Copasetic Flow

 KO6BTY and I took Project TouCans up to Mt. Davidson this morning. We did not activate the summit. We did manager a QSO with K6EL before the keyer may have given out. (We're going to test it here in a bit.) What we did find out is that the imuto charging brick we're using can tune between two really loud radio stations that are presumably both broadcasting from nearby Sutro Tower. With the power cable plugged into the 100 Watt jack, we received the local sports station. With it plugged into the 60 Watt jack, we get music instead. Update: We did in fact lose a keyer chip. When I tried to rub-start the radio, I accidentally touched the power wire to the keyer chip programming input terminal. After that, the keyer chip was forever convinced that I was holding down the programming button. I had planned for this kind of thing—it's happened before—so I had a replacement on hand back at the house.

 Project TouCans can be powered by USB-C! I've been wanting to try this since I learned that there are boards that can be connected to USB-C power supplies that can request different voltages and currents and—if successful—then power a ham radio at that voltage. Today, Project TouCans made it's first ever USB-C powered QSOs! I used a board I purchased at Adafruit. The easiest way to select a voltage and/or current is to solder bridge jumpers and/or scalpel the default jumpers. Beware though, if your input power supply can't handle either your voltage or current request, you'll wind up at the next lowest voltage down the scale that the supply  can support. So, for example, when I broke the default current jumper to ask for 3 Amperes, I went from a happy 15 V supply down to a a 5 V supply, because my laptop charger will not/cannot support 3 amps at 15 volts. I wasn't sure the green board RockMite that makes up half of Project TouCans could support a 15 V supply becau...