By Gus Browning, printed in 73 Magazines in 1968-01 reprint by PA0ABM Gus Browning story, Part 31 Resting in South Africa In last month's episode, I was on my way to Durban, South Africa via train, I had plenty of time to think along the way, mostly about the radio gear I had in those three suitcases, which the government didn't know I had in their country. Equipment I had been told I would never get out of the country again, Being on a DXpedition, this did cross my mind. I was met at the railway station in Durban by three well known DXers: ZS5QU, ZS5JY, and ZS5JM Roy, Oliver, and John. The first thing, as usual, was Cokes for us all. Oh yes, there are Cokes in South Africa, but by the time I departed there were a lot I visited Roy's QTH first, where I met his beautiful wife, Pam, and got a demonstration of the hard way to control a VFO. Roy lived on the top floor of about a six-story plush apartment and was using some rather old surplus-looking gear. On one which has been designed as a crystal controlled rig, Roy had installed (I use the word installed rather loosely) a home brew VFO. Now, fellows, I have seen lots of VFOs, and have built 35 or 40 of them myself, but to this day I have never seen one that was built more haywire than that VFO Roy had hanging out of the side of his rig. His rig was turned up on its side, and he told me it has always been sitting that way, The VFO was only supported by the wires from it to the rest of his rig and the VFO's power supply. Now get this ... it had no tuning capacitor to change frequency. To change frequency, he turned the shlg with a small screwdriver, and when the screwdriver touched the screw in the VFO, the frequency jumped about 43.7 kHz. Plus this, his hand made it change 11.2 kHz when it was placed near the VFO while tuning it. Can you picture Roy trying to zero in on a station? Well, he could do it I tell you fellows, that's doing it the hard way. It involves tuning the receiver 53,9 (thats 43.7 + 11.2) kHz below the station he wanted to zero in on. Remember, the receiver he was using was not too well calibrated either, and this made it that much more interesting watching him. Well, all I can say is he certainly did not tune up on top of anyone by this method. Roy now has a new rig, but that VFO would make Ross Hull turn over in his grave, and T.O.M, weep. It should be placed in the ARRL's museum of real "haywire". The art of haywire may soon be gone, and, if possible, should be revived before all us old time haywirers are pushing up daisies. Anyhow, there I was at the home of Roy and Pam, after all the many QSOs I had had with him all these years. Roy is a young fellow and I would estimate his age at about 30 when I was there. He had a very efficient antenna (a ground plane) and it was definitely not haywire. How Pam stood for that haywire rig and VFO in that modern up-to-date apartment, I don't know, but they were a happy couple and looked as if they were living a very nice life. Next, we went over to John's (ZS5JM) operating site, which was on the outskirts of Durban. It was some five to ten miles from the city, down beside the beach. His father and mother lived there year round, and John and his wife, Maureen, usually stayed in the city during the week and came out there on the week end to operate, swim and boat, I have a strong opinion that John went there mostly to do some DXing. He had a fine looking rig that used either one or two 813's and a 3-element beam that was hand tuned. Boy, this beam sure did make those W/Ks boil through, some of then S-9 plus. I told John I wanted to return there with my rig and set it up and do a little operating from that QTH with that beam. The beam was on top of a 50-foot homemade tower, This tower looked almost exactly like a windmill tower, only it was made from wood and it was unguyed. After drinking a few more Cokes and talking to John's mother and father for a wonderful eyeball QSO, Oliver (ZS5JY) and I departed for Ms QTH some 30 or 40 miles down the coast from Durban, Oliver had a Mercedes-Benz and he had a real heavy foot, too! With that high speed traveling, we covered those miles in very short order. Oliver s home is out on a sugar cane plantation, which covers a tremendous amount of acreage, I don't really know how much, but a wild guess would be maybe 10,000 acres and his house is about in the middle of it. He had plenty of Cokes in the Fridge. In the garage, there were two Mercedes-Benz, both exactly alike. One for the nice XYL, and one for Oliver. His station was very nice. He had a Collins S-line and even a 30L-1, which he called his "beam". In the yard, besides his private tennis court, was a fine home-brew 5or 6-element beam on top of a good high windmill-type tower, I found that Oliver could tune the beam from the operating position with two push-buttons and could get the SWR down to 1:1 on any part of the 20-meter band. I think the two push buttons controlled a small motor that, in turn, tuned a capacitor connected to the Gamma rods, or something like that. Anyhow, it worked great, Oliver turned over the station and his home to me and told me to go in the air whenever I wanted to, stay up as late as I wanted, and sleep as late as I wanted, He said to help myself to the cokes, and if I felt like it jump into the swimming pool Now, fellows, this was what you might call DXing deluxe. I had three weeks to wait for my ship, so I had some mighty fine QSOs from there. Although ZS5 is not rare enough to be exciting, I had some little pile-ups from there when I turned up on my usual frequencies for the Gus watchers. I had plenty of time to visit all around the place, and saw many ZS5 stations, and as usual, I found all of them just as nice as DX'ers I met at all the other places I had visited in my travels. Oliver even had a big get-together one night for me, All the ZS5's from around Durban showed up, and there was quite a bit of drinking, fancy eating, swimming, etc. As for myself, I never had it so good. While they were drinking all kinds of stuff, I stuck to my Cokes, as usual, Oliver was a wonderful host, and the gathering was a very nice one, Oliver was a graduate of some sugar institute in Louisiana, and was a good friend of Ack's (W4ECI) while he was going to school there. Oliver has a sugar refinery where all the sugar cane is squeezed out, the juice boiled out, and it all ends up as some of the best sugar in the world (according to Oliver). This is a very modern refinery and all the very latest machinery and methods are used. Plenty of the ZS5 fellows were always on hand to take me here and there when Oliver was tied up with his business. Many hours were spent in Durban watching the Zulu Rickshaw boys with their colorful costumes* They are very tall, husky fellows and never did seem to tire out when they had a paying customer in their rickshaw. They could cut fiipflops right in the middle of traffic and not even let loose of the two handles of the rickshaw. Those rickshaw boys were about the happiest lot I have ever seen anywhere. We visited museums, zoos, and snake houses. Lots of interesting times and sights were seen and had in and around Durban, South Africa, It is a sea-port city with wonderful temperatures they say, all year round. Oranges and other citrus fruits grow well there, but to me it looked as if sugar cane covered the most acreage. I visited ZS5QU any number of times and for some strange reason that VFO always seemed to draw rnv eves in its direction. I spent a number of days out at ZS6JM's QTH, operating right on the seacoast with his beam. The long path openings to the states were fantastic. Time was coming to depart, and I began thinking about how to get that radio gear out of the country .so I could take it home with me. Note: Well, Peggy and I are back from our vacation and things are beginning to jump again with my DXers Magazine, I did get up my 150-foot tower and now am starting on the 4-element tri-band quad to put on top of it. I gotta get this job done before cold weather sets in. Plus the fact that I want to be able to hold my own in some of the DX pile-ups which are heard occasionally on the bands. Looks like I may have a 40-meter quad up one of these days too, so look out, fellows. I am tired of being trampled on. I want to come up for air and I hope I will be in there with the top layer boys again. Gus