By Gus Browning, printed in 73 Magazines in 1966-04 reprint by PA0ABM Gus Browning story, Part 11 Persian Gulf States Last month I stopped when Rundy was getting ready to move on to Qatar, just up the Persian Gulf from Bahrein Island. We had our licenses all in order for all the MP-4s all the way up to and including Muscat. We had all our police permits in order and our airline tickets in our pockets. We had been in Bahrein about 6 or 7 days and bad made many thousands of QSO's. As I mentioned in last month's article we stayed in the only hotel there, the Speedbird Hotel, and boys, if you want to be sure you have a place to stay when you go to Bahrein I strongly suggest that you make reservations well in advance. Lord knows where you will stay if you get into Bahrein and cannot get into this hotel. You know you are right in the middle of Moslem country there so pork is taboo. One of the bell hops there told me about some British sailors who stopped there a few days. These fellows ordered pork chops at the Speedbird and quite naturally they were told that there was no such item to be had. Well these fellows went back to their ship and got some pork chops from the freezer and brought them to the hotel and went back into the kitchen and gave them to a cook and told him to cook them. This cook was a little young and not too experienced with the fact that this was pork when in the middle of frying them the head cook came in. He sniffed around and his nose told him there was pork in that frying pan. He made the young cook remove the pan from the stove, take it out in the yard and bury it, chops and all. Then this young cook was fired on the spot! The little planes that fly up and down the Persian Gulf are some sort of small four motor jobs. I am not sure just what kind of plane it actually is but it seems like it was a DeHaviIand. Down to the airport we went and we were off to Qatar. When you take off from Bahrein that's when you can see all those oi! derricks. It looked like I was over Texas with the exception that there was desert all over the place. Millions of years ago there must have been something other than deserts there to put all that oil under the ground. They tell me it usually rains about once during die year, but boy with all that oil under the ground who needs rain! The plane hugged the coast and in a very short while we landed at Qatar. Rundy told the taxi driver to take us to the hotel. At that time there was only one there and boy it was an eye-opener! I've forgotten its name but it looked like one of those Hilton jobs, real fancy, completely air conditioned, and about $22.00 per clay. We checked in and set up our antenna. This was very easy. We just ran it from the top of the hotel down to a fence post-in the direction of the big swimming pool. Just a few hundred feet from the pool was the Persian Gulf, very blue and calm looking. We saw a number of Arabian dhows with their very odd shaped sails going up and down the Gulf very slowly. The seamen on the dhows were .a tough looking lot and truthfully I would not make a trip on one of those things. I would be afraid that I would never get to the place I was headed for. We loaded the antenna up to the rig and the first CQ was sent out from MP4QAR and boy, business was FB too. You know things usually go like this when you first set up and start operating from a relatively rare spot. You call that first CQ and maybe one station comes back to you. Then sometimes you have to call another CQ to get the boys going. Well that time only one came back but when you sign with him that's when things began to pick up. By that time maybe 6 or 8 fellows are on your trail, and when you sign these 6 or 8 calls about 50 other fellows hear them and most of them join in even if, up to then, they have not even heard you. That's when you start having trouble picking one out of the pile. Now boys, don't fool yourself that there is always one fellow who is louder than everyone else in the pile— this is just not so. Nearly all the time everyone is at least within one S point of each other. The fellow you work is the fellow in a clear frequency, not the fellow who is slightly louder than the pack. So boys I strongly suggest when you are trying to work a rare one pick yourself a clear frequency, do some very close listening first, then jump in with a De-W??? about 3 times and BK. That's the way the smart boys operate. Some of the fellows have a sort of trade mark-W3CXX just sends XX XX XX, DL7AA sends Gus Gus Gus, W6SC, when on SSB, sends South Carolina, South Carolina, and about one of the best of all is W4CCB who just sends Coca Cola bottle. If you can think of a good trade mark start using it and if it clicks, stick with it from then on. I am trying to come up with a good one for me to use when I get started again back at W4BPD but so far I am stuck— how about some suggestions, boys! Incidentally, I am writing this portion of my story while I am in the Central Hotel in Ouagadougou (pronounced Waggadou-gu) Upper Volta. The rates here for a single air Ouagadougou (pronounced Waggadou— gu) is about 8 or 9 dollars. Coca