There is a long history of hams going to put rare countries on the air. In the fifties through the seventies it was mostly solo adventurers. I got to know the most famous of them all, Gus Browning, in the early seventies. He had been around the world multiple times and I worked him in different countries all though high school and college.

He wasn't a rich man unlike others and depended solely on donations. I remember being in his hotel room at the Dayton Hamvention where he pitched where he was headed in the next year. People gave him stacks of fifty or hundred dollar bills along with either their business cards clipped to the money or QSL cards.

I vividly remember tens of thousands of dollars laying on his bed. I've never before or since seen that much cash in one place. Being a poor college kid I felt so badly that I bought him lunch the next day. The tales that man could tell, he'd ridden on river boats with peasants and partied with Kings.