Not for squeamish readers

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. Bantam Spectra, 1992. 608 pages.

The title is a warning: This book is going to be about doom. To avoid spoilers, all the reader should know before starting the book is that it’s about time travel to the 14th Century, and that the plot has to do with the plague. If the Covid-19 lockdown has got you down, this book won’t be good for your mental health. Despite its flaws, Doomsday Book has earned its place in the apocalyptic section of everyone’s bookshelves.

I considered flinging this book several times, even after I was a few hundred pages into its considerable length. Connie Willis, who is one of a small group of our most competent living science fiction writers, ought to know better than to let a novel drag along so slowly for 400 pages, the first two-thirds of the book. This novel won both the Nebula and Hugo awards in 1992, and Connie Willis was named a grandmaster of Science Fiction Writers of America in 2011. She (and her editor) should have realized that such weak or non-existent subplots are not enough to keep the reader engaged for a long, slow 404 pages until the plot is finally off and running. One Amazon reviewer writes, “I finally couldn’t take it anymore and simply gave up.” I stuck with it, because many of the characters are appealing, and because I fell under the spell of her Oxford and medieval atmosphere.

It would be easier to review this book by dividing it into two parts.

The first two-thirds: Almost all the scenes are too long. Almost all the conversations include some pitter-patter. Rather than strong subplots presenting obstacles to the characters’ striving, the obstacles (of which there are a great many) are rarely more than frustrating and meaningless little aggravations — somebody can’t remember something, or someone is on vacation and can’t be found, or a petty official forbids something, or the weather gets in the way. Sometimes the pettiness has the feel of slapstick. But Willis does have a pretty good sense of humor, and that helps. This meandering is not a total loss, though. By the time we’re 400 pages in, a lot of good character development has gotten done, and the scene-setting is excellent even when it is suffocating. A romp around medieval England would have been fun and easier to write, but Willis rightly chooses to keep the characters in one place, locked down, in the dark about their circumstances, miserable, often crossways with each other. After all, the plague is not something that one goes questing for. The plague comes and finds you, even if you try to hide.

I give Willis high marks for her theology, a subject that is bound to come up in a story in which there are last rites, lots of Latin, graveyards, and so many church bells. I also would give Willis high marks as a psychologist, as she makes the point that certain types of people will be with us in any century — the noble few, the hordes of the ordinary, and those who specialize in being insufferable.

The last third: With the key to the plot revealed at last (not that it was hard to figure out), the story is off and running. The slow investment in characterization and setting pays its dividends. The level of danger escalates rapidly. The misery of the characters starts to seem sadistic, but as Kivrin, the main character, reminds herself, “It’s a disease. No one is to blame” — except maybe God, an idea that Willis invites us to see through modern eyes as well as medieval eyes, and through the eyes of the noble as well as the insufferable. In spite of the slow start, Willis ends up weaving a spell so intense that my reality started to blur a bit. Partly it was the weather, in which my local atmosphere was like the atmosphere in the story — cold rain and ice, dark skies, a cat by the fire, masks, and not going anywhere if one can help it. And though the pandemic in the here-and-now has been nothing like the plague of the 14th Century, one never really knows how bad things might get before a pandemic finally starts to recede.

Would this novel be as compelling if read in the merry month of May? I don’t know. I’d say it’s a winter novel, if you can handle it.

Let’s hear it for the wobble


Illustration from An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics

Surely one of the coolest things about this planet is that it wobbles on an annual cycle. That causes the intensity of the sun to be about half as great in midwinter as it is in midsummer. The result is that life at most latitudes had to evolve to deal with the variation. Trees shed their leaves and fall asleep. Other plants produce seeds and then die. Animals evolved fur and feathers and warm blood. As the atmosphere and oceans strain to make up for the uneven heating of the planet (as required by the second law of thermodynamics), we get our wind and weather — more wind and weather than we want, often enough.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I like a bit a winter. That’s easy to say, though, for those who have warm clothes and heated houses. One only has to look out the window to see that most creatures have only their fur and feathers for winter comfort. But even as the polar vortex struggles to obey the laws of thermodynamics and spills arctic air where it doesn’t belong, I think that even the creatures outside the windows understand right now that winter won’t last much longer. The birds are grateful for the seeds I put out for them, but they’re clearly not starving. The squirrels look well-nourished. Even Mrs. Possum, though she licks clean the bowl that I leave for her most evenings at the edge of the woods, wasn’t hungry enough to eat the pimentos that had started to mold in the refrigerator.

