Midwinter calling, day 3

Connection issues.

It's sad to see Iselin leave. 3 weeks without her. I missed her after 3 days. But I've given her enough silver and gold that she should have that covered, the MP3 player and powerbank for entertainment, and some paper airplanes she can try to throw out from suitable cliffs or mountains. Two disappeared somewhere in the strait between the islands when we threw them from the mountain this morning.

I just stand there and watch as the ship lifts anchor and sails away, with her, Hillevi and Ida. Stand there a wave goodbye. Three weeks. Argh. Hopefully she will come back with her parents. Iselin is smart and I trust her - probably more than I should - but not knowing or getting an update will be difficult. I want long distance radio.

I try to avoid thinking about Iselin by spending time doing monthly maintenance on the steam boiler, checking everything is okay and working properly, that the safety valve trips and falls back, and so on and so forth. Hrappr cleans out the fire under the boiler properly, and we just check that everything seems to be okay. Hrappr pulls a bundle of branches down through the chimney with a rope to clean out some soot and give us an estimation of buildup. It doesn't really take long and I assume it's wasn't really needed yet, but it feels good to have done it, and Hrappr can show a couple of the workers how to do it so they can do it on other houses, which is not that easy as they have to avoid sooting down the inside. I will try to upgrade all chimneys with spark nets to prevent fire, which is a bigger risk on houses with wooden roofs. On some chimneys maybe even install one of those cones that turn with the wind, to test if it helps to get a better up draft. The workers should install work platforms on the first houses, and on the roof of the pavilion to reach the chimneys there. After Hrappr has finished sweeping, he will oversee transportation of horses and the carriage to Lysesund before tomorrow's departure to Laxlanda.

I take the opportunity to climb out on the wings roof and replace the wind turbine with the new and improved one after the chimney sweeping is done. To Alith and Gunhild's worries and Caecilia's joy, because I'm cold and sweaty afterwards and she insist on accompanies me in the bathtub so I get really clean and warm. Both Kari and Ciara know that my evenings and nights will be theirs for the next three weeks, so they let her have her turn.

The sand filters for water seem to work quite well, so we won't touch them this time. We simply have to check when there seems to be a problem and then blow back and rinse out the sand at shorter intervals than that. Sand filters also seem to have a small run-in period of a day or so, which feels weird. Then I have no idea how good this sand is as a filter. The sand in these filters is literally taken from a sandy beach where Hrappr filled a couple of barrels, then rinsed in fresh water by putting in the creek, before filtering, sun dried and then used.

I inspect how the door lock installation goes, and houses like Unn's can now really be locked from the outside, and just like the other houses, she got two keys, while we keep an extra key in the mansion. This is both so that I can copy the key if they are carelessly lost, and so that people don't think that there are master keys. Although master keys seems to be an unfamiliar concept, as each lock and its keys are individually made. Hell, a simple but probably quite effective lock against most would be a screw with a special head. Most have never heard of that concept either as they nail stuff together, and even Iselin have had problems identifying what is a screw and isn't. And then they need special tools. A big countersunk insex screw would be quite effective.

When Unn got the lock installed and I gave her the keys, I saw that it was a big moment for her and quickly realised why. The last thing that happens in a marriage ceremony here, is that as part of the morning gift from the husband to his new wife, he gives her the keys to his home, and when she hangs them in the belt, she becomes his wife, the lady of the estate and the one who rules that home. We are not married - or even had sex even though Unn probably would be positive about it - but I had just given her the keys to a house that is mine, but will probably be Unn's home for the rest of her life and that is huge. Many men would do such a thing to a mistress or kept woman to make her 'official', but I don't have to worry about it being interpreted like that because there are several others I will also do it to, which will include men. I also believe that Unn has too much respect for me to even suggest sex between us. Partly because my sejd is powerful in a way no sejd woman can understand. Partly because I also have power, wealth and high status. But also because I let her work and live here in such a luxurious home, and she have gained respect just for that, and will probably get a lot more respect in the future as the Academys Fjölkunnig.

I finish the job with thermometers and only have left to create their scales so each shows the same temperature. I'm unmotivated but finish it before I sketch on a radio. I check which components there are on my Wouxun radio according to the service manual, which radio schematics I have stored away and how I needed to pick parts or modify the schematics. I would have managed without it, but it would have taken far longer to measure the pinout on each semiconductor, and then have to test its characteristics, which I still need to do to some extent as I don't have data sheets on most of it. The components of the ring flash have the same problems. I draw parts from the radio's schematics on paper and slate since it's more efficient than using with a tablet and zooming in and moving about, and reverse engineer some of the connections for the ring flash transistors because it gives a basis for what it is, and I write down the lists of the components and their numbers on the circuit board. It will be enough work already to choose what I use for what, and adapt to the component i have, so I take every advantage I can get.

It's really almost ridiculous how many wonderful small semiconductors there are in the radio, and I especially like it's a modern radio with a lot of mosfets that are better for receivers than most transistors, because a mosfet is a high impedance input that is controlled by a voltage, while a transistor is a current amplifier that generally has a couple of hundred times amplification. Unfortunately, a lot of the radio's transistors have built-in bias, which is bad as it limits their use. But there are around 50 transistors of different types and 35 diodes, plus LEDs, and some nice Op-Amp ICs. It is intended for 5V systems so I can try to use components from, for example, Tom's powerbanks to be the 5V supply, or use the radios existing voltage regulators converting from it's 7.4V lipo battery. I can also use 5V USB sockets and power a radio directly. But the radio's schematic has so many beautiful semiconductors.

