By Gus Browning, printed in 73 Magazines in 1965-11 reprint by PA0ABM Gus Browning story, Part 07 To Monaco, first DXpedition In last month's issue I had cleared Czech customs with the assistance of my Red Star badge, or an Auspice Day, or my usual dumb look. I was on my way to Munich, Germany, to see some of my friends. After an uneventful train trip (at least it was uneventful after getting in Germany) the train arrived hi the big Munich railroad station at midnight. I wandered to any number of hotels and found that it was impossible to get a room. Some sort of international convention was taking place and all the hotels were filled. Now what would you do at this ungodly hour of a chilly night in a strange city? Well, back to the railway station I went and walked up to the ticket window and said, "Give me a ticket to Vienna, please!" After about 4 or 5 hours' wait I was on my way to Vienna, After that it was Zagreb, Yugoslavia;, Sofia, Bulgaria; Bucharest, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Warsaw, Poland; Copenhagen, Denmark; back through Hamburg and Frankfurt, Germany, on to Luxembourg. Then Paris and to Andorra in the Pyrenees, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Gibraltar, Ballarec Islands, and Marseilles, and on to Viernheim, Germany to visit Hans DL3JJ. Up to now I had only been a tourist ever since I had left Munich with their filled up hotels. I had no one to visit in these countries between Munich and Viernheim. I had not yet received my equipment. These trips through Europe were by train and bus, the costs being very low, and I had a wonderful time just seeing these places, if for only a few days at each spot, T had no definite schedule on this portion of the trip. I just stayed at each place until I figured it was time to move on. Incidentally, this is the best way to make any trip if you have the time and are not in a hurry trying to meet a tight schedule. I got off the train at what I thought was Viernheim. later on I found that it was some other "heim" not spelled with Viern. To be truthful, I was not pronouncing the name properly to the train conductor and he let me off the train at what I suppose was some town that I was kind of pronouncing. Now this was about 5 a.m. No one was at the railway station and I wandered up the street of this little German town. Very few people were on the streets at that hour, I asked a policeman how to find DL3JJ's home, and he spoke no English at all. I continued up the street trying to question other people, and not one of them spoke any English. Finally I stopped in a service station and the attendant could not speak English either, but while I was trying my very best to talk with him and not getting anywhere at all, a truck stopped in for some gasoline and this driver did speak fair English. He even offered to take me to DL3JJ's QTII, which was about 20 miles out of his way. Upon arrival there I found that Hans had a small electronic manufacturing business in his back yard, but that Hans was away on business. Working for him, however, I found Mahmud SU1MS who welcomed me, took me down to a nearby small, very neat German hotel and checked me in and in the end paid my hotel bill for me. Mahmud gave me a note written in Arabic with a telephone number, he told me when I arrived in Cairo, Egypt, to Call this number and I would hbe taken care of in good style. Hans was building some od the very nicest precision measuring equipment I have ever seen. Direction finding units for their FCC was an item he was making when I was there, a very beautiful piece of gear. Mahmud was just as nice a fellow as I had thought he was when I worked him on CW. I have found that everyone I had QSO ed, even on CW, and formed an opinion of usually was the type of fellow I expected him to be, I cannot say the same holds true of how you picture people to appear. This will fool you, and I mean nearly every time. After spending a very pleasant few days with Mahmud, meeting Hans' very sweet mother and a YU chap that also works for Hans, I departed for Nienburg to visit Hadi DJ2PJ. I found that Nienburg was another typical small German town where nearly everyone knows everyone else. All the people I met there through Hadi's introduction were most friendly. They offered me German beer, which I very gracefully turned down since I am a 100% non-drinker of anything containing alcohol, so we all had a cup of good German coffee. Sometimes I even ran into a Coca Cola. Hadi speaks very good English, T understand he teaches it in school His parents were very friendly and nice to me. I stayed at his home and did a little operating of his station. After spending a most enjoyable week with Hadi and his family I departed, again by train, for Hamburg and another short eyeball QSO with Gus DL6ZZ and his nice XYL, Helene. A phone call to Amsterdam Airport informed me that my radio equipment had arrived and was QRX for me to pick up. Off to Amsterdam by train. Upon arrival I immediately took a taxi to the airport and located my equipment without any trouble at all. Yes, locating the equipment was no trouble, but getting it was the rub! In fact, they more or less told me that they would not release it