And so the minor ice storm here this weekend was more entertaining than inconvenient, especially since I lost power for only about four seconds. In the eleven years I’ve lived here in the woods, I’ve started thinking of Valentine’s Day (I’m at latitude 36.423961) as the last day of true winter. The 10-day forecast looks good (though wet), and, as the wobbling back toward the sun accelerates, tomorrow will be 2 minutes and 8 seconds longer than today.


For several days now, the prevailing winds have brought rain followed by freezing rain followed by more rain.


A science project this winter was buying greenhouse basil at the grocery store, potting it, and feeding it with light for two or three weeks before turning it into pesto. The basil grows many more leaves, and the green grows deeper. The LED grow lights cost only $29 from Amazon (though I see the price has now gone up a little).


The garlic in the herb trough was planted in early December.


The birds aren’t visible in the photo, but Lily is watching the birds eat the seed that I spread at the edges of the driveway.


Homemade lemon shortbread with lemon icing


I didn’t go out in the ice storm, but a neighbor sent me this photo. There is no shortage of tractors and chain saws in these parts. Ice storms are to old pine trees as pneumonia is to the elderly. It’s often an ice storm that ends an old pine tree’s life.

Our own fresh taste of the 14th Century


The Covid-19 virus. Source: Wikipedia

By historical standards, this plague has been a mild one. So far, worldwide, about 2.3 million people have died from Covid-19. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death, which peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351. The Black Death killed between 75 million and 200 million people.

Covid-19 is not the first plague that seniors like me have lived through. Even today, the World Health Organization estimates that there are 10 to 20 million survivors of polio worldwide. AIDS has killed up 40 million people worldwide, and the peak year for deaths from AIDS — 2004 — is only 16 years behind us. Hundreds of thousands of people still die each year from AIDS.

There is much here to reflect on, including our vulnerability to the dark and primitive side of nature, no matter how modern we think we are or how dazzled (and coddled) we are by our technologies. Nor can we forget that the dark and primitive side of human nature is still with us. When I was a poll watcher during last year’s election, a woman who refused to wear a mask said, loudly, because she wanted as many people as possible to hear, “God’s got me covered.” And just this morning a former friend posted a link on Facebook about how Covid-19 was caused by a global “criminal elite,” including Bill Gates, George Soros, and the Rockefeller family.

Though I think there is such a thing as the arc of justice and slow moral progress, we have plenty of grounds to wonder just how much fairer today’s world is from the world of the 14th Century. Covid-19 reminded us that viruses are just as fatal to the high and mighty as to the poor. But the poor are more exposed, and they’re usually the last to get help.

I feel slightly ashamed to report that, three days ago, I got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19, because my state (North Carolina) is now vaccinating people over 65 as the available vaccine is allocated to risk groups. Meanwhile, teachers can’t yet get the vaccine, nor can younger people with pre-existing conditions. In the U.S., only 28.9 million people have had at least one dose of the vaccine so far. At that rate, according to the New York Times, we won’t reach 90 percent of the U.S. population until Dec. 15.

It’s surprising that I’m just now getting around to reading Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, in which a 21st Century historian time-travels to 14th Century Oxford to do historical research and accidentally arrives during the middle of the Black Death pandemic. Now seemed like a good time to read this book, the better to appreciate not only how some things never change, but also how much better off we are — or could be if we really tried.


Source: Wikipedia

Having mentioned the 14th Century, I should also mention Barbara Tuchman’s classic (if somewhat controversial) book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, published in 1978, which I have read twice.

