WA6AUD published the WCDXB for 11 years, every week, without missing one. This is just one of the stories that Hugh published in the WCDXB, 18 January 1977. Protect what you have One of the Local QRPers was up the hill last week, and with the weather closed-in and not being able to even see San Quentin Point down the bay, we sat where it was warm and discussed important things, like DX. "Tell me", the QRPer said, "why is it that once you have earned something important like five- band DXCC that those who do not have it are trying to down grade it. ** This idea of opening up the whole country as areas from which contacts can be counted can only work to cheapen the award. Why are they always working to cheapen the award?" We too had thought about this but in this instance we were still a seeker of the truth. However, this QRPer was not finished. "And why are they still carrying those deleted countries as credit for DXCC? Why some of those countries have been deleted for over a quarter of a century. There are a whole list where there has been no activity from ten to twenty years. Why continue to give credit when there is no activity and no possibility of that those who need them can have a chance to work them.? Why don't they wise up?" We were beginning to get some ideas of our own so we slipped in one of our own self-starting questions. "What do you think of them issuing two-letter callsigns to novices?", we asked and the fulminator was hot. "Why that's absolutely ridiculous!" he shouted. "That proves my point. All they are interested in is longevity and we young fellows around sixty don't even have a chance. They make those DXCC rules for old men!" Son of a Gun, what could we say but that all things are relative to whose ox is in the gore. And we thought of Albert and his often spoken admonition: "All things are relative, some more so." And even though 1927 is an FCC watershed, someone has to be blamed and things look differently when you have than when you have not. Learn when you are a protector of what you have or a claimant for what you have not . . . ** Note: In the Early Days of DXing, all contacts for DXCC purposes had to be within a certain radius, not just within the same DXCC country as is the case today A man should keep his friendship in constant repair (Samuel Johnson (1755).