to me, I tried to tell them that I was on my way to Monaco and that was where I wanted to use it They said FB, we will air freight it to you down there. I asked them how about sending it by train. But when they told me the costs to send it by train I was floored. There were all kinds of charges tacked on: airport handling, railway charges, the charges down in France, tax and other charges. In the end it was much cheaper to have it sent on down to Marseille by air freight. I was learning a little about some of the many troubles and costs of shipping things around instead of carrying them with you as surplus baggage. Of course, surplus baggage costs more, but alter giving many thoughts to the various difficulties you run into when things are shipped separately, it's by far a better idea just to pay the added costs of air freight. Then you don't face the problem of your equipment not being there when you arrive, and customs is a lot less trouble when you have things along with you. As a rule customs at the airports is in just as big a hurry to let you pass through as you are. Generally they don't have any place to store things at the airport and this makes them want you to take your equipment along with you. Of course, cut down every single ounce, because in the end they will cost you bucks! I know nearly everyone who makes a trip abroad takes by far too much clothing, just as I did at the beginning. Somewhere during my trip I sat down and gave lots of thought to this big batch of clothing I was lugging all over the world and decided I was going to cut this to the bone. I shipped home everything I had with me except the following items; 3 pairs of undershorts, 3 undershirts. 3 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, one pair of shoes, 3 pairs of socks, one sweater, and one dress coat. You can put all this in a small air passenger bag. Right now I have even cut this down to just two changes of clothing. Be sure everything vou have is the very best you can buy, and is drip-dry ; wash your clothes every night and hang them up over the bath tub (if there is one) and the next day you again have two changes of clothing. Of course, if you are going to be where it's cold you have to carry a few heavier things with you, It's actually a lot cheaper in the end to carry the bare essentials and BUY what yoy need along the way. Well, after shipping my equipment from the Amsterdam Airport I boarded a train and made a slow trip on through Holland, Belgium, and France on down to Marseilles. Upon arriving there I checked into a small hotel and waited three or four days there for Leny (then VQ4GT-ex VQ8CB and VQ8AB), his XYL Lillette and daughter Gertie to arrive. It was quite an experience there. I hung around some of the waterfront places looking at all those people drinking all that wine and I saw some of the doggondest dancing I had ever seen. They called it "The Apache," and it's real rough stuff. They throw? the girl down, pull her up by the hair, slap her face and also slap other parts of her, and a lot of other rough stuff like that. But she likes it and keeps coming back for more! Leny and family arrived and we met for the first time, after the many QSO's we had had. We each had written the other as many as a hundred letters, exchanging photos of our families and I thought we knew each other quite well. I had told Leny all about my exact financial status and everything else about me that I could think of, I don't know what kind of fellow he expected to see when he met me. but here I was, a little fellow living in a cheap hotel, pinching every penny . I was not the Rich American that people usually expect to meet overseas. Any of you fellows who know me personally know I don't try to put on a Big Front just to impress people. I try to always be humble and as unassuming a fellow as possible. To put it mildly, I think Leny and family were a LITTLE bit disappointed in what they met. In the end, though, we all had a fine stay in South France, traveling all over in Leny's new Volkswagen helping to make the mileage high enough so that he could take it back to Kenya with him as a "used car." As it turned out, Leny took me all the way to Monaco. There I went to the Hotel Le Siecle and told the man behind the desk I was a radio amateur and wanted a room. He said, "Yes, I have been expecting you and I have a room on the top floor waiting for you." At the moment I thought this was rather odd, because 1 had not told anyone I was going there, but to save an argument I just kept my mouth shut. We went up by a stair case that ended up right on the roof. There were four nice 25 or 30 foot poles lying on the roof (it was a flat cement roof with a wall around it). There were even four metal bands mounted on this cement wall for the poles to be mounted in! I was taken to room 39, where there were two tables end-to-end at the back window to set equipment on. He said he had fixed it all up for me to use! I could see that DXpediting in Monaco was going to be a lead pipe cinch; everything was all set for me even before I got there! The manager told me he always gave hams room 39. That afternoon I was directed to the Ministry of Finance to see about my