Cola here is 40 cents per bottle, a good dinner is over $4.50, breakfast with only one egg and a small piece of bacon and a cup of this very black, very strong coffee is about $1.50. You don't live here cheap unless you can live on bananas and oranges. Another thing I have found is that you just don't hop on a plane here anytime you want to go. You have to wait, and I mean sometimes one full week to get a plane that will take you some place you might want to go. This is a bad place to be stuck, too. For two cents I would connect up the rig and do some bootlegging right here but then there are these red caps who probably would broadcast this news to the wrong people and you would be in Dutch with a capital D! Oh yes, the YLs here wear these topless dresses, not all of them, but a pretty good number. I hardly pay any attention to these things any more. I wonder if the topless bathing suits ever really became the style over in the USA would such things ever go unnoticed. I, for one, think they should try it out and see. I have been thinking a lot lately what it is I miss most being away from the USA. Of course number one is being with Peggy and seeing my own children and those five little grandchildren (it's five in 1965, maybe later on there will be more of them). The next biggest thing I miss is getting a nice slice of good white, soft bread and a big cold glass of milk, those good tomato sandwiches my wife makes covered with mayonnaise, real southern fried chicken, someone I can talk to (it's 99.9999% French here) seeing my favorite TV program, operating a big ham station with a big beam and seeing all my friends. Those are the kind of things you miss most of all when you are away from home as long as I have been, Well as usual, I completely wandered off the subject. Rundy and I were operating at the real fancy, air conditioned hotel in Qatar and we had a ball the first few hours. We went down and had our lunch and back we came to the rig. It was going like blazes when there was a loud knock on the door. Yes, you guessed it, it was the police. There they were, all three of them, wanting to know what we were doing with all that radio equipment all set up and operating. Rundy produced our licenses and told them we were permitted to operate in Qatar or any of the other Persian Gulf countries. After a while they more or less agreed with him but in the end, it seems like we both had to go down and check in with the police and explain again to them just what we were doing there, how long we would be there, and all the information on our equipment. We all shook hands and we returned to our room. From then on we had no more police trouble while we were in Qatar. Boys, see the local police first because if you don't they will be seeing you! Rundy and I packed up and away we went to the Trucial States. The plane landed at Shariah where one of Rundy's friends met us. We decided that since every operation up to that time had been from Sharjah that we would go to the Shiekdom of Dubai some 30 miles away from Sharjah thinking maybe somehow it would count for a new one if ARRL could ever be convinced as to just how these shiekdoms were governed. As for Rundy and me, we both still think that each of the seven should be different countries. There was sort of an outline of a road there, but it was very vague in spots and almost disappeared at others. But we did find Dubai all OK. It was a real Arabian settlement. I think it used to have a hotel there but I guess the hotel business sort of disappeared. The building that was once a hotel was almost deserted. The two top floors were completely empty and all the rooms were bare to the wall. A friend of Rundy's owned the building and gave Rundy and me permission to move in any of the top floors. We picked out a nice large room on the top (fifth) floor and the owner of the hotel loaned us two cots and the bed clothes. Most of these Arabic buildings in and around that part of the world have a flat cement roof. This one was like that with an added cement fence around the edges of the floor. This proved to be a fine spot to install an antenna. We rounded up four nice long bamboo poles about 40 feet long and got them up on the roof, and while Rundy was looking up a friend to borrow an extension cord from, I was left to put up the antenna. We had secured the assistance of a young Arab fellow about 18 years old and he would hold up the poles while I would fasten the guy wires to the cement rails around the roof. We were up there working up a storm in that hot blazing sun about 3 PM when the PA system on one of the nearby mosques cut loose with that long wailing call to prayer for the Moslems. This fellow who was helping me asked me to hold the pole a few minutes and he whipped off a prayer rug that was over his shoulders all the time. He spread it out quickly on the roof, faced Mecca and did his praying. I wonder just how close they are when they think they are facing Mecca. Maybe someday I will get some cheap compass manufacturing company to make me some compasses, each one of course calibrated for four different countries that has no