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Project TouCans RF Plus Out, Whitecaps, and More NOAA Data

I had the RF out leads on TouCans vertical reversed. The fix led to a very fun radio day with correlated data and radio events. In the past, when TouCans was a dipole, both RF out lines, RF+ and GND, were attached to antenna wires. Now, one wire goes up a carbon fiber mast forming a vertical antenna. The other lies coiled on the ground near the rig serving as a counterpoise . A few days back, while fixing a shorted power supply lead on the Tuna Topper amplifier component, I realized that the RF+ output port was attached to the counterpoise. I reversed it so it went to the vertical. It didn't seem to make a huge difference from the home QTH Those are pretty common snr numbers from the house. Friday though, there were rumblings of greatness. TouCans handily made a POTA activation followed by a SOTA activation where it was spotted in Japan on the RBN three times. Sunday I made a Juan Bautista activation from Civic Center that was remarkable, I'll write more about that later. The
Recent posts

Things I Learned: Submitting ADIF Files for SOTA Activations

 SOTA accepts ADIF files and they are pretty easy to build from POTA files. After a particularly successful SOTA activation of Mt. Davidson, ( W6/NC-423 ), with 21 QSOs, I once again looked longingly at the Import ADIF button on the SOTA site. Thus far, I've been unable to locate the SOTA fields that should be used, but I happened upon the ADIF standard and found that it might only require  MY_SOTA_REF . On a whim, I used my POTA template to create a line that looked like <station_callsign:6>KD0FNR<Call:5>w0jsl<QSO_DATE:8>20241115<TIME_ON:4>1740<BAND:3>20M<MODE:2>CW<MY_SIG:4>POTA<MY_SIG_REF:7>US-0757<eor> and simply changed the name of the park reference field so I had <station_callsign:6>KD0FNR<Call:5>w0jsl<QSO_DATE:8>20241115<TIME_ON:4>1740<BAND:3>20M<MODE:2>CW<MY_SIG:4>POTA<MY_SOTA_REF:9>W6/NC-423<eor> And it worked !  

Project TouCans Lab Notebook: Fixing a Power(?) Short

 I had an interesting failure with TouCans a day ago. TouCans handily activated a park a day last week. Then, yesterday, when I pulled on the antenna wire just a bit, (I promise), the RockMite keyer rebooted which is never a good sign. I adjusted the wire again and the rig audio went off. What had actually happened was that the power supply had shut itself down. I inspected the interior of TouCans and immediately wondered if the power leads to the Tuna Topper ][+ amplifier had shorted on the tuna can. I unhooked the power lines to the amplifier and tried again nothing. Leaving the power lines detached, I decided to check if the power supply would take a charge. It would. I tried again and the RockMite, (as evidenced by its keyer), booted!  I left everything for a bit before, this morning reassembling the rig with the power lines to the amp re-attached along with the RF output line that I had accidentally broken in the process. I checked the bias voltage to the power transistor, for th