Copasetic Flow

  This morning at the 2nd POTA activation here, I got to talk (OK, CW), with JG0AWE again! Just like last year! I was using a bit more power this year. Project TouCans is running somewhere between 3 and 5 Watts at the moment. He caught me just before the gang go the oatmeal ready, (we're camping on the edge of Great Basin National Park), On top of that, a RBN station in Japan had spotted Project TouCans about half an hour before. There wasn't a grey line between our locations, so I'm curious about what was going on, but delighted to have made the QSO! Here's the activation in Cesium so you can see where the sun was in relation to the QSO. The QSO takes place at 14:49 near the end of the animation.

 Washi tape to the rescue again! Tuesday morning, with Project TouCans working better that it had in days, I noticed that the ends of our stranded wire antenna had begun to fray out. I grabbed a roll of washi tape from my pocket, (who doesn't take washi tape on a radio outing?), and a few minutes later, voila The end of our antenna was no longer frayed, and nosie was down significantly! Here's a view of our activation site from the opposite angle looking out over the Great Basin of Great Basin National Park US-0032.

 The band's looking alright to Project TouCans this morning! The map covers the following half hour table. Project TouCans is still running five watts or less.  spotter  ●  spotted  distance mi freq mode type snr speed time seen    K3PA-1    KD0FNR/6 1360  mi 14057.4 CW CQ 8 dB 18 wpm 1244z 17 May 3 minutes ago    ND7K    KD0FNR/6 385  mi 14057.3 CW CQ 7 dB 18 wpm 1244z 17 May 3 minutes ago    W6YX    KD0FNR/6 207  mi 14057.4 CW CQ 13 dB 17 wpm 1244z 17 May 4 minutes ago    W1NT-2    KD0FNR/6 2601  mi 14057.4 CW CQ 8 dB 17 wpm 1243z 17 May 5 minutes ago    W1UE    KD0FNR/6 2579  mi 14057.4 CW CQ 4 dB 18 wpm 1242z 17 May 6 minutes ago    KO7SS    KD0FNR/6 533  mi 14057.3 CW CQ 6 dB 18 wpm 1239z 17 May 8 minutes ago    TI7W    KD0FNR/6 27...