Copasetic Flow

 I was this close! I'm an avid reader of W6CSN's POTA blog because we tend to frequent the same parks here in the Bay area. And yet. I've never contacted him on the radio. I'd never heard his station until this morning. Also, did I mention that Project TouCans is still rock locked, and still has a very wide receiver? I could hear W6CSH calling CQ POTA, I could see the station calling on the Utah SDR, but I couldn't quite be heard 1 kHz away on the 20 m spectrum. It was close though! References: W6CSN's POTA blog Why there's no sound in the video

Project TouCans was having an issue with fog-borne moisture here in San Francisco. The flat top of the Tuna Can provided a place for water to pool—even if only a bit. Consequently, each morning, the radio would need to be lowered—don't forget, it lives in the antenna—disassembled, and dried.  I tried taping the radio shut more completely, I tried tightening the banana connectors—it doesn't help that on top of everything else, tuna cans bottoms have ripples—all to no avail. And then, the solution presented itself. The kid—Diaze—and I had discussed using airliner barf bags as rain shields on our recent trip to New Mexico. I'd successfully used a Donette's bag to the same end when the gang and I were out camping back in June. I couldn't find a barf bag, a coffee bag, or a Donettes bag. (They're all lined in plastic, that's why they work.) But, I did find a plain old wax lined donut shop bag, and voila! The rig has had no water issues since. You probably also n...

 A few days back I reported that I'd lost the ability to rotate and tilt on Google Earth Web. I filed a ticket with support. A forum member answered me in short order. It took a few back and forths for us to get used to talking about which controls were which, but there's still a way to rotate and tilt even though the controls went away. The key is to use the middle mouse button. From the response to the support issue: Can tilt/rotate, by holding the 'middle' mouse button, and dragging. Usually the mouse wheel itself.  Can also hold down Shift then up/down arrow to tilt. Left/Right to rotate.  If you'd like a fun map to try out the tilt and rotate controls with, check out this F2 skip map from the first Project TouCans POTA at K-0649. (You'll need to download it, and then load it into Google Earth Web or Pro since Google Earth Web doesn't support map sharing yet.)  

 Diaze (the 12 year old kid here) and I are adding F2 skip paths to the QSO maps from Project TouCans. One point of the project is to give us us an opportunity for Diaze to learn Python. Another point is to better visualize what the radio is doing with real-time data—within a 7 minute window—about the F2 layer! I'll talk more about unschooling and learning Python in another post, for now, here are some of the results we're seeing! Yesterday I made a single QSO to VE7ZD in Canada. I mapped out all the reverse beacon network spots for KD0FNR as well as the QSO using our  new code additions . I can see that the radio did it's usual thing of hitting the stations in the Bay area first. Stanford led the way The map immediately brings up a good question. What do we do for ground wave comms? Another good question is, are they always ground wave, or are some of them veritical incidence skywave? I believe Stanford is mostly ground wave because moving the antenna a bit in the backyar...

 Working POTA in San Francisco is a treat!  On the way to the POTA site—Lands End—I got to sttop off at two art musems, and ride, oh, I don't, know, at least 7 different buses, and it was awesome! My first stop was at the DeYoung Museum. While there, I checked out the Robert Henri paintings. He founded (helped to foun?) the ashcan school . We know about him because he influenced Leroy Neiman who made several paintings of one of our favorite hangouts, the Buena Vista. He's also an interesting artist to me because up until about a year ago, there were portraits of his wife and his mistress—hanging on opposite walls of a gallery in the DeYoung—staring at each other. The mistress was missing from the DeYoung yesterday. I remembered that I'd last seen her painting hanging in the Legion of Honor and since I was headed to Lands End anyway, I made the Legion my next stop. And the buses lined up! I'd walked to the bottom of the hill to take the 44 to the DeYoung. I hopped back ...

 With all my discussion of Google Earth Web this morning, it's nice to know that all of the missing features still exist on Google Earth Android. Consequently, here's a quick view of where Project TouCans reached during yesterday's POTA to Lands End (Golden Gate Recreation Areas K-0647 )

  Google Earth Web does not import kml files that it did before its recent upgrade. These same files are accepted by MyMaps. A workaround does exist which is to import the KML file to MyMaps, and then from the MyMaps UI view the map in Google Earth. The map appears correctly, and thereafter is incorporated into the user's Google Earth instance. I filed an issue on this. Using this ham radio KML map file, here's the workaround: First, import the map into MyMaps. That still works . Then, using the 'View in Google Earth' menus selection You can successfully import the KML file into Google Earth: