Copasetic Flow

 Getting pytest to display output, even if the test case passes; sorting tuples by datetime Frequently, I find myself needing to watch print statements during development as pytest calls new methods. Today I learned how to force passing tests to write to the screen. The -rP option is the answer to that. I'm constantly impressed with how much pytest just already has implemented. Along the vein of 'wow, it just works', I was surprised to find how easy it was to sort tuples by date . On a side note, the StackOverflow question linked to in the previous sentence closed as a duplicate, and I don't think it should have been. I mean sure, there was a more general question that could be construed to be the answer if you already knew lots of Python, but that's kind of beside the point I think. If I knew enough python to make the construction, I probably wouldn't have asked the question . I mean I didn't ask that actual question, but you get the idea.

This summit's a nice, fairly easy hike to a flat mountaintop with six foot tall cedars that worked just fine for suspending a 20 meter halfwave dipole ham radio antenna. Summit: El Cerro de Los Lunas  W5N/SL-015 This was a fun climb just a few miles off the interstate, I-25. I'd forgotten how gorgeous New Mexico rain clouds are, and how much advance notice they give. Where there are little whisps coming down out of the grey cloud, it's raining. It sprinkled on me just a bit, luckily after I was done playing radios. Getting there: The trail mentioned on the SOTA site for the peak—route A specifically—is a big improvement over any other routes I found, (alltrails for example), to the summit. There were a few issues though. There’s no longer a gate at the end of the road. There is a dip in the barbed wire though, and I was able to easily step over. I was unable to find the ‘main’ trail mentioned in the route’ on the SOTA site. I was, however, able to find a small arroyo that I...

So, I used a voice recorder for my last three calls of my Orgna Mountains K-4551 POTA. My phone then promptly dumped the recording, and no logs!!! If you are one of the three hams, (or even if you just know them/ who called in late this morning from K-4551 , please holler at me here or at hcarter333@gmail.com. I'd love to send out QSLs and also for the hams to get credit for the park.

 I made one QSO, was heard in Costa Rica, and maybe found a wavelength tall natural antenna tower in Albuquerque. Here's a view from below of the mesa the POTA station was situated on. Park: Petroglyph National Monument POTA  K-0955 . Radio Details: Radio : RockMite 20 Antenna : Halfwave dipole Happenings of Interest   Shyoooo, I was tired. I spent a few minutes debugging the lack of audio when I turned on the radio. In the end, the answer was...... I hadn't plugged in the headphones. I was so tired. It's been a week. Here's the thing though: the antenna was 5.5 ft off the ground during most of the POTA. And, as you might expect from reading any number of ham radio books that exhort the amateur radio neophyte to build a tower as soon as possible, I only made one QSO, to a station a few blocks away. (Actually, I thought that was pretty cool! That might have been the shortest QSO the RockMite ever made.) As you might not have expected—I certainly didn't—the radi...

I dropped the antenna this morning and all of a suddne, the RockMite's signal into Utah was back. This afternoon? Utah appeared again. We know why. First, in the morning, I didn't actually 'drop' the antenna, not to say I haven't before, but this time I lowered it on purpose to see what would happen. Andddddd when I did, the Utah SDR which we've been invisible to most of the day lately, found the RockMite immediately.  It's been kind of a pain disappearing from this station, because for the rest of the year, it provided a nice safety net. Is the radio working? I don't know, check the Utah SDR. The antenna's launch angle is supposed to increase when the antenna is lowered, so a hypothesis began to form—the ionosphere is 'too' high. Last night, the kid and I were able to test the hypothesis. We'd set the RockMite picokeyer up on beacon mode, and were listening to a number of SDRs in the other room in case anyone responded to our CQ calls ...

