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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!! 

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.