Copasetic Flow

 There's been a lot of talk about what is and isn't homebrew lately. I started hearing the all-in-good-fun contention around the Soldersmoke DC Receiver Challenge . A few days back, the conversation wandered over to the comments section of a HackaDay post. In that post, I found the following quote from The Tao of Programming :  "When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas." While it's cobbled together from modified kits, TouCans, suspended in its dipole beneath a Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory rain shield, will always sit in my heart as a manifestation of "the simplest harmony between machine and ideas" That makes me wonder if there should be a catetory known as a homebrew system. Sure, TouCans has kits, but they're modded to fit the application. They're also powered and controlled by a homebrew Darlington array buffered momentary contact relay (keyer) and a latching relay (power),...

 N2CQR mentioned the waterfall being handy for QRP in that other operators can find your rock-locked signal on the ham radio bands.  In addition to the use-case pointed out by Bill , when operating Project TouCans in locations where there's an available internet connection, I've used SDR waterfalls to my advantage in a few other ways: 1. I can get more immediate feedback than the Reverse Beacon Network. On the West Coast, the Utah SDR can see our signal during most of the day. We can find out immediately if Project TouCans is working at all. 2. I rarely have zero-beat issues with TouCans. The contained RockMite's receiver is very wide, so I can hear a lot on either side of the frequency the rig works on. There is one big issue though. The crystal oscillator for transmit has found its home near 14057.4 MHz. The receive bandpass, however, is happiest at 14057.9 kHz. Especially when there's a crowd, the waterfall display from Utah helps me to determine if the loudest sign...

 ChatGPT wrote a little more starter code for me to answer the question, could we simply make an image of the F2 maps? Here are the current 3D F2 maps . These are great for visualizing what the ionosphere F2 height actually looks like. The maps are, however, a little memory and processor heavy. I wondered if would be faster to load a simple image for a daily driver sort of F2 map. I asked ChatGPT for help, and while things took longer this time, the LLM still made quicker work of the project. Here is one of the early sample outputs. Notice that the map is still split into grids in the same manner as the Cesium map. The only remaining task was either to display a legend on the same web page, or to use tooltips! I chose tooltips. To implement tooltips, I needed an html <map> tag containing the FoF2 values at each grid location with FoF2 image. That wound up being a bit of a journey. My first idea was to simply crank out an entire html page in the GitHub repos and display it he...

 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've been casting about trying to find the format for Project TouCans video QSLs I liked the best, and I've finally got it! Today, in the Mt. Moriah BLM National Conservation Area, (US-9692), I learned how to do split screen while also recording the screen, and I'm kind of in love with the way these look! In one panel, you can see the controls for Project TouCans. Over the audio, you can hear the QSO and my commentary as I work. In the other panel, you can see the view out the front of back of the phone which is kinda gorgeous on Mt. Moriah! It's just like Project TouCans. It mixes really old tech—the rig—with brand new tech—split screen phones, html/JavaScript control panels, embedded controllers; the last two things at least partially built by an LLM at this point—and looks kinda awesome... to me, anyway! Here's the first QSL. It doesn't have the polish of the ones I make at home—the gang and I are camping near Great Basin National Park—but I love the format...

 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...

 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 ...

 Just a few notes on the varactor that's providing the FSK on the Rockmite and a few more notes on the FSK circut itself. This page will continue to evolve and is related to the slow moving project to try out teletype with Project TouCans . To communicate in most of the 20 meter RTTY band, the rig needs to have a 175 Hz FSK, rather than 500 to 700 Hz. I'm woroking on understanding the FSK circuit to see if it can be modified to give the desired shift. Short conjecture: I suspect/hope I can place a small variable capacitor around the varactor to bring the frequeqncy shift into the range that will work. The RockMite achieves frequency shift with its Colpitts oscilator via the following circuit from the manual and I'm just not sure how this works out. When Q2 closes, it looks like there should be a short to ground. The Zener, D5 with its 4.7 V reverse voltage, is immediately gone. Using the capacitance chart below, it looks like we gor from 100 pF from the varactor ot on the ...

 Can a RockMite send RTTY without a modification? Maybe. There are are two reasons it might not be able to. First, the keyer might not quite work the way I'd like for it to. What I need the keyer to do is to allow me to hold the key down in straight key mode while changing the FSK frequency of the rig by tapping the programming button. The second reason is that the frequency shift on RockMite's is between 500 and 700 Hz. Meanwhile, most rigs on the ham bands use a 45.5 baud rate with a 170 Hz separation. However, the German weather teletypes transmit at 50 baud with a separation fo 500 Hz, so there's a precedent for recievers that could decode RockMite RTTY if a RockMite could RTTY. The nice thing—the thing that got me thinking about teletype at all—is that RockMites have a built in, controllable FSK. Consequently, I asked ChatGPT to write microPython code to pull the FSK line on the RockMite. What I hadn't thought through was that KO6BTY, or I still needed to add a re...

 The TouCans keyer works much better than it ever has in the past, (apologies if you were on the receiving end of a key down lockup), and it's all due to connections I made while unschooling with the 14, 12, and 10 year old gang of kids here. This story stars when they were 9, 7, and 5 years-old, so strap in :) I've probably written about this before, but here's the rough chain of connections The, then, five year old, known as Tawnse here, and I attend a design exhibit at SFMOMA where She and I find a Foldscope , a simple origami-inspired microscope that's pretty fun, and pretty cheap Tawnse develops an interest in microscopy The gang and I join the San Francisco Microscopy Society The Society is working on archiving their old documents. Daize, (aka K06BTY), and I are working on a book about Mike Gladych where we've accumulated a lot of documents. We attend their archivist committee meeting. I read the list of committee members, and there's a name I recognize, S...

