Copasetic Flow

 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

 I spent a little bit of time doing math debug this weekend, but in the end it turned out the QSO mapping app had a visualization issue, not a math issue. It was fun to get to look at the math for calculating the apparent launch angle of our antenna using F2 height data and rx/tx station locations. I wouldn't have thought to do the review except I had data that didn't match the maps I was getting back. According to the launch ange calculations made by our, (mine and KO6BTY's), QSO mapping app, the launch angle for the signal from our QTH was 0.00227 degrees. The map however, showed the path of the signal soaring over the very nearby Bay Bridge. The angle shown is much larger than 0.00227 degrees. Here's a picture of the nearby Bay Bridge with our antenna in the foreground. After completely reviewing the underlying math, it occurred to me that CZML likes to make lines that follow great circles. To make something that approximated a circle out of a path with a very low ...

 The F2 skip traces in Cesium have looked a bit odd: Whyyyyy????? It's because they're starting from sea level, not the altitude of the station.... I think... What follows are somewhat random development notes. Relative to Ground: True, Alt: 0 Relative to Ground: True, Alt: 3600 meters Relative to Ground: True, Alt: 1772.717 Almost!!! Relative to Ground: true, elevation: 1770.829467773438 I got the more accurate elevation from the elevation plugin using: {{ tx_lat }},{{ tx_lng }}|{{ rx_lat }},{{ rx_lng }} Not quite there yet.... To get this close, I had to run with  But the CZML schema says: So, it seems like the correct altitude in this case should be 0. (Start the line on the ground.) But, if I put in zero for altitude, I get the result shown above Found a reference to quaternions. Ahhhh, quaternions. References Ionosonde Data This was made possible with data collected by  Reinisch, B. W., and I. A. Galkin, Global ionospheric radio observatory (GIRO), Earth, Pla...

  This morning at the 2nd POTA activation here, I got to talk (OK, CW), with JG0AWE again! Just like last year! I was using a bit more power this year. Project TouCans is running somewhere between 3 and 5 Watts at the moment. He caught me just before the gang go the oatmeal ready, (we're camping on the edge of Great Basin National Park), On top of that, a RBN station in Japan had spotted Project TouCans about half an hour before. There wasn't a grey line between our locations, so I'm curious about what was going on, but delighted to have made the QSO! Here's the activation in Cesium so you can see where the sun was in relation to the QSO. The QSO takes place at 14:49 near the end of the animation.

 I completed the first prototype of my CZML QSO mapping template for Datasette yesterday. So far, I've implemented animation by using the interval property in CZML. Intervals can be attached to any (?) other tag it seems. I had to intuit what to do on a large degree based on the documentation. { "id" : "myObject" , "someProperty" : [ { "interval" : "2012-04-30T12:00:00Z/13:00:00Z" , "number" : 5 } , { "interval" : "2012-04-30T13:00:00Z/14:00:00Z" , "number" : 6 } , ] } I used CZML polylines to display each QSO. Each polyline has a show property. I attached an interval to each QSO of one minute, like so: . "id":"ea1ec", "name":"ea1ec", "polyline":{ "positions":{ "cartographicDegrees":[-106.55691216...

 A single path animation is up and running! The animation can be seen here . But wait! There's more! I now have a template that creates an entire animation: Want to explore it on your own! Please do : I'll have more details soon. For now, here's the template . Check out the sun going down over the Organs as the POTA progresses! So Cool!!!  NOTE: If you're on a cell phone, first zoom the globe in until you can't see the edges of the Earth. At that point, the terrain should become visible. It appears to be a Cesium issue, but it's easily worked around.

 I had a little time to play with a new mapping app over the weekend! This one is from Cesium and in its native form uses a JSON derivative called CZML. CZML is similar to KML. Furthermore, while it won't animate kml for me (at least not yet), CZML looks like it will support timestamps and animation. So! Maybe there'll be a new plugin for the logging program this week. Also! The resulting maps are shareable ! And perhaps can be shown in an iframe