I guess I was in a bit of the building mood tonight, and I did some more work on my ATS-3. I have to be the slowest builder in all of QRP-dom! Anyway, I added some resistors to the PCB tonight; and it's coming along nicely. The resistors are going on rather easily.
I did have one big scare, though. As I was emptying some resistors out of the little carrier that they come in, one bulleted out and made like a dive bomber for the floor! Luckily, I spotted it right away and didn't give myself a heart attack. For those of you not familiar with surface mount resistors, these little buggers are about 1/16th by about 1/10th of an inch. They are incredibly tiny! It's no small miracle that I was able to find the resistor right away. I can imagine the hoops I would have to jump through to find a replacement somewhere.
Then, after I turned off the soldering station for the night, I had an interesting QSO with Mike N2VT on 80 Meters. It turns out that Mark is located in Chinatown in Manhattan! It's hard for me to imagine a Ham station in Manhattan. Mike was using a Yaesu FT-857 to an inverted Vee. I can only imagine that he must have had it on the rooftop of some building. I don't think that there are a lot of backyards in Manhattan!
When Mike found out that I was using a K2, he had a lot of questions. He told me that he was tempted at one time to purchase a K2; but now he's thinking more along the lines of maybe a KX1. If my experience is typical, whichever Elecraft radio Mike buys; he's in for a treat. Fun to build and even more fun to use!
73 de Larry W2LJ
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