license. I walked in and told the pretty French secretary what I wanted, filled out an application, and was told to come back the next day at ten o'clock to pick up my license. This one was "duck soup." The next day I picked up the license and my call sign was 3A2BW. This incidentally, was the easiest place in all my travels to get a license. Up on the roof I went and in a very short time T was on my first DXpedition tryout. Back then 3A2 was still on the relatively rare list and I wish I could tell you the thrill of being the chased, instead of the chaser. After getting on the air I had a chance to try out all the many ideas I had had for all these years as to how to operate a DXpedition the right way. In many ways my ideas were good and some of them I found were no good at all. For one real surprise I had never given much thought to how bad European T-7 QRM could be, the many lids that kept calling on my own frequency, the UA boys insisting on giving me their name and telling me their power was 200 watts (most seemed to be named Vlad at that time). And what stopped me was they all insisted on my giving them my name, power, QTH, etc. At Monaco I took out my little hand compass to see how the lay of the land was in the direction of the USA, I found that the highest mountain, the one that was the closest to me, was in the exact middle of the path. If ever I go back to Monaco I want to try my very best to operate from that neck of land that protrudes into the Mediterranean Sea, which would give a very fine signal path to everyone in ALL directions. The prices, the food, and the service at the Hotel Le Siecle are very nice, but for a good DXpedition it's no good until someone removes that great big mountain. When you can't move the mountain YOU move! Departure time arrived we packed up everything and boarded the train that was taking us to Milan (on our way to Campione d'Ttalia, INSIDE Switzerland. I thought maybe a new country, but it wasn't). Well, this train stopped when it arrived at the Italian -French border and the fun began. If you want to cause a lot of excitement, try going into Italy with two suitcases full of radio gear, one of the pieces being a transmitter with markings for key, mike, antenna, etc, very plainly marked on the front panel- I had put a deposit with the French customs upon my arrival in France at the border check point they had given me back this deposit and I had walked through a little gate that separated France from Italy. Now the Italians upon finding me with this equipment said that I couldn't bring it into Italy without an import license and to carry it back through the gate into France. Back I went with my suitcases. Then French customs said, 'You can't bring that to France without an import license!" Well back and forth I went any number of times. Finally TI just put my suitcases down in the exact middle of that door. Neither of them seemed to like this, but it's a sort of no man's land and they could not do anything about it. BOY, I WAS LEARNING, I sure was! The biggest fly in the DXpedition ointment is ALWAYS customs. I wonder if that small neutral zone between France and Italy would count as a new one. Well after about a six hour delay and many phone calls to Rome we were permitted to bring our equipment through, but a deposit of something like $169.00 was required (this was sometime in late 1959 AND TO THIS DAY Italian customs still has that deposit of mine!}. But we (Valdo , I1IN and I) were on our way to Campione d'Italia. IC1IN was the call sign issued to us. The train was one of those coal burners and With all the tunnels in northern Italy, it's a wonder we all were not stifled to death; some of these tunnels are quite long and the trains always go very- slowly through them. Sometimes they would stop for maybe five minutes right in the middle, and you thought you would sure enough stifle with all that smoke from the engine. My lasting impressions of northern Italy, and in fact nearly all the rest of Italia are: there are lots of very small villages each one, even though it looks very drab and about to shrivel up and disappear, has a great big Catholic church; there are Catholic priests everywhere. Grape arbors! Oh yes, they have them by the hundreds of acres, all over the place. All for making that Italian vino. Italian women like to talk and talk especially on the trains; it's always a talking marathon on these trains with these ladies. Everyone drinks their vino sometimes a big bottle is all gone with a meal. I thought for sure that every place would serve spaghetti with nearly every meal, but do you know, I had a hard time finding a good spaghetti dinner in all of Italy. Just like I had a hard time finding sauerkraut when in Germany. While walking down the street in Milan, right in the middle of the city on top of its Highest building (I guess it was about twelve stories) I saw the doggondest thing-a five or six element 20 meter beam up on top of a 70 foot tower. Brother, this fellow had himself a real site for his beam. I asked Valdo who lived there and lie said Bruno I1RIF, Later on— about three years later on— I visited Bruno and will tell you all in a later chapter of one of the world s best