Yasme: The DXpeditions of Danny Weil & the Colvins

         For those of us who became hams and began to chase DX in the fifties and sixties, the names of Danny Weil and Yasme conjure up all sorts of exciting images. For many of us who were avid DXers as 60's teenagers, ham radio went on the back burner while we sought our educations and began to raise our families. When we returned to ham radio after we settled in to our lives and our jobs, the siren call of DX returned, aided and abetted by Lloyd and Iris Colvin. As our families became more independent and our kids became older and began to do more on their own, many of us returned to chasing "new ones" on the bands, and Lloyd and Iris were central to many of these pursuits.

         James D. Cain's Yasme: The DXpeditions of Danny Weil and the Colvins (ARRL, Newington, CT, 2003) is a welcome addition to the expanding written history of ham radio DXing, and compares to Jan Perkins'Don C. Wallace W6AM: Amateur Radio Pioneer (Vestal Press, Vestal, NY, 1991). It focuses on three major players in post-World War II DX: Danny Weil, VP2VB, an English adventurer whose goal of sailing around the world solo brought him into ham radio, and on Lloyd Colvin, W6KG, an American army officer, and his wife, Iris, W6QL, whose DX exploits began in postwar Japan and later, in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and early 90s, took them all over the world. Like the Wallace biography, Cain's story uses contemporaneous records, pictures, and personal documents to portray with precision and clarity one of the most exciting periods in amateur radio.

         Danny Weil was an English clockmaker who set out to circle the globe in his small sailboat, the Yasme, in the mid-fifties. In 1955, while Weil was visiting the American Virgin Islands, he met noted DXer Dick Spenceley KV4AA. Spenceley suggested that Weil combine ham radio with his visits to various exotic locations. Weil proceeded to obtain his license and was assigned callsign VP2VB. It was Spenceley's vision that Weil would travel to various DX locales in his boat and put those locations on the air for the world to work. Over several years and through three different Yasme sailboats, Weil, Spenceley, and several other major DXers of the day devised the Yasme Foundation, in which DXers interested in supporting the various Yasme expeditions purchased subscriptions to the Foundation in support of the operations. While the number of DX contacts actually made by Weil over the years he was active was modest by modern DXpedition standards, the concept of the sponsored DXpedition was born.

         Lloyd Colvin, first licensed in 1929, and his wife Iris, licensed in 1945, became avid DXers in the postwar years while stationed in Japan, and subsequently operated from a number of other overseas postings. Upon Lloyd's retirement from the Army, he and Iris established a highly successful construction company, and began to travel in the 60s, 70s, and 80s with the express purpose of operating as DX from various foreign countries. They were successful in visiting over 200 countries and actually qualified for DXCC from over a hundred different DXCC locations, becoming along the way celebrities known for their presentations at various hamfests and amateur radio conventions as well as for their operating exploits. Few hams active during this period don't have at least one contact with a Colvin operation. Although they largely financed their trips themselves, the Colvins were instrumental in reviving the Yasme Foundation to serve as a sponsoring organization and fundraising organ for their own and other DX operations. The Yasme Foundation, which sponsored this book, continues its work today, based in Castro Valley, California.

         Cain's book is well-organized and well-written, interlacing the stories of the Colvins with the exploits of Weil and his succession of Yasme craft. Reading about Weil's ventures, one appreciates how different and how challenging working DX in the fifties and sixties was from today, and how much the DXCC program has evolved. The business of obtaining a ham license from most foreign jurisdictions was either impossible or very complex - in fact, the United States had no reciprocal licensing arrangements with any country except Canada until the 70s, making it difficult to secure permission to operate in many areas where obtaining a license today is a given. Equipment was massive and power requirements were challenging. Despite these obstacles, the Colvins, acting as unofficial ambassadors representing ham radio, were often able to succeed in fielding operations from locales where other DXpeditioners had been unsuccessful. Much of their hard work, gentle assertiveness, thoughtful diplomacy and good will form the basis for the good relations ham radio enjoys in many countries today.

         K1TN has succeeded is compiling both a meticulous history and a highly readable story, which will resonate with many hams who either remember or grew up hearing stories of these three DXers. Even for the newest additions to our hobby, the story of early postwar DXpeditioning - an era before computer logging, before packet clusters, before e-mail, before reciprocal licensing - should be fascinating. The book includes many pictures, maps, and statistics. It is certain to take its place in many ham libraries as another important contribution to the history of ham radio.

Don Lynch W4ZYT

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