No. 19 May 23, 1997

L.I.V.E. DX

(Low Impact, Vegetarian, Environmentally Safe DX)

It was a spring day in the 1970’s when I first noticed her. She was at the Cahuenga boulevard off-ramp, wearing a dirty red quilted coat. Her faded jeans were stained, she wore incongruous white running shoes, held the hand of a pathetic little girl with knotted, clumpy braids. A cardboard sign said "Hungry." I felt a chill and my heart shivered. Awkwardly, I reached into a pocket and pulled out a bill, held it out to the woman who clamped a filthy hand on it.

I parked a few spaces from the pharmacy. I made eye contact with a man with disheveled gray hair. He grabbed my arm. "You have some change, mister? I need a bus ride home," he mumbled. Feeling guilty about owning my shiny Nova, I pulled some change from my pocket and slipped it into his hand.

When I left the pharmacy, an elderly man with no teeth needed to buy some milk for his cat. As I entered an office building, a young man wanted to buy shoes so he could seek work. When I left the building, I returned to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription. The gray haired man sought his bus fare again. "I gave it to you about an hour ago, remember?" I asked. He just turned away and grabbed someone else’s arm.

As I waited at the freeway on-ramp, a man wearing a sign, "Will work for food," knocked on my window. I couldn’t think of any work for him, but I did find a candy bar under the seat. He wouldn’t take the candy. "How about a coupl’a bucks?" he said. Unfortunately, even though I felt pity for him, I was running on empty. He turned and ran to the next car.

At "my" exit, a middle-aged woman with a scarred face held a sign: "Help Me. GOD Bless You." I thought about how difficult life must be for her. As I drove past her, I shrugged, held up my hands in penniless sympathy. In my rear-view, I watched her. She made a gesture I couldn’t decipher.

The next day, she was there, smiling. I gave her a dollar. Perhaps it would help her start a new life. Next day, I had given away all my money again. She was at the exit. She spit on my window as I drove by and called me a name. By giving away all my money, I was causing a lot of grief. What irony. I resolved to give away just what I could afford, two dollars a day. I even made my own cardboard sign to cover the rest of the day: "Gave at the last off-ramp."

One of the Regulars made a new sign: "Can you afford a SMILE?" When I stopped to smile, he hit me up for five bucks. Good gimmick. At a gas station, a young couple ran up to me. "Can you give us cab fare, I have to get my wife to a hospital, she’s pregnant?" the man said. I really wanted to help. I pulled the hose out of the tank, ran to open the car door. "Hop in," I said, "I’ll drive you."

The man and his wife took up a officious pose, arms akimbo. "Screw you," he said, shaking his head. Did I miss something here?

The earliest DX-peditions were funded by equipment manufacturers, anonymous benefactors and participants (like Gus Browning, W4BPD and Danny Weil, VP2VB) who wanted the ego-thrill of a pile-up, a measure of fame, and adventure in far away and mysterious places.

Then there was Don Miller, W9WNV. Without your donation in hand, he couldn’t hear you.

Today, rare places are activated by large, professional expeditions that cannot hope to recover their costs from manufacturers alone. These extravaganzas must ambitiously raise funding. There are one or two of these a year.

Ron Wright, ZL1AMO lives in Auckland, New Zealand. He travels to Pacific destinations like Rotuma, Conway Reef, Campbell Island. If you send Ron a QSL via the bureau, you’ll get a nasty note. He uses the "donation" you send to pay for his trips. Herik, FR5DX lives on Reunion Island. He is a native of Scandinavia, and has been a teacher on that remote Indian Ocean location for many years. The yearly pile of dollar bills ("green stamps") supplements his modest salary.

I just completed my series of donations to the Heard Island expedition by purchasing two mugs and a video. I sent my yearly donation to the Northern California DX foundation. I enclosed an "honorarium" with my QSLs to FY, ZY0, 9L1, and CY0. The January, 1998 Bouvet operation will be soliciting soon. Next time I have cards printed, I’m putting "Gave at the last off-ramp" on them.

The CQ WPX World-Wide CW contest is in full swing, opening the bands and providing donation-free contacts. It’s a good way to add to those band-country totals. Wait until Sunday, you won’t have to pit your peanut against the big guns!

Ahhhh, Thirty Meters, that swell band. It’s been open a lot, low power, CW only and full of surprises. One minute, you’re working an Australian, the next, a Czechoslovakian. This morning as I drank my coffee and compulsively totaled up my outstanding band/IOTA’s, I listened to a Japanese station working a fellow in Santa Barbara. The Japanese Op had a big signal, "KW," he said. Must be legal there. The US station was running twenty watts, mobile with flawless high-speed CW, in heavy traffic, heading toward work. I wonder if he ever told anyone he does this – operate wireless Morse whilst driving. Raise a few eyebrows, I’ll bet. Matter of fact, I’m thinking of becoming an anesthesiologist. I won’t need the chloroform, I’ll just explain the romance and allure of DX-ing. 

Reduced to the Absurd

I was eleven years old when I first got interested in Amateur Radio. My Uncle Bob said: "Whaddaya need all that stuff for? I wanna talk to someone, I pick up the ‘phone." When I became interested in computers, Uncle Bob said with a sneer: "All I need’s a pencil, ten cents."

The family contends that Uncle Bob became wealthy when he bought IBM stock for seventy-five cents a share. I say that Uncle Bob made all his money moonlighting for the U.S. Government as a "Simplification Expert." I think he’s the one who referred to the Korean War as a "Police Action," thus saving Ike Eisenhower a lot of bad publicity. Bob’s the one who called carpet bombing "defoliation." Here are a few of the "Reducto ad Absurdum’s" that, I believe, have made Uncle Bob the man he is today:

No matter how noble your calling, how intense your dedication, Uncle Bob could make you feel small and unimportant. I wonder what he would say if I tried to explain the pursuit of DX? Naaaaah.

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