By Gus Browning, printed in 73 Magazines in 1967-12 reprint by PA0ABM Gus Browning story, Part 30 Back to South Africa After a brief visit in Capetown with my good friends Jack and Marge (ZS1OU and ZS1RM), I departed for Kroonstad, a fairly good sized city which is between Capetown and Johannesburg. I was met at the station by my good friend Syd ZS4RM. I had mentioned to Syd on my first stop at his home some months previously, that I wanted him to put my name on one of those fine peach trees he had in his back yard. Luckily I did,^ because he had sold all the peaches on all the other trees except this one big, fine one that was loaded with the finest peaches I have ever seen anywhere. Syd and his wife took me out in his backyard and pointing at the tree, said, "they are yours, Gus". I spent some four or five days with them and I think I ate most of the peaches from that tree before I left. They made some very fine peach ice cream with some, made peach cobbler pies with some, many were used by just slicing them, covering them with sugar and then with fresh whipped cream— man thats eating high on the hog. I definitely say in all the world with the fine eating I have sampled here and there nothing can touch fresh peaches and fresh cream when they are put together. One day Sid drove me over to the town of Welcome in his little car (I think it was a Volkswagen). Syd and the other ZS4 fellows I met while down in Welcome told me about this town. Just a few years before I visited the town, it was just a big, flat field, with very few trees in it, and the land where the town was built was a few very large farms. In some way they found that gold was down below the place and very deep mines were sunk. It turned out that the place was loaded with gold bearing rock at a very deep depth. I took a trip down one of these mines, I forget the exact depth but it was something like 7,500 foot straight down and I had a look see at how things were down there. Even with all the tremendous blowers and even air-conditioning in some, it was very warm down at that depth. They hauled the rock up after it was loosened by various means. At the surface, it was crushed and by some chemical process the gold was removed from the rock. Sitting on a small table, they had one of the gold bricks with a sign that said "It's yours if you can pick it up with one hand, no sliding to the edge of the table permitted". Of course like many others I grabbed at it and let me tell you, I don't know what it's weight was, but I could not budge it from that table. It's size was somewhat smaller than a usual brick but it must have weighed 50 or so pounds. I sure could have used that "chunk" of gold. The town of Welcome was laid out absolutely perfectly. Every street was a straight line, and all city blocks were perfectly square. The houses there were all brand new; each one more conditioned, beautiful lawns, and every house had a car in its front yard. The entire place had the smell of real prosperity. Everyone was very well dressed and had a very happy look on their face— it looked like a very fine place to work and live. It was one place that, if I was a young man looking for a place to settle down and live the rest of my life, I would have stayed. Sid and I drove all around the town and visited quite a few houses and hams, many of them real DXers. They all had some very fine rigs and most of them had either quads or yagis for antennas. These fellows all seemed to be making very good money on their jobs. After spending a full day there, we drove back to Kroonstaad and had a real ball on the air with all the "Gus Watchers," telling them the date I expected to arrive at the next DX QTH, I even connected up my own rig and used it. Sid said it sure was great to be able to operate a real rig! He sure did love the feel of that rig I had and he thought the electronic key was great. It was made especially for me by my friend W3KVQ/2- good old Ed, I have it in use at my home station now and it's still as good as it ever was. In fact it seems to improve with age!— but back to the story. Time arrived for me to depart from Sid and those FB peaches. Sid was one of those fellows who went all out to make my stay at his home a highlight, and it was with regrets that I departed for Johannesburg. I was met at the railway station by Lamberth, ZS6LM, who is just about one of the sharpest operators in ZS land, and a technician of the first magnitude. Lamberth had made all the arrangements for us to drive down to Basutoland (now it's called Lesoto) and he had the license in order and all necessary permits fixed up for both of us. Now this fellow Lamberth was one of these thorough Dutchmen (used to be a PA0, some years before moving to ZS land) and ho had the check list all made out of what we were to take with us on this camp out expedition into Basutoland. Absolutely nothing was overlooked either, and we were prepared for any eventuality. Plenty of spare parts, plenty of food, a cook stove, canned goods, fresh fruit, plenty of spare Petrol & oil for the putt-putt (power plant) which I had brought back with me from my island stops at ZD9 and LH4 lands. The plant