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Could Agent Sonya Have Done It? (It: QRP CW on 40 meters in 1939)

 The Soldersmoke blog pointed out an interesting post that was a focal point of a larger book review for "Agent Sonya: The Spy Next Door". The post's author was quite convinced that the key protagonist of the nonfiction tome could not and did not construct her own QRP communication rig in the 1930s as stated by the book's author. I beleive Agent Sonya could have constructed the rig  More about the book on the publisher's site The Soldersmoke post The focal review post The 1936 Radio Handbook So, as I was saying: I, for one, believe. I'll admit up front, I didn't have time to read the entire linked post. The following assumes that the issue was Sonya being able to build a transmitter in 1939 for use from Switzerland to Moscow. The short version? It should have been the picture of simplicity.  As an aside and a bit of a bona fides, we routinely QSO from San Francisco to Texas and beyond. That's the same distance as Switzerland to Moscow. I grew up in a ...
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Snails of McLaren

 Snail season is upon us! The snail weed in McLaren Park in San Francisco is in full bloom this morning. There's fog mired on the hills, and the snails are back!
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The Project TouCans CZML Tester: Another o3-mini Rapid Prototyping Tool

 Did you know you can store czml maps in github and then load them into the Cesium Sandcastle to try things out? I didn’t for the longest time, but now I do! I recently ran into an issue where I needed to test the differences between several different versions of the same CZML file with one incrmental change per file to debug an issue I was seeing on my maps. I asked ChatGPT to write some JavaScript code that would allow me to simply place the URL into a text input box, click a button, and view the newly specified map on a web page. It wasn’t quite ‘vibe coding’ but a little while later, I had this tool for working through my test maps. You can load any github (or other cors-exporting-happy site) czml file to visualize it.  As an example, I walked through my use case–debugging the slider position on an animated czml map of ham radio QSOs Finally, if you’d like to play around with the code o3-mini and I generated as the basis for a project of yours, it can be found in this gis...
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Pirate Audio Software as Seen on Soldersmoke!

 Remember saving software on audio tapes? No, of course I don't either. I mean really, who's that old? OK, it's me. I am.  What brings all this up? a post from soldersmoke about tapesponding . One of the many amazing things the video mentioned there reveals is that pirate radio stations used to broadcast software... You know... The kind you saved to audio tapes! Back in the '80s, I pestered my parents for an entire year for a Timex/Sinclair 1000. Of course I saved programs on audio tapes! The reference to pirate radio broadcasts of software was something I'd never thought of, and it's sheer genius in my opinion. How cool! As a kid in the early '80s, I used to tape record conversations and broadcasts using my dad's shortwave receiver, an EAC R-390 A/URR. I wish I'd held on to the tapes! The kids here who are 14, 12, and 10 are still audio tape afficianados thanks to our '95 Isuzu Trooper complete with tape deck.  Perhaps we'll have to try ...
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POTA Camping at Angel Island State Park US-1123

 Gaaackkkkk the AM broadcast interference!!!! Gaaasssspppppppp! Still though, the POTA went really, really well and camping with the gang, (aged 14, 12, and 10), was a blast. We haven't camped in forever! The Park Angel Island State Park, US-1123, no surprise perhaps, is an island. It's just off the coast of San Francisco, Oakland, and Tiburon. It served a similar purpose to Ellis Island once upon a time. Getting There No surprise to anyone that regularly reads the blog, we, of course, took public transit to the island. The gang were carrying most of our camping gear. We took BART downtown, had lunch at the Irish Bank, the Irish pub the gang grew up around over the last decade or so, and then hopped the ferry to Agnel Island. I stopped by The Palace on Montgomery and Market before meeting the gang on the way to the ferry terminal. If you think you've seen that ceiling before in a certain movie with Michael Douglass, it's because you have. If you'd like to know what ...
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Lab Notebook: TouCans is Back Up and Running

 TouCans is back up and running! The batter noise is also just gone! One issue caused both the noise and the key stoppage. The ground wire connection from the keyer relay was in the process of breaking away during the fixes last week. This led to the noise I heard in the rig. It also led to the wire, of course, actually detaching which kept the keyer from working. KO6BTY soldered the ground connection back this morning, and TouCans is back up and running well! Here's what the noise before the fix. This is what a wire breaking in TouCans does. The new battery is doing a good job. Here's how the RBN saw TouCans right after the fix.
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Project TouCans Lab Book: The Weekend of Gentle Debug

 Note: The following will probably change over time, and is not ready for primetime. It's in the nature of a lab book entry so that I don't lose information about changes to Project TouCans.  I dodged a lot of near disasters this weekend by waiting to make sure I understood what was going on before acting.  The day before what I'm going to detail here, the Pico-W that's been in in outdoor service on TouCans for just over a year gave out. It was the curse of the Butterfield Overland Trail. I may never activate that park here in San Francisco. Not only do I not make many QSOs at the locations I've tried, the rig also tends to become damaged in one way or another. This time, the Pico-W jsut wouldn't boot after I got home. It also wouldn't respond to a direct USB connection anymore. When I replaced the Pico-W, I thought we'd done a better job of revision controlling our code than we had. I loaded code onto the new Pico-W, and nothing! I assumed the Darlingto...
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