For those taking radios away from Grantville and from Gustavus Adolphus’ Europe, away from steam engines and windmills, the radio heads looked to Australia’s native genius Alfred Traeger for a hint.
We’ll be taking a page from Traeger’s book. Here’s how you power a radio outside the RoF. and here’s one of them in use:
Closeup of Traeger Generator:
Photo of the woman pedaling the Traeger radio:
Battery management is difficult. A car battery lasts about three thousand charge cycles. Even with careful use, the best will die within the next six years. Once we’ve used up the supply of car batteries, we will be down to wet cells of some sort. Danielle cells, or hand-built lead-acid cells with much lower efficiency than what we brought along with us can be made. Danielle cells (wet cells) were used to power the first radios and telegraphs and telephones. They are well documented and simple to make, once Grantville begins importing and refining zinc.
Hand-held radios will slowly become man-portable and then fixed base operation as the supply of rechargeable batteries declines and Grantville lacks the tech base to make new compact batteries for them. Over the course of the first few years down-time, the battery to run a walkie talkie turns from a few C cells into a couple of three-gallon buckets of blue goo and sulphuric acid.
FRS Handheld Radios
There will also be a small number of FRS (Family Radio Service) 49 Mhz handhelds which are FM. Gayle used one pair in 1633 to chat with Oliver Cromwell in his dungeon. Range is very limited (less than one mile). Plus, see the battery problem above. Less than 20 FRS radios exist in the RoF, since in 1999 they were not yet popular.
Ham Radios
You can’t talk about Ham Radios without talking about Hams. The 1632 authors are blessed with a good selection of people in Grantville who know about radios, who build, operate, and collect radios as a hobby, and who have the material needed to set up a functioning communications system for the new United States (which, by the end of 1633, is now the United States of Europe).
In late 1999, there were eighteen amateur radio operators in Mannington, and thus in Grantville. There are three Extra class (the highest), two Advanced class Hams, five General class and one Tech-plus. All those have shown Morse code proficiency. There are five Technician class Hams who have shown general class knowledge of radio operation and design. There are two Novices. One of the Extra class Hams is female.
The FCC database does not give information on original date of issue of licenses, but a number of those licensed have licenses dating back ten years, which is the expiration period. Two of the three “extras” must have studied and tested together, because their call signs are sequential.
These individuals—not them, of course, but the characters who reflect their skills in the 1632 universe—have a large variety of radios available. Several of those have been sent out with the various diplomatic missions along with antennas and antenna parts to London, to Amsterdam, and (in the upcoming novel 1634: The Galileo Affair) to Venice. As follows:
Julie and Alex Mackay have a portable Radio Shack DX-398 and a supply of six-volt lantern batteries to power it.
Gayle Mason has three FRS handhelds described above, a Radio Shack DX-394 receiver,
and a hand-built CW transmitter and amplifier powered by a set of Traeger pedals. She has an isotron 80b antenna which she hangs out the window of the tower to use.
Rebecca Sterns and her mission were supplied with the best radios of any team in 1633, which makes sense, as she is Mike Stearn’s wife. (And, leaving aside nepotism, her Holland mission is likely to bear the brunt of the relaying work for all the diplomatic missions.)
Becky has a Kenwood TS520 transceiver. It is simple to operate, plug and play, 12 V ready, 160M to 10M all band transmitter, SSB, CW, AM capable of operating at either 20Watts or 100Watts. It will “punch through” to Grantville with no problem. In the same box integrated is an excellent receiver, better than the one sent with Gayle for our purposes. Original cost was around $600. Good stuff, two revisions back from the current state of the art. It’s bulletproof. It pulls 20 amps at 12V for power, exactly on target for our power budget. It was chosen from the radios available in Grantville because its tube finals will tolerate poorly matched antennas better than an all-solid-state radio would. The Holland team also has an isotron 80b antenna and wire to make a big “beam” antenna if they get a place and the time.