Tuna Topper and Rockmite Packaging

The 12 year-old and I got a chance this last weekend to test out the Rockmite complete with Tuna Topper amplifier on a POTA activation. The results were outstanding! We were making a QSO per minute for most of the activation. Something we've never done before.

On top of that, the prototyped packaging of the combo of devices solved a few problems we've always had when we suspended the Rockmite from the antenna. Here's a look at the how the pair were packaged together:

The first, biggest advantage, is that we moved the BNC coax connector out of the equation. As you can see, it is now the input to the Tuna Topper. That means that it is not supporting the antenna. That means that there are no longer any torques on the BNC connector in the case. This fixes an issue that inspired so many washi tape fixes.

The second advantage is that there is now access to the power leads outside of the Rockmite. This frees us up to send power in on a different path than the Ethernet cable inspired by the original Flying Rockmite and the OpenHeadsetInterconnectStandard from N6MTS. This means that we can bring big chunky power wires, perhaps twisted around the Ethernet cable, up to the Tuna Topped Flying Rocmite, reducing voltage drop. I'm looking into using 8 D cells as opposed to 8 AA batteries.

The last advantage relates to the first: The RF output lines are no longer attached to a coaxial BNC connector under radial stress either. The two banana posts seen at the top of the radio case attach to the antenna wires, and are attached to nothing inside the radio case. We're not going to have any more broken RF output feed wires!

Next steps are going to be to look at putting the Rockmite and the Tuna Topper into the same can to make everything a bit cleaner and easier to use.

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