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.
Then, on the 18th! The rig became simply screamy for lack of a better word!
The Utah SDR was picking it up at S9 which is kind of a big deal for TouCans and something it hasn't done with its vertical antenna yet. The first QSO of the day was to SM0GJN in Sweden!
There was another cool thing though. The waves under the pier I was transmitting from were two or three foot swells. That meant that TouCans' ground was heaving towards and away from the rig quickly. TouCans noticed!
If you're new to TouCans I should mention that TouCans is a RockMite feeding a TunaTopper][+ in a single rig housed in a pineapple can with a tuna fish can that came with the TunaTopper][+ serving as the antenna mount and a soup can as the optional battery pack. The RockMite's keyer reboots when too much RF is reflected back into the rig emitting a cheerful little 73 as it goes. KO6BTY and I have always considered this a feature: a sort of automatic SWR overload protection circuit.
On the day of the activation with each wave crash, TouCans reset itself chirping out 73 each time.
And here's the tape. Listen to both the ocean waves and the CW. Notice that as the second wave crashes, the CQ call stops and then starts back up about a second later. The missing CQ message characters were lost to the reboot.
You can see the resets happening in the keyer log as well. I turn on the rig, send a few 'k's, start to send CQ, and then, a minute later, decided to slow down the keying speed because the keyer is resetting. (The keying speed RFI remediation hack is something we surmised about starting long ago.)
Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent O 2024-11-18 07:39:06.576527 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent k 2024-11-18 07:40:10.665642 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent k 2024-11-18 07:40:13.018932 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent P 2024-11-18 07:41:48.161878 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent O 2024-11-18 07:41:50.452118 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent k 2024-11-18 07:41:54.035526 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent %3F 2024-11-18 07:46:56.882181 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent S 2024-11-18 07:46:59.496853 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent sm2%3F 2024-11-18 07:47:09.428523 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent sm0gjn+tnx+gm 2024-11-18 07:47:35.345572
Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent F
2024-11-18 07:58:24.530400
Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent P
2024-11-18 07:59:16.721661
Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent O
2024-11-18 07:59:19.072729
Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent S
2024-11-18 08:00:13.593792
Google Gemini tells me that waves in the San Francisco portion of the Bay are caused by high winds and the wind speed, direction, and gust data correspond to the waves I was seeing in the Maritime Park's Aquatic Cove.
STATION NAME: San Francisco (9414290) **************************************************************************************************** CD T TZ PW OW WS WD WG AT WT AP SA SG RH AG VI **************************************************************************************************** 2024/11/18 15:36 PST 2.98 2.52 8 260 12 54.1 -99.9 1021.6 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 15:42 PST 2.79 2.38 7 261 13 54.1 -99.9 1021.7 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 15:48 PST 2.61 2.21 8 274 12 54.1 -99.9 1021.8 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 15:54 PST 2.43 2.03 10 268 13 54.1 -99.9 1021.9 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:00 PST 2.25 1.79 9 270 13 54.0 -99.9 1022.0 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:06 PST 2.07 1.60 8 260 13 54.0 -99.9 1022.0 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:12 PST 1.89 1.46 7 268 13 54.0 -99.9 1022.0 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:18 PST 1.71 1.28 8 261 10 54.0 -99.9 1021.9 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:24 PST 1.54 1.13 7 247 13 53.8 -99.9 1021.7 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:30 PST 1.36 1.03 6 254 9 54.0 -99.9 1021.7 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:36 PST 1.19 0.86 5 270 8 54.1 -99.9 1021.6 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:42 PST 1.03 0.70 5 232 8 54.0 -99.9 1021.6 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:48 PST 0.87 0.50 5 262 7 54.0 -99.9 1021.6 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99 2024/11/18 16:54 PST 0.71 0.35 4 234 6 53.6 -99.9 1021.6 -9.9 -9.999 -99.9 -99.99 -9.99
When the gusts died back down so did the waves and the resets went away. You can see the keyer speed commands below, (4 faster followed by only 3 slower), and the results on the RBN below.
Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent F 2024-11-18 08:25:53.586993 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent F 2024-11-18 08:25:54.764030 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent cq+pota+de+kd0fnr+k 2024-11-18 08:25:59.587837 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent F 2024-11-18 08:26:32.561508 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent S 2024-11-18 08:26:55.097916 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent S 2024-11-18 08:27:14.508451 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent S 2024-11-18 08:27:15.814683 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent cq+cq+pota+pota+de+kd0fnr+k 2024-11-18 08:29:59.449388 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent cq+pota+de+kd0fnr+k 2024-11-18 08:30:23.249521 Enter Your Message (a-z, 0-9): msg sent kr4i+tnx+gm 2024-11-18 08:30:44.454861
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