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It's now Sunday and it's not been "one of  those days" BUT one of those weekends!!! Now that it's Sunday the frustration factor for me is just about blowing it's way through the roof  here. Maybe if I vent my weekend on the blog it will help level the playing field for me....oh and thanks for listening. Well Friday started off like any other Friday. I woke up to celibate the TGIF feeling, the weekend was here. My work day went well but it was after work that things when a little funky. After going to the gym I got back in my car to head home only to find I had left my Iphone and company cell in the change room. So back I went and both phones were gone!! I looked around in the change room and nothing, I checked with the front desk and no one had turned anything in. It was back out to the car thinking maybe they were in my gym bag or in the car somewhere. I ended up going back to the front desk at the gym to call my cell to see if rang in the change room. I called the cell and low and behold it started to ring at the front desk!!!! It was turned in and the young lady at the desk within all of 5 minutes forgot it was turned in
. Getting home I found the internet, home phone and cable not working. I called the provider, was on hold for over 25 minutes being told how important I was to them and to please hold. Seems there was a problem in the area it was being worked on. At this point thought I would work on my Elecraft KX3 movie with some final editing with Apples Imovie. Turns out you need the internet with Imovie to view the tutorials which I need so that was stopped as fast as it started. Since I was on the subject of the KX3 felt is was time to finish off the calibration of the rig. Well how do you think that worked out!!! Not so good the rig was calibrating transmit bias and was in some type of a loop were it would not stop. Oh well have to save that one for Elecraft Support on Monday. 

Endless calibration...that had 3 failed upload to blog attempts

Time to start dinner, went to open the cupboard under the sink......there was an smell coming from there like something had died. Turned out to be a leaking drain plug in the sink drain trap. The drain trap turned into an adventure.....purchased gaskets that were to small. Then I found the replacement drain plug complete with gasket......to good to be true drain plug turned out to be to big. Drain trap has to be replaced save that for next weekend, for now  put some silicone on the plug with a bowl under the trap.
Hey on Saturday the phones and cable were up and running but no internet. It was back on the phone to tech support and after unplugging and plugging things in and up and down stairs to the basement to the modem. The support came to the conclusion the modem was toast and so was I almost after all that running around the house.
Picked up a new modem at the cable store and hooked it up.....funny thing nothing in the house wants to connect up to the modem!!! Great back to tech support on the phone that for some reason now is NOT WORKING!!! Called them on the cell and they know about the phone troubles but the internet is good to go I was told.  Told her my troubles about getting on the net and the response was "I have no idea what's wrong" I was told I was not stating a problem to her just a statement....can you believe that!! To make a long story short I did it myself it turned out the modem and my Apple airport router did not like each other. With a few menu adjustments to both units they are fully in love with each other.
As I began saying today is Sunday and to not turn this post into a book not all adventures were mentioned. The lights in my radio room flickering, loosing my car keys while at the mall, dropping carton of milk at the grocery store (yes it went everywhere), leaving my debt card at the machine, taking a picture with my Nikon camera to have it display a message "all files are corrupt" then totally stopped working..... the list goes on. So it's now Sunday, Julie thought a nice trip to Starbucks with my laptop and her Kindle would be relaxing. That sounded great until the laptop decided to not start....nothing. When I got home I got the Linux CD out to see what I could do. I started the Laptop and it started just fine!!! I started and restarted that thing at Starbucks like 10 times and nothing it now works like a charm.
So how has your weekend been going???? To think it's not even over yet the adventure here at VE3WDM lives on.

The last few weeks here have been a couple of busy ones. As most of you know who read my blog the Elecraft KX3 arrived the other week. I have spent time putting the rig together as in good QRP spirit I ordered the kit and not the assembled unit. The assembly went very well....there were some bumps  I did encounter along the way. I made a 4 part video series giving updates of the KX3 assembly. This was another project that has kept me very busy and  keeping me away from the blog. Recording the video was the easy part the editing and getting it ready for the blog and YouTube was a long and drawn out process. The video series is very close to completion and it's really my first video series I have had to edit and play with so it's a little rough around the edges. I am planning to have the finished product up on my blog and YouTube this week.....well that is the plan anyway. Then there is the KX3 and my iMac computer...a new adventure for me in the Mac world. I ordered and paid for Macloggerdx, sure there are free programs out there but I opted to splurge for Macloggerdx.  This was but another learning curve for me, I have always used Windows for my rig control, logging and contesting so this is a new horizon for me. I have been "Macing" this week as well trying to get the KX3 to communicate with my Mac software (all is well in that dept now) also getting used to the Macloggerdx program. I am by far not a Mac geek at this point but I have been able to understand and use the KX3 in harmony with Mac!!! So with all this "stuff " that was going on in the shack I have not as of yet made one single contact on my new KX3!!!! Having said that I have not made any contacts with any of my rigs in the shack. I have been reading of band conditions that are up and down, I have heard of great 10m openings and then solar storms that has left a lot of the bands silent.
So this week my goals are....
1. To get the KX3 video up on my blog and YouTube.
2. Learn some more about the Macloggerdx program.
3. Go to the gym three times this week....(non related ham goal)
4. Oh and finally get on a radio and make contacts!!!!