ham stations. After spending one night in Milan, off we were for ICI-land by bus. At the Swiss border there were those customs fellows again. But upon producing our license for Campione dltalia we were permitted to pass through without any difficulty at all except a deposit, which they gave back when we left. Upon arriving in Campione d'ltalia we found our little hotel-the only one in town- with one of the impossible roofs. So we ended up with just about the worst antenna that I have ever tried to use. The hotel room we had was on the third floor. The 20 meter dipole was a length of antenna wire from one window around the corner to the other. It was a dipole with a 90 degree bend in its center the SWR was about five or six to one. It did load up kind of half-way. I tuned up the rig and said to Valdo, "Well, here I go with my first CQ with the world's first IC1 call sign".' Valdo had already secured the license well in advance of our arrival but then he said, "No, no, we cannot go on the air yet, there are a number of things we must do first." Our first call was at the office of the Governor, and after explaining to him the purpose of our visit and getting his approval, we went to the Police Chiefs office for more explaining. We were told not to go on the air until the police came by and inspected our equipment. We then went to the Post Office and saw the Postmaster and did more talking, and he said OK. This took over half a day. We arrived back at the hotel about 2 pm. and finished a very slow meal. We then went back to our room and had a short nap and finally about 4 or 5 p.m. three policemen came around to "inspect" our equipment and to also inspect us! These fellows knew absolutely nothing about radio a radio amateur— ha, ha— they didn't even have the faintest idea what these words meant. So Valdo tried explaining what a ham was, and after about 30 minutes of lust Italian they departed, I said, 'Is everything OK now Valdo?" He said. 'Yes all is OK we can now operate." The results of this operation were not very good, mostly I think because of the antenna system. Also, to every QSO we had to explain where we were, and tell them that it would not count as a new one. All of this took a lot of time then sometimes Valdo had to call CQ Rome and this took up some more time. The European QRM was fierce from this spot. The QSO's with the USA as far as I can remember were few. We stayed there about seven days and away we went to San Marino. Valdo had been issued the call sign of I1IN/M1 and I had W4BPD/M1. The trip from Milan to San Marino was made by train again— all those smoky tunnels again. We arrived at a small sea port town, and then we boarded a bus to San Marino, some 35 miles away. San Marino as far as I remember, is just one whole mountain. it covers the mountain from its base to its top. It's strictly a tourist spot. When we arrived there I saw about a hundred big buses, about the size of our Greyhounds, all from Germany, Tourists were all over the place snapping pictures, and every little shop was full of them. It sort of reminded me of Asheville, North Carolina, in the middle of summer with the tourists there. We checked with the police again and got their approval. But up to this point we had not selected our QTH. They told us when we got located to come back and let them know where we were going to be operating from. We wandered around to a few hotels, all of them quite steep in rates and not too well located to suit us. Then I suggested to Valdo that we try to get permission to operate from the high watch tower that overlooks all of San Marino, He said that he thought this was not possible but we could tiy anyhow. So away we went. To get to the top required walking up 880 steps (I counted them myself!). We found a very nice guard named Joe in the old castle that's under the high watch tower and after a good long talk he went to his boss and it was decided that it was OK with him for us to use the small room right at the very peak of the tower. This is the very highest spot in all of San Marino; it's about 100 feet or more high and on top of that it's on the peak of the mountain— it's even a better QTH than W3CRA has! So up the steps we lugged everyhing and we strung out our string of dipoles in tandem: 10 meters, 15 meters, 20 meters and 80 meters, all between the two tower peaks. We had a real antenna system, With the assistance of Joe, our guard friend, we got 230 volts up to our room. After everything was installed we went back to the police chief to check in with him. Then we went up the 880 steps to our shack and away we went with our first CQ. The results here were fantastic we got the best reports and really had a ball, Joe brought us up two Army cots to sleep on and even a small electric heater and a few blankets, and on top of that a big plate of spaghetti that his wife had cooked for us, and boy she really knew how to cook REAL Italian spaghetti (the kind that is so hard to find in Italy,) After staying there a few days and walking up and down those 880 steps, which was killing me, I asked Joe if I could pay his wife to cook us a big plate of that good spaghetti every night for our dinner. This she did, thereby