Topband: FWD: [PVRC] HI8XAL on 160 meters in 1965

[Bill Tippett]

(Note that I am forwarding this from K3ZO
on the PVRC reflector.  Do not "Reply" to
me...I am NOT Fred.  73,  Bill  W4ZV)

I have been going through and trying to organize my old papers, and in
so doing I ran across my old logs from my days as HI8XAL in the
Dominican Republic.  Since some of you on this reflector seem to have
tolerated my occasional historical ramblings, I thought I would write
down how the Dominican Republic came to become  available on Top Band.
  It's a bit long, but I hope you enjoy it.

73, Fred, K3ZO

(begin)

My first overseas assignment in the Foreign Service
was the Dominican Republic.  I shipped my Hallicrafters
SR-150 transceiver there and a National NCL2000 amplifier.

I arrived in the summer of 1964 and after getting settled
I eventually got around to going over to the Dominican
Department of Telecommunications to apply for an Amateur
Radio license.  Since there were already several
Americans on the air there I didn't expect to have any
problems, but luck was not with me.

It seems that the Director General of the Foreign
Ministry, Pedro Purcell, HI8PP, had just returned
from visiting his son in Baltimore and had been
unable to get the FCC to give him permission to
operate while he was there.  So the minute
he returned home he ordered the Telecommunications
Department to immediately cease issuing Dominican
licenses to Americans.  Guess who was the first American
to apply for a Dominican license after his order came
down?!!

The Goldwater bill allowing foreigners to operate in the
USA under reciprocal operating permits had just been
passed, but there had not as yet been any reciprocal
operating agreements negotiated with other countries.
The Dominicans had been granting licenses to
Americans on a courtesy basis.  HI8PP put an end
to that.  The Americans already licensed,
however, could stay on the air.

Vic Clark, W4KFC got me the text of the Goldwater
law and the sample text suggested by the
State Department for the agreement.  Howard
Shoemake, HI8XHS, an American missionary, had
many friends in high places in the Dominican
Government so he passed the text to them informally
and they approved the American-suggested text
without so much as changing a comma.

So that left the ball in the court of the American
Embassy.  The responsibility fell on the shoulders
of the Economic Attache.  He was typical of a type
of bureaucrat that I came to learn was all too
common in the Foreign Service: he didn't want to
be the first to do anything.  At that time no
other government had signed a reciprocal agreement
with the USA and he was afraid to be the first to
try to get one to do so.

It so happened that HI8XHS was also handling a
weekly phone patch from the American Ambassador to his
aged mother in Atlanta.  When Howard learned that
the Economic Attache was holding back on negotiating
the agreement, he informed the Ambassador in language
as strong as a missionary would allow himself to use
that if his Economic Attache didn't get off his
behind and get cracking on negotating an agreement,
there would be no more phone patches to Atlanta!

In those days you couldn't just pick up the phone
and call overseas.  There were no satellites, few
undersea cables, and most international calls were
handled on short wave.  In the Dominican Republic
you put yourself on a list with the operator and
when the circuit was available you were called back.
It might take several days for this to happen.

Meanwhile I met Wilson Rodriguez, HI8WSR and he
permitted me to operate his station using his call.
He also took me around to the Radio Club
Dominicano and introduced me to the hams there,
and I joined the club and spent a lot of time
with the members, including the aforementioned
HI8PP.

Christmastime came and the Telecommunications
Department asked me to come over.  I was informed
that hereinafter I was permitted to set up a
station at my residence and was assigned the personal
call sign HI8XAL.  They emphasized that I was not
being issued a license, but only a letter of permission.
Apparently unnamed Dominican hams had urged the
Telecommunications Department to give me this
Christmas present and had guaranteed that I would
abide by the regulations, using their own licenses
as collateral, as it were.

So I proceeded to set up my station.  There was
just enough room for an 80-meter dipole just above
the roof of my house.

The minute I had arrived in the Dominican Republic
I began receiving letters from Stu Perry, W1BB
imploring me to get on 160 meters.  The top band world
needed the Dominican Republic badly.  Actually
Carlos Fatule, HI7CAF had operated some CW on
160 meters, working a few people, but since the
Dominican regulations did not include 160 meters
as a ham band, there was some doubt as to the
validity of the contacts, which in any event had
been few and far between.

So the first order of business was to get official
permission to work 160 meters.  I wrote a letter
to the Telecommunications Department asking special
permission to operate 160 meters on an experimental
basis in order to investigate radio propagation on
that band, and promised to give them a full written
report on the results of my experiments there.  They
responded with a letter granting the permission, but
instead of permitting the frequency range 1800 to
2000 Kc., the letter read "1800 AND 2000 Kc."  For
those of you who know Spanish, it's the difference
between "1800 a 2000" which is what I wanted and
"1800 y 2000" which is the way their letter read.
I decided to operate on the basis that their
secretary had made a typo, typing "y" where she
meant to type "a", and operated accordingly.

