Copasetic Flow

 How difficult is it to build a single tube ham transmitter? Honestly, I don't know because I haven't tried. The gang and I are out camping this week and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the latest episode of the Soldersmoke podcast as we were out exploring the area around Baker, NV. In the podcast, (episode 260), Agent Sonya  came up again. (Here's the Soldersmoke blog post for the podcast.) I have to say, I'm still a believer. Maybe it's time to put my money where my mouth is though. So, this week, the kids and I will be researching: The article in the 1936 radio handbook on page 111. Whether or not we can still get our hands on a functioning 6C6 tube and socket. Can we find a crystal that fits into a socket like the ones advertised in the back of the handbook? Can we maybe bring the plate voltage 6A6—aka a 53 tube—down to something more manageable than 450 Volts?  How does the circuit function and how does it depend on plate voltage anyway? What sort of oscilla...

 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...

 During yesterday's POTA activations, I kept losing my control panel connection to Project TouCans. I restarted the rig's Pico-W several times to re-establish the connection before it occurred to me to think through the symptoms which were: Productively using the control panel to key the rig Switch to any other app on the phone besides the Chrome browser Return to control panel on Chrome browser and the connection is gone. On my implementation, the control panel's On button first opens a WebSocket to Project TouCans' Pico-W. As an experiment, rather than power cycling the Pico-W, I simply hit the 'On' button again even though the rig was already on. Sure enough, that did it. The connection was back up and running. I asked ChatGPT what might have caused this. I mentioned that the phone, as Samsung Galaxy 23 had forced an update of One UI. The answer that came back was that versions of One UI newer than 6, (I'm on 7 now), do indeed cut socket connections when...

 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 ...