Tonight I fired up the 718 again to see if last night’s performance wasn’t a fluke and I could snag a few more QSOs. Eighty meters PSK31 was a bust, so I moved up to 40 and called CQ. Right off of the bat, I got an answer from KD7MTI, who is only about 10 miles away from me. It took me a minute to realize it, but Robert is a gentleman who I’ve had contact with before, via the pQRP reflector. He is currently in Portland until the end of the year, when he then heads back to Israel. Robert was using 5 watts into a end-fed antenna and was doing great into Beaverton. I was a bit surprised to see that we had such a solid connection, as I assumed that we were too distant for ground wave. I guess not, since we had a solid Q5 conversation. He also told me that we was nearly done with his 20 meter Rockmite, so maybe there’s a chance I can catch him on 20 groundwave once he’s done with the kit. Anyway, I was just getting warmed up for a nice ragchew, when I heard a loud crash from the living room next door. Baxter had been sleeping in “his” chair when I went into the shack, but obviously he had woke up and went directly into his “hellion” mode. I had to leave in the middle of Robert’s transmission to see just what had happened.

Stupidly, we had left a large framed art print leaned up against the wall. As I came out of the shack, I could see it knocked over face-down on the ground. As I tipped it back up, I could see that, sure enough, he had broken the glass in the frame. I guess ol’ Baxter wasn’t feeling the love and wanted to make sure that I knew that he was a bit lonely. Serves me right for leaving something breakable within his reach, but sometime I have the delusional thought that he’s grown out of his puppy stage. Once again he proves me wrong!

Oh well, hopefully I’ll be able to catch Robert on the air again before he departs Portland. It’s always neat to meet like-minded hams in the local area.