. To start with I though how nice it would be if a fellow could write with one hand an use the other hand to operate his key. All my life I had been using my right hand both to write and send with. I was talking to a friend of mine who had studied the human brain and how it functioned and I asked him if it were possible for me somehow to learn to use my left and to write while keeping my right hand to operate the key. He told me he had read in one of his books how to do this and that he could look this info up and give me a phone call if he found it. A few weeks later he telephoned me to come and see him. When I arrived there he told me how to go about trying to change my writing hand. Here what he told me to do. For two weeks I was to stand up in front of a mirror with one hand on top of my head and the other hand on my stomach, then to pat my head with the hand on it and at the same time to rub my stomach with the hand that was on it, then to my "change" and to rub the hand on the head when rubbing, the hand should be going in circular motions and to pat the stomach with the hand that was on it. This did take two weeks really to get so you could change instantly from rub to pat and vice versa! About 10 minutes each morning I practiced this. All is time I was told to do all my writing with my left hand but to keep on using my right hand on the key while operating the rig. Well, back to my doctor I went, and demonstrated to him that I had accomplished my assigned task. Next he told me to change the position of my hands, explaining that he meant for me to put the other hand on my head and the other on my stomach and to practice this for two weeks and to report to him then. This task was perfected in two more weeks, did my writing with my left hand was getting better (I could almost read it!— hi). Back I went to him and he made me demonstrate it to him telling me when to change my rubbing to patting and vise versa. He said, "Gus you are doing fine, but you have nearly begun to work, there is more to learn yet!" he said, "From here on I want your wife to give you the commands when to change, I want you to be able to use either hand on your had or stomach. Let's start using numbers from now on. Number 1 will be right hand on and patting while left hand is on stomach rubbing. Number 2 will be right hand on head rubbing while left hand is on stomach patting, number 3 will be left hand on head patting while right hand is on stomach rubbing. Number 4 will be left hand on head rubbing while other hand is on stomach patting. Let your wife do the counting, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, then 3 2 1, 4 3 2 1, then 1 2 4 3, 4 3 2 1 etc. Do this for one month and come back to see me." I was working like a slave on this darn assignment and my wife was laughing her head off at me or bawling me out for being so silly! But yon know me, I am hard headed, I was going to learn to write with that left hand or else. One month later it was back to the doctor's office again. This time he did the counting and boy, I jumped when he gave those 1 2 3 4, 4 3 2 1 etc, commands. But I satisfied him that I could do the exercises 100% perfect. (You know, I used to have plenty of hair on my head, and I wonder why it's so thin now? Maybe all that rubbing and patting had something to do with it! My writing with my left hand was beginning to get sort of almost legible too. My wife said to me one night when I was doing my exercises, “How crazy can you get?" I guess I could not blame her for this remark when you sit down and think about these things I was doing either! You know, about this time I got a letter from my bank wanting me to come down and give them a new signature card— I wonder why? Well, back to the Doc and me— Next he said for me to keep doing these 123 4, 4321 exercises but every time I change from one number to another for me to be patting one foot with the other foot still and then to change feet! You know, this was getting to be a complicated thing, and was turning out to be lots of hard work! He said to do this for 6 months, to keep writing with my left hand while transmitting with my right hand, to put a Coke on .the table, then while I was writing to stop and pick up the Coke and take a drink while I was still keying with the right hand, then to light up a cigarette while I was still using the key, and to get all this do\vn to where it was a smooth operation and perfectly co- ordinated with both hands. (You see, I had told the Doc why I wanted to become left handed in my writing, explaining to him about DXpeditions, the necessity of speed in filling out logs while using the key— he understood the problem. Well, in 6 more months I had things down to perfection, I went back and demonstrated to him and he even came out to the house and let me show him how it work out while 1 was actually in QSO with someone. He said to me, “Gus boy, you have it all O.K, now you don't need me anymore," and that was that. I must say this has helped me out in speeding up QSO's when those piles get real high and you have to work em, to get the pile down, where you can control em! I used to listen to W4KFC and W3BES in those SS contests and their system of operation was an education all by itself, I also learned a lot listening to ole Nose KH6IJ out in Hawaii too, I was getting ready for any thin j in the line of operating that the futnre migh bring my way. Of course X was all the time oi the air working what DX there was, and trying to out-guess the other fellows who were in competition. During those times I was trying to make as many good friends as possible over seas with the hope that some day I would get the chance to visit them and at the same time not have to be paying a hotel bill! Oh yes, will admit most of my motives had two view points but I think both of them were hones viewpoints, All during these years those trees on my farm kept on growing and growing and different people in the lumber business kept on making me offers to buy the timber. Most of the offers were made by small timber buyers and did not amount to much, but eventually one of the larger companies came to see me and said they were making a serious offer c so-and-so many dollars for the timber I had. Well, I had no real idea as to what the timber was really worth, but I just told them I would not consider selling at the price they offered me but I would sell them if they would pay me that same day a figure about 35% higher then what they had offered me. I said for them to go back to their office and make their own decision and if they wanted to make the purchase just to bring me the money before 6 pm that same day—or to forget the whole thin but not to come after that day because the timber would not be for sale at any price. They left at about 2:30 pm and back the were at 5 pm with a certified check for the amount I had asked. The papers were signed they had departed and the next day I went down to a bank and deposited their check. I said to myself, "There is my DXpedition money” I never did mention this to the wife. Then I kind of gradually started telling some of the DXers overseas that I might come an visit them the next year if they had a spare room for visiting hams. If they said they had the room for me I said FB and if they did not answer my query I just forgot about them. The plans for a DXpedition were slow in developing at first, but after a while the news got on the grape-vine that I was going on DXpedition and then the fellows started asking me where was I going— and to be hones up to that time I did not have the faintest idea where I wanted to go or where I should go. I asked different DXers what countries they needed and the answers at first were usually Tanna Tuva or Wrangle Island, Then I would teII them to be reasonable and they would usually mention a few countries that it was possible for me to visit. I wanted to go to as many good spots as my little money would make me, but I knew the money would have to be stretched very thin if I went to too many. But I had my mind made up how I would operate when and if I ever got going. • I would never have any Black List; • I would never work anyone on my frequency; • I would not start this business of having someone in the USA or elsewhere assist me with giving a lst of stations to work ; • I would have none of this Wl, W2, V3, etc, business. I wanted to be the one to run my DXpedition the way I wanted to run it: no favorites, come one, come all, no holds barred. About this time I started wondering about getting licenses overseas, getting equipment to use (I had nothing small or portable at all), the various language barriers. Custom troubles with radio equipment, the health problems. In the next episode these things begin to tart getting solved— things start moving— and problems start coming up that have no solutions— or at least I could see no solutions to hem. I said to myself many times— Come on Gus, don't chicken out now!— Gus