saving us many steps up and down. Occasionally we would go down to have a meal at night and let me tell you, it is spooky walking through a number of rooms in an old castle with the walls covered with instruments of torture, old guns, coats of armor and many other relics of ages long past, and only a flashlight to see where you are stepping. Every night at about 11 p.m., it started to rain and this continued every night we were there. Lots of wind blew all the time, day and night, and lots of weird sounds were heard with this wind blowing through the old castle. One night, just as one of these rain showers started, the most awful noise started coming out of the phones. It kept building up and up, and finally the S meter was reading S-9 plus plus plus! All signals were blotted out, of course. I turned off the set and, believe it or not, the noise was still heard I started hunting for the source and when the light was turned out I saw a very thin blue halo on the end of each of the unused antennas, I reached over to ground one of them, but it reached for me first and what a jolt I got! When I had grounded the center conductors of each of the unused antennas I then observed that the outside shield was still arcing from every unused antenna to the concrete wall After grounding every unused antenna and its shield, all the noise disappeared from the 14 mc antenna and back I was on the air. One night the wind was almost at cyclone force, but I kept on operating anyway, I noticed the SWR went up a little higher than usual in the middle of this storm, about 10 p.m., but I operated on until about 2:30 a.m. anyway and went to bed. The next morning I went outside to look over the antennas to try to see if I could find out why the SWR had gone up, I found that the whole string of antennas had fallen and was strung out down the mountain side, lying right on the surface of the mountain. Except for the slightly higher than usual SWR I could not see that there was any noticeable effect on getting out . Many amusing things happened while we were there. All day long tourists came and went, walking around the little stairway around our little shack. After the first day we decided to keep our door closed to eliminate them QRMing us with a lot of questions. Sometimes when they were outside and saw the closed door one of them would say something like, "I bet if this old tower could talk it could tell some interesting stories about people being killed in these rooms." That's when Valdo or I would let out a blood curdling yell or a good loud groan and hit on the door with a shoe. Then you should have seen them scram back down the spiral stairs leading away from the spooks in the Belfry Towerl This happened any number of times every day and was a good pastime for us. The operating at San Marino was very good and Valdo and I departed for Rome with a very satisfied feeling. The trip to Rome, as usual, was made by train and they were jammed full as is usual there. We went third class to save our money and we arrived the same time the first class arrived. We went directly to the Vatican and met Dominico HVICN, Iasked him to let me operate HVICN for a few days, just on CW. There was a lot of hesitation and a few questions, including what was my religion. I guess when I said Baptist I must have given the wrong answer or maybe it was something else. But anyway, he did finally say, "OK, you can operate some on CW," After getting the keyer out of the drawer and blowing the dust off (the mike was nice and clean) I plugged her in and while Dominico was telling me to give only signal reports and under no circumstances to give my name, I let loose with a fast CQ on 15 meters and boy, the old dead band really opened up. In nine minutes 1 had 11 QSO's, all Europeans, While I was writing down the call sign of the next caller, Dominico reached over and pulled out the power plug and said, "WeIl, it*s time for lunch," I asked him if I could come back after lunch and do some more operating and he said, "I will get in touch with you," That was the end of my HVICN operation. I can at least say that I here has been one Baptist who has operated HVICN, even though it was for only nine minutes. On over to Yugoslavia with a brief stop at Zagreb and on to Belgrade and a one week's stay with YU1KC and his son YU1EH, where I was treated royally, A fine place, Belgrade, and fine people these Yugoslavs. Some day I want to return and get to know them a lot better. Off to Athens where I was met at the airport by SV1AB and SV1AE, good old George and Sock. I spent about a week with George in his home, was taken all over Athens and saw all the historic sights, George doesn't have coffee for breakfast— it's a cup of good HOT milk along with his breakfast each day. I did not think it was possible for me to take this, but I did and it stayed down, so sometimes you fellows try a cup of hot milk for breakfast and you will see what I mean. It will not kill you, but— well try it! That's all for this time— next month it's ole Rundy OD5CT, Cairo, Khartoum, and Kenya. Then off to the Seychelles and octopuses, Lee Bergren W0AIW, some /MM and ole Harvy Brain. Stick with me, boys, there's a lot to tell yet! Gus