 OK, so this is just kinda cool! Suppose you're operating near mountains and are curious if your QSOs are hopping over the mountains, or if they're knife edge diffracting after smacking right into the mountain. You'll need to know how high the F2 layer was between your station and the receiving station and you'll need to be able to visulaize the path with respect to the mountain. It's taken a while, but we have that now!  Thanks to the GloTEC data curtesy of the NOAA, we know the F2 heights all over the world at the time of each QSO. We can also map our QSOs on a Cesium map with toplogy. This allows us to start with maps like this: where I wondered on the day of the QSO if TouCans' signal would clear the high way embankment, and found out that yes, yes it did. Check out the interactive map below. It has all the QSOs loaded with their actual F2 skip heights.

 I didn't manage to activate this El Paso, TX adjacent park this time, but the innovative antenna KO6BTY and I prototyped back in December did a pretty good job in kinda lousy band conditions! Then, I had to flee the dust storm and head for Albuquerque to catch a plane the next morning. Project TouCans watches the dust storm roll in with its big brother Park: US-3012 Franklin Mountains State Park near El Paso, TX. As is usual for my trips to New Mexico, my radio ops over the weekend were all car transit. Radio Details: Rig: TouCans and a Stick on the only band it uses right now: 20 meters The radio worked well considering the antenna was taped to a rest area trash can. Propagation in general was bad, but I learned a few ways to make things better with respect to the trash can. The rig does better when the insulated antenna wire is not touching the trash can lid. Go figure. It makes sense, but still. Go figure. Here's a closer view  of how the antenna was mounted, although you...

 What a gorgeous day to hang out in the mountains! I drove a bit outside of Las Cruces, NM over the weekend to play radios! KO6BTY first activated this very spot in the park using TouCans and a vertical antenna in December of last year. I used the same setup this time with one change. Instead of using a tent pole as a mast, I actually remembered to take the carbon fiber fishing pole we usually use off the airplane with me this time. You can see TouCans enjoying the view out over the White Sands Missile Range in the picture to the left.  Propagation wasn't spectacular either afternoon, so no off-the-continent DX, but I did get pretty good coverage of the United States and a few QSOs into Canada! I'll have more updates on the park activation later, but for now, here's the animated QSO map.

 Did you know you can store czml maps in github and then load them into the Cesium Sandcastle to try things out? I didn’t for the longest time, but now I do! I recently ran into an issue where I needed to test the differences between several different versions of the same CZML file with one incrmental change per file to debug an issue I was seeing on my maps. I asked ChatGPT to write some JavaScript code that would allow me to simply place the URL into a text input box, click a button, and view the newly specified map on a web page. It wasn’t quite ‘vibe coding’ but a little while later, I had this tool for working through my test maps. You can load any github (or other cors-exporting-happy site) czml file to visualize it.  As an example, I walked through my use case–debugging the slider position on an animated czml map of ham radio QSOs Finally, if you’d like to play around with the code o3-mini and I generated as the basis for a project of yours, it can be found in this gis...

 Remember saving software on audio tapes? No, of course I don't either. I mean really, who's that old? OK, it's me. I am.  What brings all this up? a post from soldersmoke about tapesponding . One of the many amazing things the video mentioned there reveals is that pirate radio stations used to broadcast software... You know... The kind you saved to audio tapes! Back in the '80s, I pestered my parents for an entire year for a Timex/Sinclair 1000. Of course I saved programs on audio tapes! The reference to pirate radio broadcasts of software was something I'd never thought of, and it's sheer genius in my opinion. How cool! As a kid in the early '80s, I used to tape record conversations and broadcasts using my dad's shortwave receiver, an EAC R-390 A/URR. I wish I'd held on to the tapes! The kids here who are 14, 12, and 10 are still audio tape afficianados thanks to our '95 Isuzu Trooper complete with tape deck.  Perhaps we'll have to try ...

 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 ...

 TouCans is back up and running! The battery noise is also just gone! One issue caused both the noise and the key stoppage. The ground wire connection from the keyer relay was in the process of breaking away during the fixes last week. This led to the noise I heard in the rig. It also led to the wire, of course, actually detaching which kept the keyer from working. KO6BTY soldered the ground connection back this morning, and TouCans is back up and running well! Here's what the noise before the fix. This is what a wire breaking in TouCans does. The new battery is doing a good job. Here's how the RBN saw TouCans right after the fix.

 Note: The following will probably change over time, and is not ready for primetime. It's in the nature of a lab book entry so that I don't lose information about changes to Project TouCans.  I dodged a lot of near disasters this weekend by waiting to make sure I understood what was going on before acting.  The day before what I'm going to detail here, the Pico-W that's been in in outdoor service on TouCans for just over a year gave out. It was the curse of the Butterfield Overland Trail. I may never activate that park here in San Francisco. Not only do I not make many QSOs at the locations I've tried, the rig also tends to become damaged in one way or another. This time, the Pico-W jsut wouldn't boot after I got home. It also wouldn't respond to a direct USB connection anymore. When I replaced the Pico-W, I thought we'd done a better job of revision controlling our code than we had. I loaded code onto the new Pico-W, and nothing! I assumed the Darlingto...

This has been fun! KO6BTY and I have been working on QSO maps on 20 meters vs. the F2 layer for the last few years. We finally have a map of the F2 layer, one half hour behind real time with global data provided by the NOAA's GloTEC product . Check it out .