Back to camp Narwa.

The trip back to Kampala, on Sunday went on without problems, a room at hotel Imperial in Kampala was booked by cable. That night in Kampala, Bill Snyder barged into the hotelroom. He was in Kampala with Arch Oboler (the famous radio man) and his wife, on their way to Belgian Congo. Of course they had a long talk about old times etc. Next day they had lunch with Bill and the Oboler family. Bob made some QSOs from VQ5PBD.

The truck had to be repaired, the wheels still had only few bolts to hold them in place, and there was no spare tyre available. Bob and Jim had to stay in Kampala for 3 days, before the truck was repaired. Bob helped Peter Dodd, VQ5PBD with putting up a 6 element beam for 10 meters, and he made some QSOs with only 20 watts. A cable to Gatti was necessary to get Jim and Bob out of money problems, the money arrived just in time before they left Kampala on July 1, 1948. They spent the night at the Kenya/Uganda border at Tororo. Both wondered that they could find again a very nice place in the middle of wild Africa.

Next day the truck moved on along well until they ran into a long and steep escarpment. They went on, mile after mile, in the low-low gear, until they reached a muddy area. It had rained, and the rain was still coming down, so they put on the chains, but slid to the edge of the road anyway. The next two or three blocks did take two hours, helped by lots of natives. Finally they made it that day to Londiani, Kenya. Needles to say, there was AGAIN a nice hotel to spend the night.

They went on the next morning passing the Kenya Highlands, a beautiful wooded country, and with farms all along, with natives hoeing the land, or ploughing with oxes. Lake Naivasha was pink colored by the thousands and thoudsands of flamingoes. Bob saw a strange bird, a large black one with a red band on its neck. Saturday, July 3^th the mini-expedition reached Nairo, Kenya. As it was Saturday, they could not do anything, and had to wait until monday before they could bring back the power-generator to International Harvester. At 11 pm, on Monday July 5, they were back at camp Narwa.

The last QSOs.

Back in camp Narwa, it was clear to Bob that the plans from Gatti, to go on a lion hunt, had been a fizzle, as he expected it would. The equipment was still in the back of the little truck, and Bob operated from the little truck already the next day, using VQ3HGE for more than 8 hours a day. During the last day lots of hams wanted to say thank you to the hams who made their QSO(s) possible. Friday night, on July 9, 1948, Bob pulled the switch for the last time VQ3HGE was off, silence returned to the HF bands again. The expedition had logged 3822 QSOs, the country-counter stopped at 122.

 

The Gatti-Hallicrafters Expedition QSOs in 1948

Call	Start	End	QSO#	W6PBV	W0LHS	Ctry#	Zones	States
VQ4EHG Kenya	Jan 21	Feb 16	942	620	322	51	24	42
VQ3HGE Tanganyika	Feb 20  Jul 06	Jun 13  Jul 09	2629	2447	182	122	39	47
VQ5GHE Uganda	Jun 20  Jun 26	Jun 21  Jun 27	233	233	0	19	13	30
VQ5HEG Uganda	Jun 27	Jun 27	18	18	0	3	4	7
Total	Jan 21	Jul 09	3822	3318	504	123	39	48

The logs of the Gatti Hallicrafters Expedition 1947-1948 has been lost, pity. In one of his own old logs (the one marked with nr. 7), Bob found a summary of his activities from British East Africa. From VQ3HGE they worked 122 countries and 39 CQ zones, only zone 23, Tibet was missing. And for WAS Montana was still needed. They worked Montana only from VQ4EHG, Kenya, but here (kwale camp) they did not work Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Rhode Island and Wyoming.

Tom, K8CX has scanned a lot of old QSL cards, which can be looked up on internet. All links in the table above, point to Tom's site at hamgallery.com.

From notes made by Bob, W6PBV, some QSO-data could be reproduced. Some data was unreadable, and therefore QSO-data is not complete. Watch in the table the different way the QSO-time was given.

©W7LR and PA0ABM