Project TouCans Back on the Air on the San Juan Bautista National Historic Trail

Project TouCans made it back on the HF airwaves last night!

I had forgotten that urban POTAs are kind the epitome of luxury here in San Francisco. On my way to the bus stop for the MUNI 49, I noticed that it was happy hour, so I stepped in for a drink. Perched on a barstool at the joint's open front window, I contemplated the world outside and whether or not the radio would work.

The power switch latching relay for the rig gave up on the last day of our Great Basin National Park camping trip. That'd been perfect timing, (if the thing was going to break at all), but also led to me not being on the air in the better part of two months.

I wound up making the ten QSOs to activate the park in just over half an hour.

My operating site was on the campus of City College San Francisco (CCSF.)

The view across the city is kind of nice. I was there just into the night this time, and the city lights up after dark.

I'm trying something new in the map below. I asked GTP5 to help me with code that wowuld add a second map so I can watch QSOs and RBN spots on at the QTH while the sun sinks over the horizon; and at the same time see where the QSOs go. If you work with it a little bit, you can get a view that looks like this.

The smaller map is synced to the larger one's time slider. I'll write up the implementation of the map in my next post, but in the mean time, it's at the bottom of the page. You can steer around in it on your own web page!

How were your radio ops this summer? I'd love to hear from other hams in the comments!

Demo

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