Meanwhile there had been progress on the reciprocal
agreement front.  Costa Rica had signed the first
such agreement under the Goldwater law, so our
Economic Attache, who had relatives in Costa Rica
in any event, flew over there to talk with the people
at our Embassy there about how they had done it.  No
doubt a little pressure from a phone-patchless
Ambassador had something to do with the trip.  The
Attache returned and in a few weeks we had signed the
second agreement to be signed under the Goldwater bill.

So now I had permission to get on 160 but my SR-150
didn't have that band, so I ordered a used Viking
Ranger from Harrison Radio in New York.  There were
daily flights between New York and Santo Domingo --
indeed, the Dominicans jokingly refer to New York
as the "second-largest Dominican city in the world"
because there are more Dominicans in New York City
than in any city in the Dominican Republic except for
Santo Domingo -- so there was no problem getting the
rig to me in a hurry.

The people in the Embassy who interfaced with the
Customs Department couldn't find my little rig amongst
all the packages there, but fortunately HI8WSR's
father-in-law worked in the customs department
so I was permitted to go into the customs building
myself and knowing what to look for I found it without
too much trouble.

There was a Hammarlund HQ-180 in my Embassy office which
was used to monitor the Voice of America so I was able
to borrow it to use as a 160 meter receiver.  I found that
my 80 meter dipole would work to some extent by shorting
the feedline together, plugging it into the center pin
of the rig's coax connector, and working against a good
ground.  Since my residence was only a block from the
sea, it wasn't hard to get a good ground.

The target date was the CQWW 160 meter contest in January,
1965.  I came on two days before the contest and worked
the following stations: W2FYT W1BB/1 W2UWD W8FGB and
W4KFC.  The reports I received ranged from 239 to 459
except for Vic who of course was getting me 569 -- no
surprise there.  During the contest itself I worked the
following: 6Y5XG K4QAY W8JIN W3GQF VP3CZ K4RIN W4WHK
W5FIX W2EQS VE1ZZ W2IU K2GNC K2DGT W1AQE K4DKJ W4BVV
W3AJS W1WY and VP2AV in that order.  Generally it took
a lot of work to get them to hear me.  But the Dominican
Republic was indeed legally on 160, finally.

I decided that as a part of my 160 meter experiments
I should attempt to "borrow" a decent antenna, for a
few hours at least.  My principal job at the Embassy
was to interface with broadcasters, so I knew many of
them quite well.  One of them was Ellis Perez, HI8EPG
who owned Radio Station HIAT, Radio Universal.

I asked Ellis whether, since his station signed off at
midnight, I could use the antenna at his transmitter
site to operate on 160 meters.  His assigned frequency
was 650 Kc. and I thought the antenna system might
work OK at 1800.  Ellis replied that if it was OK with
his Chief Engineer, it was OK with him.

The Chief Engineer turned out to be Hector Cambero,
HI8HC.  So on Saturday night February 20, 1965, Hector
and I drove out to the HIAT transmitter site, my Viking
Ranger and the office's HQ-180 in tow plus a couple of
bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label which I had picked
up at the Embassy commissary for Hector.  Midnight
came and as soon as the final notes of the Dominican national
anthem faded into the distance Hector removed the coax from
the 10 KW RCA BC transmitter and handed it to me.  I had
put the HQ-180 on the station's assigned frequency and when
I saw WSM in Nashville pinning the S meter I thought we might
have a chance to do business.  Of course I had alerted W1BB
to the experiment so the 160 meter grapevine was presumably
informed.

No sooner was the first CQ transmitted than I was called
by W2GGL at 0520 GMT, followed by W9HUZ VE2UQ W2FBA W3GQF
W1TX W1BB/1 W2UWD W2IU W2EQS W1BHQ VO1FB WA8IJI W3AJS VE2LI
K8HBR/8 K1OOV W8GDQ W5FIX K5JVF W0NWX K8CRJ W3BUR K8RRH
and WA1CAG in that order.  We shut down at 0738 GMT,
considering the test a great success.  Most reports I received
were in the 569-589 range, a considerable improvement from
what I was able to get at home, and I gave almost everyone
a solid 599 in the days when people habitually gave honest
reports.

By the way, it didn't hurt at all that I came to know HI8HC
this way.  A few months later Hector was named Director
General of the Telecommunications Department!  Not long
after that I finally received a piece of paper from them
which I had been waiting for for a long time -- a real
honest-to-goodness Dominican Republic ham license document
with my call HI8XAL in bold print.