Copasetic Flow

 Sometimes you need a 3-D visualization of data, and sometimes you don't. I just posted a page  with foF2, hmF2, and MUFD(3000km) map images. All the maps are updated to the latest available data when you open or refresh the page. Map values are available—via tooltips—by hovering your map over the portion of the map your interested in. These maps contain the same data displayed in the 3-D Cesium Ion map . Please let me know what you think. All constructive feedback is welcome!

 One consideration that I hear often with relation to vacuum tube circuits is to be very, very careful of the high voltages that are typically involved. And, I completely agree. What if the highest voltage was 45 V though? A battery operated rig would seem more useful to Agent Sonya in my opinion. I went searching for something that might take less voltage, and therefore be safer for construction by the gang and I. It didn't take too long to find something that might work as a basic concept, although I do understand that the operating frequency of the circuits shown below wouldn't transmit long distances. Here are the schematics from the 5 meter rig outlined in the March, 1936 issue of Radio Craft  on page 525 Notice that at first glance, the highest voltage involved is from a 45 V battery. The 'interruption-frequency' coil concerns me a bit because I don't know what it's for yet, and it looks like a transformer. Upon further reading, and squinting at the acro...

 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...

 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...