Midwinter calling, day 19

Installation

The biggest remaining radio problems are antennas and antenna cable. In addition to sheer size and mounting problems, I have to use free-wire ladder as the feeding cable, which needs to be matched to the radios impedance once I have mounted the antenna, and it will be affected by rain and ice. The radio has its own tuning, and it is better to put a tuner on the antenna, so that the radio can be moved or replaced, and the antenna keeps its tuning, and the antennas static discharge and lightning protection are connected. If it's not one problem, it's something else.

I expect there will be several antennas - partly because it will be fun to experiment - but I prioritize a simpler loop antenna and NVIS dipole, i.e. an antenna that radiates upwards and uses the ionosphere to bounce the transmission back down to earth and reach other stations that should be the most used antenna. I hope that with the sensitivity of my radios and antennas it will work up to 400km or so, although the NVIS principle itself can work much longer. 400km covers the whole of southern Sweden to Stockholm, Gotland, all of Denmark and Norway to the north of Hardangervidda. Where I have problems fitting a dipole or similar like on the ship it can be a long curved rod, compact loop antenna or a magnetic loop antenna, but they have around 10-15dB loss compared to a dipole, and loops are very narrowband and I have to make sure no one is near the antenna due to high voltage across the gap. The difference in loss and other signal path can be so great that a loop antenna does not make contact at all, while the dipole reaches 1000km with good contact.

On longer expeditions where the ship is far away, the only contact may be when they can go ashore and erect a better-aimed antenna between trees or simple field masts with support lines, as ionospheric bouncing is used instead of NVIS. So the antenna here will have to be adapted for that, and it will probably be a directional horizontal antenna to have some signal gain, hopefully a rhombus or simpler yagi-uda antenna, but those antennas will have to be up on the mountain top west of the mansion. A small cabin and transmitter station can be built there with two antennas with almost 90 degree angles to each other. One directed to the south west, and if I achieve 2000km range it will reach northern Portugal and cover the coasts of England and France. One in the north west or north direction primarily for Iceland or Southern Norway. I need to reach 3000km to cover the Mediterranean, 4000km to reach Canada, 6000km to reach the Arabian Sea and the New York area. There is little chance of sporadic contacts especially on winter nights and especially to the south, but not certain. The problem is also that the transmitter site may have a good atmospheric condition, but the receiver site does not. The sun moves, the Earth is round and long distance radio is tricky. For example, during the summer night it may be possible to reach South America, South Africa, India or Australia, but it can never make contact with the east coast of North America which is closer, and may not be able to reach England during the day. There are also no radio propagation beacons here to listen to. Radio, propagation, antennas and frequencies are 'complicated'.

Even though large amounts of copper wire were used for conductors and electrical installation in the mansion, I have enough and I will build two NVIS dipoles and a relatively compact loop antenna, all with tuning. The antennas for the first test may not be optimal, but it is part of future tests to try to find better antennas, and to optimize antenna installation and tuning.

But I have to decide where the radio station will be in the mansion, since that determines where the antenna needs to be. I could attach a big horizontal loop but that have issues with attachment points, and the dipoles 40m length and shape with antenna connection in the middle, limits where the antenna can be installed. I've asked the craftsmen to arrange some at least ten meter long wooden poles that we can shorten depending on the attachment, and also make extra attachment and brace poles. The suitable places for the radio in the mansion are the guards attic room, my unused attic room facing the courtyard, in the guards day room, or my workshop or office. All have their pros and cons. The guards day room feels most suitable because there is almost always someone there 24 hours a day, and is conveniently located almost in the middle of the house. The day room provides a fairly simple antenna feed out and up, which helps as I intend to use the mansions massive copper roof as a ground reflector for the NVIS antenna, because bedrock is a poor ground plane.

Having a house on top of a cliff means I don't have any suitable trees to attach an antenna to either as they are all lower and below the cliff. What I can do is to attach the antenna to the trees further up the mountain in the north, and run the antenna fedd via the outside of the wing, but then the antenna goes over 'dry' bedrock with a much longer feeding cable. The kitchen pantry at the end of the wing would have made a good radio room for a shorter feed, but it is the kitchen pantry and is not practical, and the same goes for the toilets and the wings attic. Even with a long end line, it will only be a triangle loop or end-fed antenna. I am a little worried that the antenna will be bad in the west-east direction if the NVIS does not work well, and it is very likely there will be for future changes.

So the guards day room it is. The guards don't need to monitor the radio all the time as there will be specific transmission times organized reasonably well, especially if the ship has a clock. Each transmission can synchronize the time of the clock. Timed schedule also helps to save batteries if it is not possible to charge the batteries during the ships journey. If I'm going to have lead batteries on the ship, I need to build wind turbines for the ship as well as adapted lead batteries that can handle waves motion and bad weather better. I'll probably have to make new battery vessels specifically for it, so that the free surface area changes and it doesn't slosh rounds in them, although I think the shape of the lead plates and the distance between them act as decent slosh dampers in both directions, and the cells are already tall, long and quite narrow which is good.

Hrappr and the craftsmen help build, erect and attaching the mast poles. One end will be on the gable outside my bedroom which is one of the places where brackets were installed during the mansions construction, and will be the easiest to attach too. There is even an access hatch under the small corner window. The middle post is attached to the west of the window above the day rooms window, and the other end of the antenna is a pole erected on the pavilion roof. All poles get simple loops so we can raise or lower the antenna via lines. I completely agree with my sambos and guards that it is ugly with the tall poles sticking up from the main building and the roof of the pavilion, but I have no better choice, and in the future they will accept it as worth it to get radio communication, and they just have to accept that the antenna dictate where the poles must be, and have other requirements than purely aesthetic. As camouflage and for extra use, the poles also receive extra loops so that simpler pennants or smaller flags can be raised for certain occasions.

