Copasetic Flow

 I made a run to New Mexico a few weeks ago. I took the chance to attempt POTA activations from Ciblola National Forest, Lincoln National Forest, and a few other places I'll talk about later this week. My first activation in Cibloa National Forest the day I arrived in Albuquerque was by far my most successful in terms of raw QSO count. Having just arrived in town, I of course made my way to Blake's Lottaburger for a green chili cheeseburger. I've been trying to reduce my food intake a bit so I ordered an itsaburger as opposed to a lottaburger. (Seriously. It's an excellent naming scheme, no pun intended.) Next, I made my way out to Simms Park. The park is operated by the city of Albuquerque, but it's completely contained within the boundaries of Cibola National Forest, US-4514 , so voila. I taped the Project TouCan's vertical antenna on its carbon fiber support mast to a wooden railing post and got to work. I've found several references warning not to u...

 I found a new operating location in downtown San Francisco that combines the Butterfield National Historic Trail and the Pony Express National Historic Trail and was so much fun! To be clear, I don't know if I'll ever activate either park from this spot, but wow, the architecture! And! Wow! The RF propagation curiousities! I had the TransAmerica Pyramid on one side of me  and the building formerly known as the Alcoa building on the other My operating position was from the Maritime Plaza, an elevated park smack in the middle of the Embarcadero. Take a look at the Cesium Map using Google PhotoRealistic tiles below to get a good feel for the whole area. (I'll keep you posted, but for the moment, you'll have to dial in the map yourself, I haven't had time to standardize my saved view code to all of my maps yet. I wound up making a whole series of videos just getting to the site. You can see them in the playlist below. Here's the cool thing that got me back to my r...

 Turns out that City College San Francisco on the US-4157 Juan Bautista de Anza Nationali Historic Trail is a pretty good QTH even in the middle of the day on 20- meters. I didn't make it to the East Coast, but the rig was heard as far away as Tenessee!  The audio was faint, but very quite on this POTA activation, and I managed to record it this time, so I'll have some QSL videos out soon so you can see and, arguably more importantly for radio, hear what was going on! Videos This playlist contains all the videos made during the outing. Hopefully, I'll get some QSO audio added to the list after a while. Maps More Data! Every one of the launch angles was above ground this time.  Here's an album of what the foF2 values and hmF2 values looked like along the path. If yo're interested in how these numeric charts were developed and continue to evolve, I have a  video  up on a part of the debug process where GPT-5 proved really helpful. I'm s...

 This week I spent some time tightening up the workflow for comparing F2 ionospheric data across different POTA outings. It turns out documentation really does matter. By writing things down, I’ve not only made the manual process clearer but also pushed the automated flow forward. With GPT-5’s help on documenting proton and electron flux plots, and my own notes on numeric F2 graphs along QSO paths, the project is steadily becoming easier to repeat and share. I put in a little bit of time working on being able to easily compare F2 data for different POTA outings this morning. It turns out documentation really does matter, so I've been focusing a bit more on it. I have a number of tools that allowed me to pull in F2 data quickly. This week I've been trying to spend time pulling them into an automated flow. As I've implemented this flow, I've discovered that I haven't taken the time to document the tools I've already built.  I asked GPT5 to document the solar prot...

  Live portable ham radio from San Francisco’s Presidio with a clean take-off toward the Pacific. Route via PresidiGo, light wire vertical, and a crystal-locked 14.0574 MHz start. I keep local times in the story; the QSO map is in UTC. I arrived downtown at Embarcadero Station at 15:20 PST yesterday with Project Toucans , a portable ham radio. There was a newly married couple, still in their dress and tux, waiting to ride the cable car up towards California and Powell. I was waiting for the PresidiGo bus out to the Presidio. It's a free bus out to the park that passes through downtown several times a day. I hopped on the bus at 4 PM downtown. After a few stops at 4:07 PM PST, the bus was completely full. Interestingly, when we arrived at the first Presidio stop at 4:15, almost everyone got off and exited the Presidio back towards town. I don't know why. The bus winded through the rest of the Presidio towards the transit center. The center is right in front of the new park, cal...

  Almost a year ago, I made a POTA activation from DC in Freedom Plaza. I'm discussing antennas and buildings today with Bill Meara of the soldersmoke blob and published this map to carry along the conversation. I alternately convince my myself that buildings do not matter, and then a few weeks later, that they do. QSO Map

 I was the second person to activate US-9269 Mt. Moriah BLM National Conservation Area yesterday! The gang and I are out on our annual campign trip to Baker, NV and the environs surrounding Great Basin National Park. We drove to our trailhead using the Hatch Rock Mine access road. The mine extracts quartzite for use in building. The entire wilderness area where the gang and I hiked had frequent quartzite deposits.  That second photo shows the top of a quartzite outcropping that wound up being about four stories high when viewed from below. I realized this once I got to the bottom of the outcrop as I descended the ridge I was on after the POTA activation. Google had this to say about the stone: Mt. Moriah Flagstone is a premium metamorphic quartzite sourced from the pristine Snake Mountain Range on the Nevada-Utah border. This exquisite natural stone showcases a harmonious blend of slate gray, soft mauve, and warm tawny chestnut tones, creating an aura of delicate refinem...