north on them but Mecca instead. Perhaps I could pick up a few hundred bucks like that. I would have some real fancy ones made up for the shieks and some extra large ones for the mosques built in the floor, and perhaps even hand calibrated ones if someone wanted to be exact. Conditions were wonderful in Dubai all the time. Up to about 2 AM the bands were wide open to almost everywhere. They would open again about 5:30 AM. By about 10 AM they were just about flat— and that's when we slept. Rundy rambled out one day to locate and pay his respects to the local shiek. I was on the air yakking to someone a few hours after Rundy had left and believe it or not Rundy broke in with a "Hello Gus," with some sort of a MP4T call sign. I said where in the world are you? He said he was out at the shieks. Then he told me that the shiek had a SSB rig so he could talk to the other shieks. It looked to me as if everyone eyed us with suspicion every time we went down the street, but after a while I figured (hat this was their normal look. I often wonder if they ever trusted even each other— I kind of doubt it myself. I did not see what they call 'European toilets' anyplace there. All they had were what they call 'Arabic toilets*-a place outlined for your feet to be placed and just a hole in the cement, a water spigot nearby and usually a small worn piece of cloth hanging on the spigot. Oh yes, remember— your left hand— and that's the hand I usually eat with. I saw many people, usually the older ones, on the street smoking their hubbly bubbly. That's those pipes where the smoke goes through the water and sort of goes blubb blubb everytime you take a draw on it. I even tried taking a few puffs myself just to show the people I was a regular fellow. I even found some Cokes there too, never quite cold, but they sure did come in handy with that hot weather. I went all over the town of Dubai and I tried my best to figure how these people made a living. There were only a few trees here and there, no large groves of trees indicating that olives, dates, oranges, etc. were being grown, at least not for market. A few Arabian dhows were being built down at the docks, a camel caravan or two came in each day from across the desert, one small ship docked and stayed over night. That was it. Rundy and I were treated very well while we were there and I hope some day to return and see more of this very intriguing part of the world. We drove back to Shariah in the Jeep over the desert and departed for Kuwait. Arriving there one of Rundy's representatives met us at the airport then took us to his house— a real nice Arabic type with the big high cement wall all around it. We never heard or saw any females while we were there. It seems as if the house was divided in the middle and all the females stayed in the other side, which must have been soundproofed because I never heard any sounds from there. While the plane was coming in to Kuwait I saw more doggone oil wells than I have ever seen in my life. The desert seemed to be covered with them. We tried our best to get a license to operate from Kuwait but there was no possibility of this because we heard that someone from Kuwait was in the USA and tried to get a license and he was refused. When this fellow returned to Kuwait there was an American who was operating there and his license was cancelled immediately and he was told he had 48 hours to dispose of his radio equipment! just what ever happened to his equipment I have never heard. Mind you this man had been in Kuwait something like 10 years. I understand the present status of Americans there has somewhat improved and it may be possible now to get a license. Every day I would go out for a walk and I noticed an old fellow who was always sitting at a little sidewalk cafe smoking his hubbly bubbly. He would smile at me and I would smile at him. One day I had my camera with me and I walked up to him and by hand motions asked him if it was OK to take his picture. He smiled and nodded. When I had put my camera back in its case., he motioned me to have a seat and out came a cup of that awful strong Arabic coffee for me. Well, to be sociable I drank it in small sips and when I had finished he offered me the stem of his pipe for a few puffs, which is what I did. This delighted him. He saw I was one of the boys, I guess. He spoke not one word of English and quite naturally I spoke no Arabic. But we did become good friends somehow or other. The next day when I passed him he motioned for me to have a seat at his table, and out came a Coca Cola! I tried to tell him the last day I passed him, after drinking his Coke, that tomorrow I was leaving for the USA. I had no idea that he understood me at all. The next morning I passed him on my way to the airline offices to inquire about whether they had a bus or not and he handed me a carton of Kent cigarettes as a going away gift. 1 never did spend one single cent on this man. He was just a good friend and wanted to show me that he was sincere. I have found that a big smile goes a long way anywhere in the world, a pay on the back and other ways of showing that