Project TouCans is back up and running! The rig just stopped dead in its tracks during the NAQCC Sprint a few weeks back, and that was that. After two hours of debug and soldering yesterday, it's back.

A few things of note:

The battere was completely dead. The imuto power supplies TouCans uses hold their charge for weeks, so I'm guessing this was the number one issue. But! The battery didn't do it's usual buck supply hum into the radio, (hence me not realizing it was even close to being out of juice.) 

The lack of buck supply hum might have been precipitated by the second issue I found. The audio output wire was severed within its insulation. A DC ohmmeter check indicate that there was an open circuit. I'm wondering though, if the wires were close enough together in the insulation if they weren't capactatively coupled, and therefore still producing sound and providing a bit of a filter. I replaced the wire in question, so we may never know. Here are the spots for the rig so far this morning. No backyard QSOs yet.

 I finally landed at a quiet tape vs. noise  configuration for TouCans on Saturday afternoon. Here’s how.

In other parts of the project, the Pico-W has started burning through pairs of AA batteries rather quickly.

 Here's the query I'm using for Burr Trail

============================================

select

  tx_lng,

  tx_lat,

  rx_lng,

  rx_lat,

  rm_rnb_history_pres.timestamp,

  rm_rnb_history_pres.dB,

  rm_rnb_history_pres.Spotter,

  haversine(tx_lat, tx_lng, rx_lat, rx_lng) as total_path,

  gis_partial_path_lat(tx_lat, tx_lng, rx_lat, rx_lng, 200) as el_lat,

  gis_partial_path_lng(tx_lat, tx_lng, rx_lat, rx_lng, 200) as el_lng,

  id,

  strftime('%Y%m%d', timestamp) as date,

  strftime('%H%M', timestamp) as time,

  'US-4399' as park,

  'KD0FNR' as call,

  1770.829467773438 as elev_tx

from

  rm_rnb_history_pres

where

  dB > 100

  and timestamp > '2024-05-27'

  and timestamp < '2024-05-28'

order by

  rm_rnb_history_pres.timestamp desc

=======================================================

At some point I'll add an ionosonde field using this map for each QSO. For the Boulder, CO ionosonde, the query will look like

=========================================================

select

  tx_lng,

  tx_lat,

  rx_lng,

  rx_lat,

  rm_rnb_history_pres.timestamp,

  rm_rnb_history_pres.dB,

  rm_rnb_history_pres.Spotter,

  haversine(tx_lat, tx_lng, rx_lat, rx_lng) as total_path,

  gis_partial_path_lat(tx_lat, tx_lng, rx_lat, rx_lng, 200) as el_lat,

  gis_partial_path_lng(tx_lat, tx_lng, rx_lat, rx_lng, 200) as el_lng,

  id,

  strftime('%Y%m%d', timestamp) as date,

  strftime('%H%M', timestamp) as time,

  'US-4399' as park,

  'KD0FNR' as call,

  'BC840' as ionosonde,

  1770.829467773438 as elev_tx

from

  rm_rnb_history_pres

where

  dB > 100

  and timestamp > '2024-05-27'

  and timestamp < '2024-05-28'

order by

  rm_rnb_history_pres.timestamp desc

limit 1

====================================================================

The extra ionosonde field works!!! 

References

Ionosonde Data