QRP, Locked by Rocks, and the Waterfall Display

N2CQR mentioned the waterfall being handy for QRP in that other operators can find your rock-locked signal on the ham radio bands.

In addition to the use-case pointed out by Bill, when operating Project TouCans in locations where there's an available internet connection, I've used SDR waterfalls to my advantage in a few other ways:

1. I can get more immediate feedback than the Reverse Beacon Network. On the West Coast, the Utah SDR can see our signal during most of the day. We can find out immediately if Project TouCans is working at all.

2. I rarely have zero-beat issues with TouCans. The contained RockMite's receiver is very wide, so I can hear a lot on either side of the frequency the rig works on. There is one big issue though. The crystal oscillator for transmit has found its home near 14057.4 MHz. The receive bandpass, however, is happiest at 14057.9 kHz. Especially when there's a crowd, the waterfall display from Utah helps me to determine if the loudest signal is for me, or if there's another station running an activation at 14057.9.

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