Horowitz in Russia

In 1986, near the end of the Cold War, Vladimir Horowitz, then 82 years old, agreed to return to the Soviet Union for concerts in Moscow and Leningrad. The performance was recorded on video. PBS’ Great Performances draws on this historic video for the documentary “The Magic of Horowitz,” which was broadcast on Jan. 22. The program also is available for streaming, here.

Concert videos are one of my favorite genres — often more entertaining than movies. But this one is extra special, because it’s an important little piece of Cold War history as well as a glimpse of Russian culture, as the camera frequently moves around the hall to catch the responses of the audience. They adored Horowitz. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev arranged the concert, as the U.S. and Russia moved toward détente.

The camera often watches Horowitz’ hands on the keyboard. Musicians will want to take note of Horowitz’ unusual hand positions — wrists low, fingers often almost flat. This is not how pianists are taught to use their hands. At times, Horowitz’ hand positions look almost amateurish and awkward. One wonders how he did it.

The documentary is narrated by Peter Gelb, who was Horowitz’ manager. Gelb has interesting stories about Horowitz’ personal peculiarities, such as what he ate, as well as Horowitz’ recovery from a dark period in which he never played in public.

Eat more barley ( … and sugar cake)


Barley risotto

I sometimes hear the voice of Michael Pollan in my head: “Eat more leaves.” To that I might add: Eat more barley.

Wheat, of course, will always be regarded as the monarch of grains, because we can make beautiful breads out of it. But for second place, I would nominate barley — humble, healthy, sustainable, and versatile (after all, you can make ale and whisky out of it.)

Pearled barley is much easier to find, but pearled barley is not really a whole grain. Hulled barley is the real article. If you cook hulled barley thoroughly, it’s just as good as pearled barley, and healthier. I was thinking, as I had this barley risotto, that, even though I like the chewy texture of barley, if barley risotto spent a few seconds in a food processor, you’d almost think it was a hearty form of mashed potatoes. It’s a comfort food, for sure.

Before Covid-19, it was easy to find hulled barley, in bulk, at Whole Foods. At least in the Whole Foods store that I shop, the bulk foods section has been greatly diminished for safety reasons. My last batch of hulled barley was ordered from Amazon. It’s organic, and it was grown in western North Carolina.

This afternoon my nearest neighbor appeared on his ATV bringing a box of Moravian sugar cake from Dewey’s bakery in Winston-Salem, to thank me, he said, for being such a good neighbor. To those who live in or near Winston-Salem, Moravian sugar cake is a holiday treat. It’s made here year round, though. Winkler Bakery in Old Salem, which still bakes in colonial-style wood-fired ovens, makes the best version. (Winkler Bakery is currently closed because of Covid-19.) The recipe and concept, no doubt, were brought here 250 years ago by German settlers. Dewey’s makes a close approximation of the colonial article. Those in this area will know about Old Salem. To those who live elsewhere, Old Salem is a restored colonial town much like Williamsburg in Virginia. (I was shocked to see all the corporate logos on Old Salem’s home page. Times must be hard for them.)

And I thought it was spring fever


Pale greenhouse basil bought from Trader Joe’s gets a boost from some rays before it goes into pesto.

Where did all this energy come from? Why am I spending more time outdoors instead of in front of the computer doom-scrolling? At first I thought it was an ordinary case of spring fever, because January has been mild. But then I realized that it’s relief, and that I feel safe again now that the country has clawed its way back from the brink of fascism.

The news is three parts boring, three parts worrisome, and four parts encouraging — a welcome change from ten parts terrifying.

