When a howling mob of Venezuelans besieged Vice President Richard Nixon in Caracas last spring, the most urgent problem was. to get the word to Washington fast. But how? Newsmen had tied up just about every telephone line leading out of Caracas; the U.S. embassy's own radiotelephone required a link through a Venezuelan switchboard.
Air Force Colonel Tommy Collins, pilot of Nixon's plane, solved the problem. A dedicated "ham" (amateur radio operator), he had brought along the ham's newest kind of equipmenta portable single sideband transceiver (transmitter-receiver). He nipped open his suitcase, pulled out a breadbox-size radio set, dropped an aerial out...