Project TouCans

Hello, and welcome to the Project TouCans intro page!

Update!

Project TouCans is now completely wireless! There's no feedline. At. All. There are also no lines for the keyer controls or the power supply. Everything Project TouCans needs it takes with it up into the antenna. Here's a recent photograph of the rig.

Project TouCans is the integration of a RockMite with a Tuna Topper amplifier. Both circuit boards are housed in a Dole pineapple can while the tuna can the Tuna Topper ships in is used for a lid and antenna mount. Hence, Project TouCans, ('cause there's two cans... get it... hehehehe.) Also, the rig is housed in the antenna, so it's a flying rig, so, once again, Project TouCans! The rig completely assembled delivers a QRP maximum 5 Watts directly into the antenna.

KO6BTY explains:

TouCans Innards — Photo of the Rockmite seated just below the tuna topper amplifier

TouCans without a Top — Photo of the Rockmite and Tuna Topper amplifier housed in a Dole pineapple can

Rockmite Keyer Port — Photo of RJ-45 breakout board mounted below the Rockmite. The board brings in the dih, dah, keyer programming signals, as well as the rigs 15 V power supply

Tuna Topper RF Out — Photo of the interior of the dipole antenna mount.

Exterior view of antenna mount — Photo of the dipole feedpint

Project TouCans in flight with the keyer in the foreground — Photo of Project TouCans nestled into it's dipole.

As you can see, originally TouCans was powered by D cells, but before long KO6BTY and I figured out that we could use a USB-C power brick.

Here's a list of the entries in this blog about Project TouCans.

Comments

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Copasetic Flow

Search This Blog