It is a bit of work to attach the mast pole in the middle to the log wall as the outer facade have to be removed, but worth doing well when there will be 10 meter tall post. I'm also not that happy about the issue of having to run the feed line through the exterior wall, but it have to be done because I need to keep the feed away from all the iron and the metal that is the windows with their frame and iron bars. More facade planks have to be temporarily removed, but it is below the center antenna mount in the wall above. I run the wires inside through a pair of outward-sloping ceramic insulators, but to avoid the issue of rain seeping inside or along the wall, the antenna wires makes drip loops before going up to the two shielded junction boxes at the bottom of the pole mount. It's probably a small loss but shouldn't affect too much at these low frequencies, and worth it to have the option of trying other antennas, or improve the feed. The ceramic insulators holes have room and only got wooden plugs at the ends.

I'm the one who gets a surprise when Kari and Ciara along with Jane present two chandeliers. One with rock crystals, the other with glass crystals. They've kept it a secret but started it right after we moved in, and Jane is beaming at the others praise of how well it's going. Sure, the chandeliers are relatively simple, but it looks luxurious. They know I like glass and Iselin loves the prismatic light effect, so when Jane sketched three angular prisms with holes in them and other small faceted glass spheres and shapes, they decided to try and have it made in glass and rock crystal.

Sure, all the work in my workshop certainly contributed, but I haven't noticed that they used an extra room as their work room and 'pimped' slash 'bedazzled' two double oil lamps by stringing crystals up on brass wire and made it beautiful. The chandelier is bigger and is made to have eight regular candles, but everyone agrees that fire and candles should be limited as much as possible due to the risk of fire, and they love the LED light they didn't see coming, and want me to install the LED modules in the chandeliers so we can leave the candles unlit. The main hall needs more light, and I have scrapped the idea of a light module in the library where we don't spend much time, and I will install a simple LED reading lamp for evening use. So, the more complex glass chandelier is modified with 3 LED modules and hung in the main hall, while the rock crystal chandelier is hung above the long table in the meeting slash dining room and gets two modules.

The glazier has gotten good at casting simpler glassware, and it's much easier and cheaper to get a chandelier made of glass, so they've already ordered parts for two more chandeliers. The idea is to use them on the pavilion during the wedding, because out there light will be needed and fire will not a big issue there.

Since I actually have a couple of larger Alfheimr made speakers I'm curious if the signal is even audible if they are connected together, so I just run two wires on the floor between the meeting room, through the house to my workshop. We can wave between the door holes, but it reduce quite a lot of the sound. A 7 cm speaker is attached to each end. By tapping a hand on the speaker, it moves clearly at the other end, and by cupping our hands and talking quite loudly, we can actually hear what is being said on the other end, albeit very faintly.

I let anyone who wants to try, and everyone wants to. And yes, I confirm to Jane that this is a very primitive telephone, but it works as she thinks. If I'm actually going to build a working telephone, the signal has to be much stronger, and without amplifying electronics, that means I can't use a speaker, or dynamic microphone which is the same principle, just adapted to be a sensitive microphone. Strip microphones are even worse because the signal is weaker. The classic solution in particular telephone systems is that the microphone is a carbon microphone, which is a variable resistor instead of a coil that produce an electrical signal. But by feeding the carbon microphone with a battery, the variable resistance of the microphone means that a larger current varies with the speech. The current goes through a transformer and the output signal can then be sent long distances and still drive a speaker. It is actually possible to make a primitive audio amplifier by connecting a speaker to drive a carbon microphone. That's how long-distance telephone systems were made in the beginning, but every amplification degrades the sound quality, and it's hardly High Fidelity sound from the start. But speech does not require high fidelity to be understood and something like 300-3000Hz is fine. It's more noise and interference that is a problem.

The principle behind a classic carbon microphone is simple, and the Swedish name 'kolkorn' ie 'carbon grain' says a lot, but making a good one will surely be difficult although the principle is easy. The details always gets you in the end. It's a small shallow container, with an electrode at the bottom and a movable conductive membrane as a microphone surface, with carbon grains between. The sound causes the grains to move, and the resistance changes. It sounds simple, but I can already foresee several problems in building the carbon microphone. The fine membrane will be tricky, but I can probably cheat in the beginning and use Midgård material I had with me. The carbon grains will certainly need to be a certain size to work well for a certain voltage etc, but it is possible to filter by grain size. The carbon will probably pack up and work worse, and I don't really know how big a problem it is, but I remember seeing them disassembled in museums with the bottom part having funny shapes, and I know that people used to tap the phone against the telephone box to loosen the carbon grains. Carbon will attract moisture and exhaled air is warm and humid, so I probably need to make everything waterproof, but at the same time keep the membrane movable.

People's fascination with the speakers makes it easy to slip away and do some secret wiring in my secret escape route down to the secret passage behind the library shelves to the basement. It just takes time doing some things, but I finish the electricity, LED lighting and alarm signals.

In the evening we celebrate the various successes we've had with radio, telephone and chandeliers etc, and that the radio have been installed. As Kari and I passed a rather difficult Norse test, the evening ends with me rewarding Kari for her work in learning how to operate radios, which means leather accessories for Kari and for her it's a wonderful end to a good day, and I also get a reward. I have to admit I've started to appreciate our sex games.