LabBook: Project TouCans On/Off Relay a Success!

We finally got all of the relays to work at once!

We've been using a HFD2 003 M L2 D latching relay as the on/off switch for Project TouCans. I should say, we've been trying to. The most recent issue was that our keying relay was rated for 12 Volts nominal coil voltage due to a previous design decision that went away in favor of 3 Volts. A Digikey order later and some kinda messy soldering and we had the 3 Volt relay in.

I left the 12 Volt relay in place because on occasion in the past, we've had to run the keying line through a second relay as a passthrough (literally using the 'normally closed' portion of the relay) to make the entire system happy enough to key the rig. That wasn't the case this time as it turned out, but it was also easier to just leave the relay in there because it's superglued dead bug style to the circuit board.

The latching relay along the shorter wires to the Rockmite/Tuna Topper II pair are delivering plenty of current. The rig was back up to its S9+ glory days on the Utah SDR.

I think this was more from propagatoin conditions than from anything else, but it's still pretty cool.

Here's a video of the switch in operation frmo this morning.

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