 I haven't tried this before, but it was a lot of fun. On this video QSL, I explained what was going on with the rig, (Project TouCans), and the Morse code within the QSO with N4GO in words on the video as the QSO was in progress. New video style for N4GO de KD0FNR The map below is for the entire POTA activation. It shows RBN spots as 'glowing' lines this time and QSOs as solid lines, (like always.) You can click on any of the signal paths to get more inforatmion about it. You can click the play button on the lower lefthand control panel to animate the map so you can see the QSOs as they occurred. QSO/RBN  Map for the 2025-05-20 KD0FNR US-0757 POTA Activation

 We moved to a web based control panel for Project TouCans a few months back. It's worked really well. Changing the network model of the system to one where TouCans uses a smart phone for network resources as a client even unexpectedly reduced the audio noise in the rig. Even though the control of the rig is now done via browser, KO6BTY and I hadn't tried to control the rig from more than one smart phone until our recent US-4578 POTA. Before I go any further, here's a brief introduction to the control panel. On a POTA activation last week, I set up the rig to talk to my smartphone via a mobile hotspot. KO6BTY then set up her smart phone to use my smart phone as as Wi-Fi source. The rig was immediately available to her at the same internet address! TouCans has almost moved into the cloud! For now, it's moved into the WLAN! The control panel doesn't have the concept of multiple users yet, so Hamie and I had to adjust keying speeds when each of us took control over fr...

 Gaaackkkkk the AM broadcast interference!!!! Gaaasssspppppppp! Still though, the POTA went really, really well and camping with the gang, (aged 14, 12, and 10), was a blast. We haven't camped in forever! The Park Angel Island State Park, US-1123, no surprise perhaps, is an island. It's just off the coast of San Francisco, Oakland, and Tiburon. It served a similar purpose to Ellis Island once upon a time. Getting There No surprise to anyone that regularly reads the blog, we, of course, took public transit to the island. The gang were carrying most of our camping gear. We took BART downtown, had lunch at the Irish Bank, the Irish pub the gang grew up around over the last decade or so, and then hopped the ferry to Agnel Island. I stopped by The Palace on Montgomery and Market before meeting the gang on the way to the ferry terminal. If you think you've seen that ceiling before in a certain movie with Michael Douglass, it's because you have. If you'd like to know what ...

 I made a livestream of my POTA activation from US-4571, Juan Bautista National Historic Trail in San Francisco on YouTube last night! It was pretty fun although the audio mostly didn't work out great. I'll be making notes here and in the video's comments on the QSOs in the vieo over time. (One of the things I learned was that there's no editing or even downloading of YouTube livestreams after the fact.) Here's the video, scroll for more details and, eventually, a map of the QSOs.  Park Details Here's a look at the QTH. The vertical antenna is taped to a carbon fiber mast that is in turn supported in a tree with electrical tape. You can see the rig on the ground by the tree. Happenings When a touchdown was scored in the SuperBowl at one point, there was a seven minute delay till the  next QSO. QSO Map: By moving the animation slider all the way to the left, you can see all the QSOs at once. Clicking on play will play the QSOs in order as grey line moves along as...

 And I still haven't activated this POTA site! Still, it was fun and the view was nice. Only two QSOs this time, but I think that's about as many as I've every managed on this trail. Next time maybe :)

  US-4571 at City College San Francisco, around sunset is one of the best propagation spots in the city for Project TouCans and a Stick. I discovered this a few months back when I had a little time to kill before Cantonese class. Given, TouCans isn't quite as compact as a KH-1, but it's not much bigger than some people's water bottles, and therefore pretty easy to carry around for just-in-case POTA activations. I haven't made any calls to Europe or Sweden from this QTH yet, but I did wind up with two QSOs to Maine in my log from my latest afternoon POTA activation.  I hit the park, quite unintentionally, at the sweet spot for racking up activations. The first activation ran from about 2300 UTC till midnight. The second one started immediately afterwards and lasted about another hour. Park Details: Getting to the park is a piece of cake since it sits near five different transit routes, specifically, the 29 , 43 , 49 , K-train , and the 8 , not to mention the Balboa Park ...