I had used all this time was a I KW Onin with shielded spark plug wire and to eliminate the last bit of spark noise, I had installed a 10,000 ohm 1/2 watt resistor. This one was a 115 volt job and I could get up to 4 hours from a gallon of gasoline with it. It used about I quart of #20 motor oil to every 30 gallons of gas. I would take the same plant again, I think. I had tried my very best to buy one of these new very small, light weight plants that has magnets and uses no brushes, but I could never get them to, let's call it "play ball'* and sell it to me at what I thought a good price. Maybe if there is another trip I will have better luck with them. It would have been very nice to have used a smaller plant and saved lots on "surplus baggage" charges all along the way. Don't ever think fellows, it's easy traveling all over the world with 3 suit cases full of radio gear and a wooden box with a power plant in it with a very thin pocketbook and not in a good financial position to pass out large tips to the various red caps you need at every stop. And then there were those Customs boys to deal with. This along with sometimes as much as 100 rolls of color 35mm film and two cameras to 'explain' to them. After months and months of this, you get to the point where you don't even worry about it any more. I had many different stories to tell the Custom boys usually no two of them were ever the same and you must remember at some stops, the Custom fellows could not even speak English. Like I said quite a few lines back, here I was at the home of ZS6LM getting ready to go along with him over into Basutoland (ZS8), We had a small trailer attached to the rear of Lamberth's car. This was a small one and every single item was packed in it. I don't think there was enough room left for a flea to get in. That fellow Lamberth really knew how to pack a trailer. Then a large canvas cover was wrapped around it so that if it rained nothing could get wet, Lamberth spoke fairly good English and just a little of the South African tongue called Africaans. The further we got away from Johannesburg, the less and less the local people could understand English— but Lamberth said I hey were just putting this act on, that they could understand and speak English OK but were just hard headed and did not want to use that tongue because their feelings at that time were not too good towards England. The trip from Johannesburg to ZS8 land took us from about 4 AM in the morning to about 5 PM that afternoon. There were good roads all the way up to the border of ZS8, a very rocky J mountainous looking sort of country, strictly run by their natives, poKceman, customs officials and all. At least they spoke and understood English. The last hundred or so miles, no one at any of our stops along the way could understand or speak English, or that's what they indicated to us. This did not make either Lamberth or me very happy. It was very difficult to convey to them that we even wanted a cup of coffee and gasoline for the car. The customs and immigration stop at the border of ZS8 was very brief and we were treated very nicely. They did not try to cause us any delay at alL We drove thru Maseru some 10 or 15 miles into the country, around a few small hills and mountains, turned off on a side road and found a small lake with a beautiful grassy spot under some high trees, an ideal spot for oui^ operating position. We stopped and got out the car and walked all over the place looking up at the taU FB trees to support our antennas, etc. Then we drove back to Masuru, to hunt up the Government Officials police dept, security dept, army, etc., to tell them why we were down there and what we wanted to do. In a few hours we were cleared to operate. We explained to them where we wanted to operate from, telling them exactly where the nice little lakefront was. We found that this was Government property and after locating the right officials we were given permission to stay and operate from that spot. We stopped at a sort of grocery store/bakery and bought a few loaves of bread (hard as a lock and just as heavy too!). Back to our little DXpedition QTH we drove, and by doing a lot of rushing we managed to get our tent erected before nightfall. After nightfall, it was us and the mosquitoes, but when we got our netting over the beds in place the QRM from them ceased. We were dead tired so had no trouble getting to sleep that night. In the distance we could hear a few lions roaring and many other strange sounds eminating from the jungle which was some few miles away from us. We were up early the next morning and I was raring to get an antenna up and to get on the air! We found the bees impossible to climb, the first limbs on them being out of our reach. But, while we were trying to figure a way to get our antennas up in the tops of the higher ones, two natives came past, an old man and probably his young son. The old man looked as if he was about 60 and the younger one about 20 years old. Lamberth hailed them and asked them if they could climb these trees. Neither of them could understand. He then tried in his beat-up Africaans language and the old man