 Finally! Finally the antenna went up with very little fuss or muss. The key seems to be to have a new roll of twine. The little extra bit of heft gets it over the branch. Also! New York! Park: Mt. Davidson W6/NC-423 I did the easy-to-me route of taking the 43 to Forrester and Monterrey. From there, Google Maps plots out a walk to the mountain that looks like so: and vertically speaking was far from the worst hike in the world: Radio Details: As I mentioned, the antenna went right up this time. The radio ran like the little champ that it is. Unlike when I was there over the weekend, I did not couple into the antenna. I could stand up, or sit down, and no matter. I did notice that the radio picks up sixty-cycle hum above a certain height (about 10 feet?) Below that height, the band is quieter, but also the radiation angle goes up. I found this out by taking time to experiment with antenna height and see that the Utah SDR finally picked up the RockMite in the morning again. It's bee...

I had a SOTA outing a few days back where lots of things went wrong ending with my keyer being backwards. All in all, I love our little Rockmite PicoKeyer . But every once in s while.... HoooBoy. Feeling fairly flustered that it had taken me the better part of an hour to get the antenna up and going on Mt. Davidson , I sat down to record an SOTA CQ into the RockMite . That took a while, because well, I was flustered, and Morse Code, and Keying , and Whatnot. Then... Then... When I got done, my dah and dit paddles had reveresed!!! It turns out that the command to playback a recorded CQ message, namely, "P". Is the same command that is used in the main menu to reversed dahs and dits. A little bit of reading of the manual , and I was back in business.

 We talked to Japan using the little RockMite 20! It was our first SOTA on Mt. Davidson here in San Francisco, and it was almost a total wash until I heard JG0AWE! and here's the video from the outing: Summit: Mt. Davidson  W6/NC-423 We wanted to get there really early, (the park opens at 5), so we took the 43 from Geneva and Madrid. We got off at Juanita, walked through the neighborhood to the northwest side of the mountain, and began our hike. And then, our hike was over. Terminated by the closed trail ahead of us. The city is still catching up with all the trees that were downed by the rainfall last month. A brief walk up Dalewood Way—that felt like it was almost straight up—brought us to the southwest trailhead. About ten minutes later, we were at the summit with the cross made famous by Dirty Harry. The cross was built as a WPA style project during the Great Depression. Pro tip: If you can wait to depart until a little bit after 6 AM, take the 36 from Glen Park BART st...

 I continued my recent trend of ham radio in atomospheric rivers at the San Bruno Mountain summit. It was my first SOTA. Park: San Bruno Mountain State Park W6/CC-072 , K-1196 I climbed the mountain from the South San Francisco Side. I took BART to South San Francisco station, and then took the free blue circulator bus from there to the Chestnut and Hillside stop. The climb was very reasonable. There was a well worn trail the entire way. It would have been a bit more pleasant without the rain, but then in March and early April here in San Francisco, I wouldn't have done much of anything if I'd waited for the rain to stop. Radio Details: The antenna setup worked amazingly well! With the lack of trees, and the driving, nonstop rain storm going on, I just laid the antenna across two bushes, held the radio in my hand, and hoped for the best. And it worked!!!    QSO/ RBN spot map: Happenings of Interest   It was wet! I didn't expect to make any QSOs with the bush-bor...

More on this later, but on the kids and my first SOTA activation of Mt. Davidson here in San Francisco, we made only one QSO... To Japan!!!!! The Rockmite was operating on 14058.4 MHz as always, powered by 8 AA batteries. The view from the radio:

The 12 year-old and I built a QRP Labs QCX+ 20 meter ham radio tranciever over the weekend, and then we destroyed the ATMega328p controller chip. Which is a bummer since we can't ue the radio without it. Key takeway really, really, really check super-careful for possible solder bridges. I ordered a replacement controller, but here's the really cool things. We have Arduino's sitting around the house, and per  N5BGZ's blog you can use them to program ATMega328 p controller chips! Even cooler, our (multiple) Arduino's contain ATMega328ps! So, we're going to canablaize one, and use another one to hopefully program it! Finger's crossed! The Once and Future??? QCX+ Controller References: QCX+ Tranciever Kit Mikes' Blog Post