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Flying Rockmite with a Topping of Tuna: A Quick Prelude

The twelve year-old, Daize, and I flew the Flying Rockmite with the Tuna Topper II+ amplifier installed for the first two times ever this weekend! The results were outstanding!

And! The kid made her first QSO ever on Sunday!

She and I wrapped up amplifier construction late in the week. From there, we were able to do some basic testing on the back balcony of the house where we learned that the LED was soldered in upside down, and that our multimeter was reading rather wonkily because it's battery was (already!?) going dead, and maybe also a heavy dose of RFI (radio frequency interference.) I'll be writing up way more about the initial tests, the ideas they spawned for the radio/amp packaging you'll see below, and other things soonish.

Anyway, after our one brief day to test the amplifier, the kid and I were scheduled to hop on a plane to New Mexico where we would camp just below Manzano Peak and eat breakfast each morning in Mountainair, (Yum!). We took the Rockmite and the Tuna Topper with us. The trip was tremendous!

But, for now, the important stuff. We were making a QSO a minute for a while!!! Let me say that bigger:

We were making a QSO a minute for a while!!!


This has never happened before, and while our SNR numbers from the Reverse Beacon Network didn't seem outlandish, the frequency (no pun or confusion intended; every QSO but one took place on 14057.4 MHz), of QSOs says to me that the amplifier is working quite nicely.

Here are the Flying Rockmite and Tuna Topper in their proper home: outside, and up in the trees! The packaging is still very much in its prototype stage, but already gives us some things the Flying Rockmite solo packaging never did, (more on this later.)


Here's the QSO map:



Here are the QSOs!

Callsignrx RSTtx RSTTime (GMT)Frequency
VE3CWM5395392023/09/17 14:37:0014057.4
WI5D5595592023/09/17 14:38:0014057.4
W2SKY5595592023/09/17 14:39:0014057.4
AC5K5795592023/09/17 14:41:0014057.4
KJ5W5595592023/09/17 14:42:0014057.4
K4CTF5494492023/09/17 14:44:0014057.4
KU8T5395592023/09/17 14:46:0014057.4
WD5GRW5695592023/09/17 14:47:0014057.4
KG8YT3393392023/09/17 14:49:0014057.4
KJ7DT5795592023/09/17 14:52:0014057.4
KI5JIM5795992023/09/17 14:53:0014057.4
W0MM5595592023/09/17 14:58:0014057.4
N6PF5795892023/09/17 15:00:0014057.4
N2VGA3395992023/09/17 15:01:0014057.4
KB9RPG5995592023/09/17 15:20:0014058.0


Anyways:

We also listened to three Ham Radio Workbench episodes while we were out, and boy, will the kid and I have comments.

Rockets

Amplifiers

SolderSmoke





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