could sort of halfway understand this, but the youngest one could not. After a little explaining the younger man agreed to climb the trees for us. This was a very interesting antenna installation fellows, I would tell Lamberth, he would translate what I said into Africaan, and give it to the old man, the old man would then translate this into the Basuto tongue. To this day I am quite sure the final message to the fellow up the tree installing the antennas was never the message I gave to Lamberth I Something was lost along the way I am fine DXpedition operation. The power plant was set up 500 ft, away at the end of two 250 foot extension cords attached together. These two #12 wire extension cords saw me all around the world and came in very handy many times so as to be able to get the power plant a good distance away from the operating position. This was about 3PM in the afternoon, I let Lamberth have the first go at the rig, while I sacked up (I wanted to be well rested for my turn!), Lamberth stayed with it for about 3 hours, turning the rig over to me just about sundown—which we all know is a good time to be on the air from anywhere in the world, With our all band capability some band was open all the time except from about 4 to 5 AM, which I had found was a bad time to try operating from almost any point on the globe, But right now, I would think many bands would be open all night long with the FB sunspots we now have with us. The sunspots were very close to their minimum 11 year count, when I was on this one trip, so I could not depend on much help from ole Sol. But even with the Sun spots against us we had a very fine DXpedition operation from ZS8 land. At that time Basutoland was on die rare country list and many fellows needed it for a new one. Specially on the lower frequencies. To be honest, fellows— "we had a ball there". Being on a DXpedition with a specialist like Lamberth was a real treat to me. We never had any trouble with both of us wanting to do the operating at the same time. Lamberth was more than fair in our operating schedules— a fine fellow to be with on a DXpedition. It doesn't always work out like this when more than one operator is on a DXpedition, I am sorry to say. The 5 or so days we stayed there passed all too swiftly, but llic day to depart always arrives. We had to find the same two fellows who had installed the antennas to take them down. This was no trouble since they lived nearby and like many others around there they were not working anywhere so they were at home and gladly assisted us in the antenna removal. This was a lot easier than erecting them, I am glad to say. Every day while we were down there, we drove to town to pick up something to eat and to get our watertank filled with fresh water. There were plenty of nice oranges, mangos, apauaSj grapes, melons there as well as very fine bananas at very cheap prices. Canned sardines could be found at the local store at a very high price, I hate to say. We ate plenty of these but not because I liked them, only because that was all to be found in the eating line. Sometimes you try eating just oil sardines and very hard, dry, brittle, stale bread three times a day! Then you will be glad to fill your stomach up with fresh fruit and this is exactly what I did each day. I would estimate I ate about 35 oranges and 25 bananas each day and maybe 3 small sardines and 3 slices of that doggoned bread, I did not look forward to our mealtime I am sorrv to sav. We of course drank plenty of coffee, and Lamberth liked it very strong which did not please me at all and there was no instant coffee on this DXpedition. We departed from Basutoland after what I called a very fine operation, I at the moment have forgotten how many stations we actually worked, seems like about 4,700 QSO's as near as I can remember which is not too bad considering the rotten sun-spot activity— BOY it sure would have been great to be there with the bands like they are now— it's hard to say how many QSO's a fellow could have if he could stick with it all night long, every night for 5 or 6 nights solid. Maybe one of these days I might get to find out how this would work out— a feller can*t ever tell what will happen in the future you know I We drove back to Johannesburg, arriving there late that night. The next few days was spent in and around ihe town visiting the various DXers thereabouts and finding that they all were very well equipped with nice rigs and FB beams mostly. I even got to visit a few gold mines there too, quite interesting these gold mines BUT you can be sure they don't give you any samples of their product. That earth down under Johannesburg must be loaded with gold, I have no idea as to how many Gold mines there are in and around that town. All too soon, time arrived to depart for the east coast city of Durban where the fellows were QRX to have an eye-ball QSO with me. Again it was via train— those fine luxurous trains of South Africa will spoil a fellow. They are as smooth as silk, very quiet, with delicious food at very reasonable prices, too. Much different from the trains in the USA, I hate to say,— more next month fellers, Gus