As I am currently in a war zone, I don't have many options for cabling • Hacker News Board

Re: As I am currently in a war zone, I don't have many options for cabling

#251

Post by bradknowles » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #159

sa46 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 2014 or so, we (light infantry) had field telephones on the books, but we only used them once for a field exercise to practice assuming all modern tech was down.

WW2 stories of diversions to enemy communications: put small needles through the cable. At first you'd think you just have to cut the cable, but that actually makes it very easy to find and fix the problem. Small needles that short the wires are very difficult to locate. Unless you have a fast device that measures return latency on the shorted circuit, but that wasn't available in the 1940s.

It's called a Time Domain Reflectometer. They're pretty cheap. For RG-58 style coax, you can get hand-held VeEX CX41 units for a few hundred dollars. I'm sure that TDRs for other types of cables shouldn't be too much more expensive.

Re: As I am currently in a war zone, I don't have many options for cabling

#252

Post by nucleardog » Tue, May 02, 2023, 2:31 AM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #203

nucleardog wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> things that wouldn't fly in million years in my current home in Canada, were perfectly viable solutions in warzone. You’d be surprised! I’m near Ottawa and in the past year I’ve been without power for 8 days, 5 days, and a handful of other times. I’m on well water and our septic system requires a pump. When the power is out we have no water, sewer or heat. The cell tower nearby only has about 1-2 hours of reserve p…

It doesn't solve the "if no power, no internet" issue completely, but have you looked at getting Starlink? Seems perfect for your situation, assuming you have a generator or batteries. You can get the roaming version and not activate it if you already have good internet and then only activate it during a month in which you lose power.

Yep, that's pretty much how we manage.

In normal use we rely on Starlink for bulk data and a slower fixed LTE connection for low latency/jitter. Once the power's been out a couple of hours... we fall back on the Starlink. If we need to call anyone, we use wifi calling through my cell provider over the Starlink. I have a backup set of Starlink hardware already linked to my account.

I've got a cheap (~$1k) 10kW generator. Pretty much a necessity since we need power for our water/sewer to work.

Generator can run on gas or propane. We've got a couple big propane tanks to provide fuel for heating/hot water/cooking/etc. So we've got that as an option, or generally about 150L of gas on hand. Keeping the generator running all day so I can work and on-and-off through the evening, 150L lasts us about a week.

We had no power for eight days and a lot of people were having to run down to the fire station for drinkable water. The town hall opened up so people could come recharge their phones and get a hot cup of coffee. A lot of people missed out on hot meals and showers.

I didn't miss a day of (remote) work. We had hot showers, coffee in the morning, hot meals, and generally besides the dull drone of the generator outside during the day and the absolute eerie silence at night when I turned the generator off... nothing was really all that different.

Re: As I am currently in a war zone, I don't have many options for cabling

#253

Post by pugworthy » Mon, May 08, 2023, 5:00 PM UTC

A really interesting resource for challenging times is the Simplifier site. It's somewhat Primitive Technology but gets into such things as how to make a crude solar panel and more.

I list it specifically because it does cover creating insulated wire.

https://simplifier.neocities.org/