Copasetic Flow

Prototype Rockmite including the Open Headset Interconnect Standard is complete! I brought the headset and keyer programming controls through the RJ45 connector yesterday. System with all controls and outputs routed through RJ45 : Yes, as you can see above, both of our workspaces are in despearate need of scalpels or at least Xaxto knives. I'm left stripping wires with the hiking, camping, and fishing Buck knife. The boards are now mounted to their respective enclosures. Here's a picture of the entire system: The 'headset' (let's call it the accessory) breakout board is mounted on nylon spacers superglued to the battery case. The radio side board is mounted with metal screws and nuts to the radio case. At the moment, the keyer programming button is implemented as a 'scorpion tail' switchc. (Did I just coin a phrase?) A wire from the pin 2 screw terminal is arched over the pin 3 (common ground) screw, and depressed when needed. Since this switch is only used...

How to measure ham radio QRPp using a device from my past. How to jailbreak your thesis. Gudermanians? Measuring QRP Power   I haven't seen a lot of QRP, (low power amatuer radio transmitter), power meter projects. The ones I have found, usually mention that it's difficult to measure low powers, (the Rockmite nominally outputs 500 mW aka QRPp.) This has been a bit of a mystery to me until today when I found this video from Mark Smith, N6MTS: In short, Mark explains that the issue is the drop across the rectifying diode used to generate the DC-ish current used to drive the meter. If the RF peak voltage is too low to forward bias the diode, then there's no measurement. A bias voltage can be applied to the diode to make it just-ready-to-go all the time, but that is difficult per N6MTS, (I haven't learned why yet.) Mark's solution is to use an Analog Devices logarithmeic amplifier. The amplifier has an output indicating peak RF power at the input. Mark's plan (as ...

The Rockmite has a new keyer that should last longer, and brings it one step closer to having a modular interconnect ala the proposed Open-Headset-Interconnect-Standard   Today I Learned: You can superglue video game switches to battery cases! From that point, it was pretty easy to kludge jumpers over to the three-wire keyer, converting it to the keyer that will eventually contribute to the Rockmite keying system . I had brought out two ground wires, one each for the di and da buttons. They each went into a single two wire connector that was, in turn, wired to on lead of each switch. The original di and da wires were jumpered to the other corresponding switch terminals. And, here it is in action! I'm not using the RJ-45 breakout board inspired by the open headset standard yet, but this will probably be the board placement Finally, since the red yam features so prominently in a number of the project pictures, (I typically use it as a light duty insulator and/or standoff), I mention...

 Let's start with the good news: the little desktop Rockmite made a QSO with K7ZAD in Farmington, Utah today.  While this was happening though, the reverse beacon netork detected absolutely nothing . I learned that the RBN is A tool for testing antenna changes, but kinda obviously, not the ONLY tool. I also learned about rain! I'd read that rain clouds do not attenuate HF signals. I had my doubts since I hadn't been able to make QSOs or even hear many other stations during rain storms. Turns out though, as explained in HRWB 168 - Audio for Digital Modes with Michael Black , rain drops make static, so effectively the noise floor that I'm hearing signals against is increased. And finally, I tried printing the QSL card templates via Google Docs rather than Microsoft Word, and it did not work.. Google Docs is limited in the size of pages it knows about, and the USPS double postcard is not one of Docs' known sizes. Apparently there is a plugin that will allow this, but ...

Mark Twain wrote about examples of synchronicity: thinking of a friend in the morning and then receiving a letter from them in the afternoon and whatnot. A similar thing happened here yesterday. I received my RJ-45 breakout boards for the flying Rockmite at lunch. Last night, I listened to Episode 167 of Ham Radio Workbench where Mark N6MTS discussed his newly proposed open headset standard . And there it was, a system (a standard no less! that advocated for using RJ-45 connectors as well as CAT-5 cable between a radio and it's control/output equipement. That use of RJ-45 connectors has strengthened my conviction while inspiring a more complete idea for the whole Flying Rockmite system! Prior to listneing to the podcast, I was very proud of myself for deicding to put in the energy to add a single RJ-45 connector to the Flying Rockmite so that it woul be easy to maintain. I still intended for the other end of the cable, the end hanging to the ground to look like this After all, wi...

I’ve been re-reading The Organized Writer by Antony Johnston over the last few months. I love the book and the system it describes for focusing on writing by organizing away all non-writing (and writing for that matter) concerns. Of particular interset to me is the concept of never losing an idea. The author advocates for carrying a small notebook (or a phone or PDA) to jot down ideas as the arise, then reviewing those ideas later in the day. To me, this is genius!  There was a problem, however. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to stick to the rigor required to write down all my ideas as they occur to me. I’ll decide I’ll remember it later, (I won’t); I’ll decide to try extra-hard to review my notes at the end of the day, (I didn’t); and so on. The author of the book says that the reader should use whatever tool for writing and reviewing notes that they find to be the most useful. I loved the idea. I just couldn’t find the tool for me. Then, I saw this presentation that I’ve wr...

 This blog has seemingly taken a departure from unschooling of late. I say 'seemingly' because at the end of the day, because of strewing, the gang's lives and mine are always twined together. So, if you watch what's going on—even with the recent slew of technical posts here—you can get an idea of what the gang's up to in unschooling. For example, they’ve been working on Morse code practice for the last several weeks. Code practice is related to radios—sure—but it’s also related to writing practice and learning typing. Anyway, I digress. I’d arrived at the conclusion that this blog no longer looked like an unschooling blog. I felt perhaps it would be interesting for me to write about the topic more intentionally, but hadn’t arrived at a way to get there when I sat down to read tech blogs this morning. About ten minutes later, I’d found the path back. The path, as much as anything, is a great illustration of how seemingly completely random unschooling and strewing li...