Copasetic Flow

 GPT5 helped me understand how the Tuna Topper ][ amplifier in Project TouCans operates yesterday. It started from just this clip of the schematic! While debugging the power supply relay of Project TouCans a few days ago, I noticed an interesting thing. With the Pico-W rig controller plugged into the supply brick TouCans itself was only being doled out twelve volts by the phone charging brick in its base, not the fifteen volts its USB-C adapter was asking for. That mattered the most to the Tuna Topper II  amplifier that drives the five watts to the antenna. I changed the rig so that, for now,  the Pico-W runs on three AA batteries. That upped the supplly to the rig back to its intended fifteen volts. I wanted to understand in broad terms what that meant for the power output of the rig. I tooled around for a bit on paper and spreadsheets before it occurred to me to ask GPT5. I didn't expect to get an answer at all. I definitely didn't expect it to be able to read the sc...

The 12 year-old and I got a chance this last weekend to test out the Rockmite complete with Tuna Topper amplifier on a POTA activation. The results were outstanding! We were making a QSO per minute for most of the activation. Something we've never done before. On top of  that, the prototyped packaging of the combo of devices solved a few problems we've always had when we suspended the Rockmite from the antenna. Here's a look at the how the pair were packaged together: The first, biggest advantage, is that we moved the BNC coax connector out of the equation. As you can see, it is now the input to the Tuna Topper. That means that it is not supporting the antenna. That means  that there are no longer any torques on the BNC connector in the case. This fixes an issue that inspired so many washi tape fixes . The second advantage is that there is now access to the power leads outside of the Rockmite. This frees us up to send power in on a different path than the Ethernet cable ins...

The 12 year-old unschooling kid here has been soldering since she was eight. She'll be taking her ham exam soon. (She's also contributing to the development of the ham practice exam app she's using. That's how we've been working on programming.) So, with all this ham radio work going on, it only made sense to ask if she'd like to help build an amp that will hopefully help the Rockmite get a little further out. So far things are working out great! She soldered the first third or so including most (all?) of the resistors last night. I got up this morning and soldered in most of the capacitors and the Zener diode. We'll be up and running in no time! Anyways: There are also ideas for suspending the Rockmite and the Tuna Topper in the antenna: There might even bee a second can of tuna for the batteries!