Speaker, microphone and volume control will be 'interesting'. I only have one true potentiometer from the radio's volume control, so I have to make a multi-position switch and then solder some resistors as fixed steps instead. Speakers can be made, but I have three, because I will take apart Toms' Bluetooth headphones for parts, and make a pair of headsets from those speakers even if they become mono. It also gives me extra battery, switches, LEDs, components etc, but I still aim for headphones as the volume won't be loud and headphones isolates from ambient noise. I could use my ear protector design.

It would be fun to make a couple of radios that not only have morse but also audio transmission for shorter distances or when the atmospherics are good, and even though there is only one microphone in the Wouxun radio, there are technically many microphones; in the MP3 player, cell phones, my tablet, cameras etc, but I don't want to disassemble them just for that. I'm thinking of disassembling my mobius camera or just joink it from my DSLR camera. I don't see much use for recording movies when I have a very limited ability to watch them, although recording movies will be useful for some tests and such. My mobius has already been extensively modded and upgraded a couple of times, but just I might as well save that too because it is a small compact recorder that last several hours. Might be a good idea to start carrying it with me, just to record stuff for later viewing, or when meeting people.

There should be a microphone or two somewhere in Tom's headset as well, considering the holes on the outside and the noise cancelling function. It is probably possible to make a good enough simple dynamic microphone, carbon grain microphone or metal strip microphone, but everyone of those will probably need a preamplifier and even if I have quite a lot of semiconductors, I should save semiconductors for more projects. More than two radios are very convenient. But it will be a 'nightmare' and oh so intricate to try to take everything apart and I have to be so carefully to see what can be used. I cannot let the magic smoke out, or nuke it.

I decide to mix the electronics build styles of 'manhattan' with 'freeform deadbug', and split both the transmitter and receiver into smaller sections and then join them together. I can reuse parts of the circuit board from the ring flash and radio if the PCB doesn't have too many layers that becomes a problem. The build style makes it easier to try to solve one part at a time, but testing and calibration will be a bitch to do. I don't have the software or data sheets needed to be able to reprogram the radios IF stage, but even if I wanted to, I couldn't use its IF part as is due to its high frequency of 29.25MHz, and I need to have several radios. One isn't enough.

In the end I plan for the radio to be in the 2-8MHz range because I want distance, and I don't care if the antenna gets long because the radio don't need to fit in a pocket. Reliable with good distance are the most important aspects. I have space here on the mansion and courtyard, and the ship has two large masts and ropes, but the ship is not huge so I should avoid going lower than at least 5MHz or so, as a dipole element will be about 15m, and that is about the maximum limit for the ship if I want a full length inverted V dipole via the main mast, otherwise I will probably have to extend the mast and use a bow rod or something. Of course, it is possible to use a shorter length and adjust with a coil, but shortened antennas usually lose efficiency.

Damn. Okay, the sails when tacking are a future problem.

A big problem is that the atmospheric and ionosphere bounce condition for low frequencies gradually change during the day, and differ from day and night. The high latitude up here does not help due to the large difference between summer and winter, and how low the maximum usable frequency (MUF) is on the day for Near Vertical Incidence Skywave, so-called NVIS. Maybe I should try to make the radio multiband with two frequency ranges? That will be more problems, which are manageable, but the antenna tuning will be bad if I don't stick to double the frequency, and that's not optimal either. I'm hardly limited by any radio regulations here, so practically a good frequency plan should be something like 5MHz during the day and half that at 2.5MHz at night, and an antenna can work on both frequencies with a little tuning when changing frequencies. I have no real idea how the radiation pattern will be affected. I'm not that good at radio signals and antennas.

It may also be a good idea to stay in the frequency range of a Midgård radio amateur, because if someone else here were to broadcast or listen, it would probably be a radio amateur from Midgård or a technological descendant from one, and most likely they would then try to use or listen to 'their' frequencies. It would be interesting if I got a radio contact with another human here, especially if they have a slightly more advanced civilization around them. Both to know they exist, and to be able to cooperate, or discover if they are a threat. I'm a bit relieved that I will never have to show a really good radio amateur my builds, because many would have given me a big applause because I built a radio, while a few would point out all the mistakes and ways I could have done it better. It is human nature, and it doesn't matter in which area it is.

Had I known better, I probably would have done it better myself, but I'm not a radio guru like H P Friedrichs, although I can find some of his experiments. Hell, it was his experiment with copper oxide diodes that made me download and read the original patents, and just the knowledge that copper oxide semiconductors exist and were used would be enough to know instead of starting from scratch, but those PDFs was saved in the 'miscellaneous' folder on the tablet. That man would have built radios completely from scratch without cheating with modern components even though he probably used them if they existed. I also can not build my own electronic vacuum tubes like Claude Paillard, but I will try in the future since it would be so damn important to show it work even if they're bad, but it will require so many machines, metals and steps until I get there and can even start trying. In the end I'm not a specialist in anything, just a good amateur above average in a lot.

I should build that spark gap transmitter and crystal receiver just because it's simple, and to prove I did it and radio can be done with 100% Alfheimr parts. I will also build a speaker with amplification, and use the radio's speakers and its amplifier part to begin with, so I can play music from my MP3 etc, and can use it instead of headphones for later radio experimentation. The speaker can be powered by a USB powerbank for a long time and will be portable. To increase the sound, the speaker will have a large horn of the folded model with a large wide opening, but I have to ask a carpenter to make that.