Comments on: 1636 The Kremlin Games – Snippet 36

By: vikingted

vikingted — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:34:23 +0000

@20 Rob, good comments. I just do not see the Russians having a transmitters, receivers yes, transmitters no. Have you ever been to one of the hands on science museums where you pedal a bicycle to get a 60 watt incandescent bulb to light? That takes a lot of effort. Bicycles are not in Russia in the NTL from what I have read. To think a transmitter say a hundred watts or so output power would take one hell of a lot of manpower/horsepower to generate 500 to 800 watts to get the 100 watt RF output.

-VT

By: ET1swaw

ET1swaw — Sun, 13 May 2012 15:53:15 +0000

@18 Mark L and @19 vikingted: As I see it they will concentrate their radio attention of LOS military transceivers and ignore broadcast radio.
Crystal receivers are easy to build with downtime available (at least in the USE) parts; and so might propagate wildly as did PCs in Soviet Russia IF there was an infrastructure or broadcast network to support them in Russia. THERE ISN’T!!! (And I sincerely doubt there will be, as the Russian mindset is centered on control/xenopobia/paranoia IMO!)
Besides which you still have the Maunder Minimum screwing with longer-range Radio comms and unlike in the USE there is a whole lot of unoccupied space in NTL Russia (For example even added together Swedish Karelia and Swedish Ingria (Territories taken from Russia by G2A) have a total population less than NTL Magdeburg and little more than OTL Hamburg ATT).

/Rob

By: vikingted

vikingted — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:22:25 +0000

@18 Mark, I see the receivers being easy enough to propagate, but the transmitters are a whole different story. I do remember reading about the intensive efforts that are going on in Grantville on how to build a new vacuum tube. The power of transmitter is really critical in the transmission of the signal. I worked at a “5000 watt” station in my “yute”. The station engineer indicated that their transmitter was not that efficient (~15%). Not wanting to get to technical here but the easiest method to create an amplifier is also the least efficient. I just do not see the transmitters being made on the fly in Russia. Sure the brain cases can made a spark gap transmitter of a few watts perhaps, but that would not have but a few hundred mile range in the most perfect conditions with fairly sensitive receivers (1960 technology OTL).

By: Mark L

Mark L — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:39:12 +0000

@10 “I really do not see a few radios, and I mean just a few, will have much impact on the greater Russia at this time.”

That’s okay. The Communists didn’t understand how a few personal computers could have that much of an impact on Soviet Russia in 1991.

And, radios have a habit of multiplying.

By: ET1swaw

ET1swaw — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:12:11 +0000

@16 TimC: Named after the family or one of the descendents of the person in our snippets.

/Rob

By: TimC

TimC — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:00:24 +0000

Is Sheremetov to origin of the name of the awful Moscow airport I slept in in the seventies? (waiting for a flight from the equally awful aeroflot). Sheremetovo or some such.

By: ET1swaw

ET1swaw — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:14:31 +0000

@14 VernonNemitz: Both Cherakasky (Cherkasskii) and Sheremetev were historical figures (though their NTL versions may differ from some perceptions of OTL, 163x-verse commitment to historical accuracy to pre-ROF events mandate a very similar person as was done with G2A, Oxenstierna, Richelieu, and others).

Cherkasskii: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Cherkasskii

Sheremetev: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Sheremetev
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedor_Sheremetev

/Rob

By: VernonNemitz

VernonNemitz — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:52:02 +0000

@11, Sheremetev may not be the worst bad guy. I recall one of the earlier snippets having Bernie meeting the czar, and a warning not to cross someone, but couldn’t recall the name. It’s in Snippet 10.

Boris says “…Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev, the czar’s cousin; he is in charge of the bureau of records. It is an especially powerful post, because he can cause so much trouble for the other bureaus.”

A couple paragraphs later, “Dmitri Mamstriukovich Cherakasky.” Boris nodded toward another man. “Not a man to cross, that one.”

By: VernonNemitz

VernonNemitz — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:35:00 +0000

@12, I might be able to guess the rationale for not “Ivanovich”. Bernie could have told some Russian his father’s name, pronouncing it as John. The Russian would not necessarily know that that could translate to Russian as Ivan, and, besides, why do you want to pronounce someone’s name differently from the way you were told it was pronounced? “Janovich” could simply be an *accent* mispronunciation, especially after one Russian begins telling another.

By: Willem Meijer

Willem Meijer — Thu, 10 May 2012 07:33:22 +0000

@1, 2 and 9
If his father is called John then he should be Bernie Ivanovich, shouldn’t he?