Very awkward, yes. But that"s the situation until the newly emerging society can get satellites back up, which will be a long time yet-in fact, at least as long as the year 1700, which is about the same time that the short-wave bands will reopen.
In short, no matter how you slice it, long-distance radio communications will be a very different thing in the 1632 universe than what we"ve experienced in our own timeline. And as tube production comes on line, and high power radios go into production around the world, bandwidth for long distance communications will be a precious and rare resource. The pressure to build cables across the ocean will be even higher in the 1632 universe than it is in ours.
The Physical Resources
In addition to the physical world around them, the radio situation in Grantville is shaped by the technological world they brought with them. What radio technology does Grantville posses? What just won"t work? Let"s examine each of the common up-time radio technologies and consider its place in Grantville after the Ring of Fire. When Eric began writing 1632 he did a very clever thing. He decided that with a few exceptions which he has carefully limited, Grantville is based on the real-world town of Mannington, West Virginia. In general, and with a few specific exceptions (the main one being the power plant), it"s safe to a.s.sume that if something was in Mannington in late 1999 or early 2000, it"s in Grantville; and if something was not in Mannington then, it is not in Grantville. That presumption drives the following discussion.
Stores
There is not a Radio Shack store in town, there is no electronics store, there is no radio dealer of any kind. Some CB radios will be available at a few stores. There is one TV repair shop.
Cell Phones
Sadly, while there was a cell phone antenna and cell in both Mannington and thus, in Grantville (an a.n.a.logue one-no CDMA or TDMA digital cells were operating in Mannington in late "99 or early "00), the cell was not linked to the local phone switch. It was operated by a different company. And while one of the short stories from the Ring of Fire anthology (coming out in January, 2004) explains that there is an excellent phone tech in town, he"s not a cell phone guy. It may be possible eventually to cross connect that cell to the phone system, but in the first two years, no one has had any success at it. The manuals for the cell weren"t in town, no one knows the computer pa.s.swords, and the cell was not set up for autonomous operation. The cell phones themselves are useless without the cell being attached to a billing and authorization computer system and to a phone switch. For all practical purposes, you may regard cell phones as a source for small high energy density rechargeable batteries and other electronics parts, but not as radios.
Commercial Radios
Pre-Ring of Fire handheld and base station commercial FM radios were used by the coal mine, by the electric company, the police, the school district, the city water department, etc., etc. The presumption of the 1632 authors is that these radios remain dedicated to their pre-RoF use. One radio from each incompatible frequency set was placed in the Grantville emergency Operations Center to provide crossnetwork links.
CB Radios
CB radios are featured in 1632 because they were owned by Mike Sterns and his friends, as well as many other residents of Grantville. CB radios are common in the U.S., particularly among rural populations prior to the wide spread of cell towers. They provided unlicensed, free, simple radio communications for a variety of purposes. It was automatic that the Stearns administration began to use the CBs to coordinate the new military actions that Grantville found itself engaged in. By the end of 1632, CB radios are primarily used by the military for tactical coordination.
CB radios operate at 21 MHz (11 meters) and are well above the MUF described above. Without relays, they are good for one to five miles on level open ground. The signals are blocked by hills or mountains. CB radios in airplanes, or situated on mountain tops can generally talk about 20 miles line of sight. Of course, we can relay over-and-over and go any distance.
Four types of Pre-RoF CB radios exist:
1) Children"s toy walkie talkies. These are useful for small-area crowd control type operations. They would have been gathered up where possible and pa.r.s.ed out as needed-except some kids refused to give them over and... it"s a free countrylet. There are probably twenty to a hundred total in the town.
2) "Base" stations designed to operate off the 110V mains. There are probably between twenty and forty in the Ring of Fire area.
3) "Walkie-talkies" that are "full power" 5-watt mobiles, generally with cigarette lighter power take-offs for use in cars when not using internal batteries. This is the most common style radio produced in the last six years. We estimate that there are one to two hundred of this and other high-powered mobiles (see type 4) in the RoF.
4) High-power mobiles, 5-watt mobile radios designed for use in cars. These and the high-powered walkie-talkies exist in two sub-types:
a. AM only. Older CB radios only supported AM modulation.
b. Single Side Band capable. SSB gives you basically double the range for the same power. Newer CB radios have a switch that allows them to run SSB.
SSB radios have a second advantage in addition to range. They can not be overheard with a crystal radio. AM radios can be eavesdropped on with 17th century built radios. SSB radios have built-in signals security. SSB signals are not understandable without a BFO (Beat Frequency Oscillator) capable receiver, and so SSB is secure except against stolen radios capable of tuning into the 27 MHz band. Having said that, stealing a CB is a possibility, but they also need to steal a battery charger, a generator, a set of batteries, etc., etc. The on-ship radios for the air force and the on-ship radios for the navy are the newer SSB models.
CB radio use outside the Ring of Fire area
Managing radio outside of Grantville for tactical use by the military is non-trivial. Batteries die, there are no power lines to plug chargers into. Cars with cigarette lighter outlets don"t exist. If you and your army buddies go outside the RoF and you want radios to chat among yourself for battle coordination, you have to figure out how to power them. This is tricky.
First, just forget solar power, we have no supply of solar cells in Grantville and can not make more. (The Lindsey publications book "Make your own working solar cell" aside, the copper oxide cells that are described produce so little power that a CB radio would require the entire roof of a house papered with them. High output solar cells are many decades in Grantville"s future.) Wind, water, steam, and cranks are how we must power electronics outside Grantville.
If someone manages to steal an up-time radio, even if they steal a set of batteries and a generator, they will still need to have a person with pretty good electronics knowledge to manage the care and maintenance of that radio and battery and generator. Destroying radios and batteries is just as likely as charging them if you are not very careful.
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 doc.u.mented 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).