you are a friend sure does pay off almost everywhere. After spending one or two nights with Rundy and drinking his Cokes I departed for Rome where I was going to pick up my deposit that I had put down when I entered Italy from Monaco, Boy, it was the usual run around and I could see that I was going to have to spend three or four days or more trying to get my money. At 11:45 AM I was sitting up in my hotel room trying to figure out what to do. I phoned TWA and asked about a seat on the next flight to New York City (this was Dec. 23rd!). They informed me there were no seats until after the 1st of January! I did a lot of fast telephoning in the next 10 minutes. All flights to NYC were fully booked. The last phone call to PanAm was the same, but apparently someone had cancelled a few minutes earlier and they said if I could be at the airport in 45 minutes 1 could have that one seat. Here I was with a TWA ticket, so I quickly loaded all my junk into a taxi and away I went to TWA to get them to initial my ticket over to Pan-Am. This involved a long drive across Rome to their office and away we went for the airport which is located about 20 miles from the city. This was a fast trip let me tell you. The taxi driver could speak English so I told him 'double fare' if he got me to the airport in time. He got me there exactly at departure time for the plane. I ran out on the apron where the 707 was getting ready to leave. They had already pulled the ramp away from the plane. I hollered "wait a minute" and they pushed the ramp back in place. I arrived in New York about 7:30 and was in Columbia, South Carolina by 10:30 that same night. Peggy still had her TV-radio shop open and when I walked in the first thing she said to me was "I was not expecting you until sometime in January!" This was the end of DXpedition number one. I was back home, safe and sound and I think a lot wiser than when I had left there about 8 months earlier. I had lost about seven pounds, had a little suntan left from the Persian Gulf sunshine, most of my clothes were pretty well worn out also. It was nice to be back home with all my family again. I had taken a few thousand color slides and quite a number of rolls of 8 mm color movies. The news got around and a number of service clubs wanted me to come to their meetings and give a talk on my DXpedition. Many people came out to our house to see some of the items I had picked up here and there. Those carvings from Africa was usually the center of attraction. The usual talk of another DXpedition made the rounds and everyone wanted to know when I was going on the next trip. On my first trip I had made up my mind that: • I would never, under any circumstances, black ball anyone, regardless of how rotten they were. • I would work everyone I heard regardless of what country they were in. • I would operate as near as possible around the clock, not just when the W's were coming through. • I would never use this W1, W2, W3, etc., business. • I would never have a list of certain stations to work in preference to others even if they were good contributors. • I would send no QSL cards direct to anyone. • I would try to improve my operating habits and stay on one certain exact frequency all the time, • I would give signal reports nothing else and try to work as many as possible in every place I operated. • Also, I would try never -to get mad at anyone at anytime! Well that s it boys. This concludes DXpedition number one. I will start on trip number two next month. Caracas convention If you are one of the fellows who missed attending the International DX Convention and the 32nd anniversary celebration of the Venezuela Radio Club, you missed one of the finest gettogethers I have ever had the pleasure of attending. For about 10 days and nights it was one continuous round of celebrations, meetings, eye-ball QSOs, party gatherings, drinking and hamming. The Venezuela Radio Club will have one of these every year from now on. I suppose it will be the week-end after the Miami Hamboree which is usually near the last week-end in January. The air fare from Miami to Caracas and return was only S199.00. Why not plan to make both the Miami and Venezuelan Conventions next year. Take off a full month from the cold Yankee weather, go swimming, hiking, meet the world's friendliest batch of haras and come back home with a sun tan. You like to see FB antennas? Well this is one spot where everyone has a beam— 3 elements, 4, 5, etc. Equipment— every station I saw was loaded with the very best. There were no bay-wire outfits down there. These fellows are the most serious batch of DXers I have ever met. When they go after DX it's no holds barred. But they are real gentlemen and when one of them is in QSO with DX the others stand by and let him finish. This cooperation is necessary as Caracas is in a valley almost completely surrounded by mountains. I think I can speak for everyone that at- tended the convention when I say "Peggy and I had the best doggoned time we have EVER had at any ham gathering"— and this covers a lot of territory, We both send the YV boys our many, many thanks. Gus