KX3 serial number 1990

The KX3 is all together now and there was some bumps in the road and I will share them in a later post. I still have to calibrate the roofing filter I will be using my Elecraft XG2 to do this but this may have to wait for another day. I have been hidden away in my radio room for a day and a half. The build took longer as I was videoing the process. The video will be divided up into segments of the build........see how it turns out.

Paper work for the "I love me" wall...:)

Over this past year I have really discovered the challenge of working QRP and more so QRPp. Never would I had thought such little power can get an amazing distance.  I got my inspiration from such hams as Bert PAB1. UPDATE...(SORRY BERT I MESSED UP YOUR CALL PA1B IS THE CORRECT CALL.....thanks Clark N8CBW for bringing that typo to my attention). who consistently operates with the least amount of power possible. His blog posts and web page got  me going on QRPp power. Then there is Larry W2LJ he too posts of great adventures in QRP operations, his own and others as well. Larry spurred me on to get outdoors with the rig either from the backyard, park or a trail somewhere. With Larry's blog and webpage (before going to Larry's web page have your PC speakers set to mid sound mine were on full just about jumped out of my chair)  I was able to discover not only QRP but getting out and working portable QRP.
My antenna here at VE3WDM is an attic dipole and it's not the best of setups for sure but it gets me on the air. But then there is John N8ZYA , I thought my antenna situation was a challenge. John's QTH is very close to very large buildings and the types of antennas he can use are limited. He uses indoor antennas, he has two Isotron antennas.....these things look like they are from outer space.  Then he has just started using a long wire antenna and I believe that is indoors as well. BUT he has been knocking off 1000 mile per watts contacts one after the other. These are just three hams  who have encouraged my QRP adventure there are many more out there. So this new 1000 miles per watt certificate is a result from the encouragement and challenge of other QRP and QRPp hams out there!! 

Someone is going to be busy this weekend with a kit!!

Almost broke my all time QRPp record with this one

On Friday I had great plan of getting on the radio this weekend,  Friday came and  it was just not happening on the bands  it was dead at VE3WDM so nothing was logged. On Saturday Julie and I had a wedding to go to and it was my plan,  when we got home to give the bands a shot. Well it turned out that we did not get home until after 2am so ham radio for sure was out. The weekend was slowly running out with it now being Sunday. I promised my son I would pick him up and we would go to Starbucks for coffee and conversation. Ben and I try to get together each weekend for some time together. He is an amazing chef (time for dad to brag now) at a very high end restaurant he is number 2 in command so arranging time together can be a challenge. BUT when we go to his place for dinner it's out of this world!!! Anyway back to ham radio.....I arrive back home and all I have to do was put away the groceries from shopping and make my lunch for Monday. Murphy had a big smile on his face as I washed some lettuce for lunches.........the water in the sink was not going ANYWHERE!!!! The plumbing from the kitchen was clogged, so much for ham radio time it was time to deal with this. I do have a thing for having the RIGHT tools for the job and I purchased some time ago an electric driven drain snake...HA HA Murphy put that in your pipe and smoke it!!!! I ran that puppy through the drain and in 15 minutes all was well.....except for Murphy he was not smiling
anymore..

500mW contact

It was now time for RADIO..........not so much......my wife was "REALLY WANTING" a latte along with the Banting of her eyes I was off to grant  this last "favor". NOW it was radio time so I turned on the rig along with DXLab software (which is great by the way) and low and behold 10 meters was hopping. There
was no new DXCC's for me to be had but lots of DX. It was 2pm in the afternoon local time and that was very odd for 10 meters to be this active but heck who is arguing. It seems I had a direct line to Spain, sure there was Germany and other European countries but they had huge pileup's waiting for a contact. It seemed to workout that I would fall upon Spanish stations calling CQ and it would work out that they were just waiting for me to come back to them. I made four contacts with as little power as possible. Since I worked  stations with the minimum power it tends to drag out contacts as I start with 100mW"s or less and work my way up from there.

The bands were very dead for DXCC's so I turned the radio off and decided to just do some web surfing and that soon became same old same old. I then had a brain storm that it has been just way to long since I had a good old fashioned QSO. Most of my time has been hunting for counties that I need for my ARRL Jubilee award. This meant for the past few weeks and maybe a month or so I have been just working the CW key with "599 73 TU" and that's it. I turned the K3 on and it just happen to be on 14.060 and KM4CU was calling CQ. I came back to him and the QRP to QRP conversation began..........so I thought!! Tom's code was great from Florida........my code..... not so much. I was absolutely embarrassed. I kept messing up his call, I could not even get passed "nice to meet you" it was like my mind went BLANK I was not able to figure out what to say and how to translate it to code!!!  Tom was very fast to send his 73's to me (it was like I was an ugly date). Once again I just struggled with the ending and once done ( which seemed like for ever) Tom was just gone........it was like a Morse code blind date that just went south very fast.......very embarrassing!!!! Tom if you read this blog I am very sorry for the code train wreak. LESSON LEARNED