ZS6EZ's Radio Stories Page

Last updated 2018-01-05


This page contains a few narratives, mainly about amateur radio contests. I'm gradually digging out some ancient articles about DXpeditions and various other follies and adding them to the site, one by one.

  • The long and the short of it, the story of ZS3Z and 3DA0/ZS6BCR in 1988. Extracted from The DX Magazine, September 1989. Reproduced here by kind permission of Carl Smith N4AA of DX Publications.
  • The ZS9Z/ZS1 Penguin Island story, the story of the largest operation that ever took place from the Penguin Islands. Extracted from The DX Magazine, April 1991. Reproduced here by kind permission of Carl Smith N4AA of DX Publications.
  • The Of Seagulls and Mountain Ponies, the story of the ZS0Z Penguin Island and subsequent 7P8EN Lesotho operations. Extracted from CQ Magazine, April 1993. Reproduced here by kind permission of CQ Communications.
  • The Last Operation from Walvis Bay, the story of the ZS9Z and V51Z operations during the handover of Walvis Bay from South Africa to Namibia. These were the last QSOs ever made from that DXCC country. The story is told by Don Field G3XTT, who was one of the two operators.
  • The 1999 CQ World Wide DX CW Contest: About breaking the old world record comfortably, and then being beaten by a 1% margin. This story was originally hosted at Contesting.com, but has disappeared as of late 2011.
  • My report on various World Radiosport Team Championships, including 1996 in San Fransisco, 2000 in Slovenia, 2002 in Finland and 2014 in New England.
  • The 2000 CW World Wide DX CW Contest: A problem-plagued effort with a happy ending.
  • The 2000 ARRL 10 m Contest: ZS6Z on Autopilot: JM1CAX piloting the station to another world win, under considerable pressure...
  • The G3IOR on Satellite DXCC: Pat, who holds Certificate # 2, tells the story of how they managed to do it with LEOs.
  • Taming a 3,5 MHz Yagi. Perhaps this title is misleading, as I never quite managed to tame it.
  • The Chasing DXCC: A narrative by ZS6EZ on how some of the South African DXCC lists came to look like they do.
  • The Announcement for 3DA6Z: The announcement was ever-so-slightly tongue in cheek. Not everyone understood it that way...
  • On my personal stories page, you can read several travel stories that include some radio, including operations from 1S, 9M2, 9M6, 9V, A4, A6, DU, FP, FS, HS, KL7, P4, PJ2, PJ4, PJ6, PJ7, VO2, VY1, W1, W8 and YB.

    Return to ZS6EZ's Radio Page