A New Bit of Whimsy
There was an old timer named Kent
Who spread joy wherever he went
He traveled all over,
A real DX rover,
And QLSd one hundred percent.
Escape From Uganda
My first unwitting contact with the work of Royce Sullivan (don’t remember his call sign) was in 1969. If you saw the original live video from the first moon landing you probably noticed that as the astronauts moved, they left behind smeared images which quickly faded out. Most sources that have that video have re-processed it to improve the viewing quality, so if you search for the video, and want to see the effect, you’ll need to be sure you have the original.
Why were the images smeared?
The transmitter power available on the moon was not sufficient to get a respectable signal to noise ratio, and the solution was to average successive frames of video. Random noise “averages down”, leaving a cleaner signal.
At that time, the world had no digital video averaging system. A Royce created a video disk recorder with parallel heads that took a running analog average. So the averaged signal is what people saw. And averaging creates those smeared trails when something moves.
Idi Amin was a vile, murderous person whose objectives seem to have been to mate with as many women as possible (estimated 60 children), and to use his military office to loot Uganda’s treasury. In 1971, he learned that the corrupt President was about to have him arrested for corruption, so he used his military office to overthrow the government and seize power.
At that time, Royce and his wife, Anne, were in Uganda, with Royce working for Margaret Thatcher, who later became Prime Minister. Royce’s job was building the country’s television network, a project being managed by the government of the UK.
Security in Uganda was never excellent. But when Amin seized power, the situation began to deteriorate. Watching with dismay as violence expanded, Royce and Anne knew that they had to leave the country, but telephone calls and mail were often monitored, so they had no regular, secure way to arrange their escape. That is not a problem for an enterprising ham.
He quietly put up a station and started contacting other hams back in the UK. Unfortunately, some of them sent Royce QSL cards which started showing up at the main post office, with the equivalent of a “general delivery” address.
Soon after, a group from the armed forces showed up at Royce’s home. They announced that someone was running an illegal transmitter in the country. (They knew that because of the QSL cards.) That announcement would have caused a lesser man to faint. But Royce allowed them to continue on. The military then asked for his help in locating the offender.
Royce agreed, and told them to bring their direction finding equipment to him so that he could adjust it for them. When he got done, they could not have found a kilowatt right under their noses.
So it was clearly time to go.
Royce used his station to coordinate with authorities in the UK, and they, and the other British expats working in Uganda got in their Range Rovers and headed for Kenya, where they were met at the border by friendly forces.
In the mid 1980s, Royce, Anne and I all worked at a little company making video disk recorders for medical imaging equipment. If you’re curious, there’s another story about changing a tire with a screwdriver and one about J Edgar Hoover and the gold cigarette lighter.
73 For Now,
Denton
W7DB