This time a year ago, the abbey grounds were a mess, with locust, copel, and briar creeping in from the woods and springing up everywhere the mower couldn’t reach. Ken did a lot of clearing last March, so it was only a day’s work for me to whip the yard back into shape with a bow saw and a pair of loppers. The daffodil shoots are two inches high. The garlic is up about three inches. The birds seem very happy, because it has been an easy winter for them so far. Mrs. Squirrel has been climbing on the house, trying to get back into the attic, no doubt because she’s ready to build a nest for her spring babies. I talk her back into the woods with a slingshot (no squirrels are harmed). I saw Mrs. Possum on a recent evening, and she was plump — probably pregnant. Out in the front ditch by the road, I pulled a blackberry stalk out by its roots, and a well-nourished earthworm came up with it. I still have some pruning to do — apples and grapes. The countdown to daffodils is about thirty days.

I can’t wait to start scratching in the dirt. The garden had a good clearing and tilling back in the fall, so it’s looking good for spring — dark, friable, and winter-fallow. I’ve bought all the seeds I need. To get an earlier start, I’m going to experiment with a kind of cold frame bought from Amazon. It’s just metal hoops with a clear cover, enough for one short row of early greens and lettuce.

For the first few years here, the challenge was building up the soil and establishing a landscape. Now the problem is managing the fertility and fecundity — holding back the woods and managing the overgrowth. In one wet summer, the place could turn into a jungle.

Keeping up the yard, garden, and orchard would be impossible without machines. The tiller, which had not worked quite right for two or three years, runs as good as new now that it has a new carburetor, which a neighbor helped me install (or, more accurately, I handed him tools and he installed it). The Snapper mower is now eleven years old and breaks down too often. It will now become a backup mower, replaced by a new zero-turn Ariens mower that I had to order from the factory and that arrived in December. Zero-turn mowers are the new must-have item for homeowners. I’m hoping that a zero-turn mower will save me some mowing time and give me much better options for mowing around trees and obstacles. The chain saw normally gets some exercise only when Ken is here. But I lent it to a neighbor to cut up the beech tree down by the bridge that fell during a storm last March, knowing that the neighbor would return it all shiny and sharpened and with stabilized fuel. (I learned the hard way that one winter is all it takes for gasoline to go bad and gum up carburetors in small engines.) I helped split and load the firewood for the neighbor. These days, though, splitting wood means operating a hydraulic splitting machine.

But we can’t yet totally avert our eyes from the pig circus that was Trump. Over at Lawfare, my old friend Jonathan Rauch, a recidivist centrist if there ever was one, argues that President Biden should pardon Trump. Jonathan’s arguments are reasonable, as long as you can stomach the idea of overlooking a minor matter like an attempt at a fascist coup and treason that served the interests of Putin’s Russia, treason the details of which we still don’t know. I cannot stomach those things. Trump must be neutralized by vigorous application of law and justice. All his crimes must be exposed, as well as whatever it was that Putin was holding over his head. Trump’s children — baby sociopaths, as the New Republic called them — must also be neutralized. They’re a crime family, after all. It was inevitable that, once we wrestled the reins out of the hands of right-wingers and fascists, that radical centrists would want to steer the ship of state again, as they did during the Clinton and Obama administrations. That’s the challenge for progressives now — not letting anyone forget that we progressives earned this, that even Georgia has turned a corner, and that our time has come. For Republicans, “unity” means acting as though they didn’t lose, and continuing to make the rich richer while fattening the livers of authoritarian white people by force-feeding them with propaganda. We have been waiting a long, long time for progress. Centrists and right-wingers have had their way for more than 50 years. This is our last chance to do something about inequality and environmental catastrophe.

I’m ready for some progress. And I’m ready for spring.

Meanwhile, to better prepare you for spring fever, here’s a beautifully produced video on Swedish winters.

Mincemeat pie

Mincemeat pie is not part of my heritage (Southern American), so I disclaim all expertise and experience having to do with it. Not only did I never have mincemeat pie as a child, I don’t remember ever hearing about it. As an adult, I was not curious about making it, just because the name is so ugly — mincemeat. Both halves of the word are equally unappetizing.

But when you’ve got good organic apples, it seems like a shame and a waste to peel them for pie. And yet, if you leave the peelings on, then you spoil the texture of the pie with little strips of leathery apple skin. To make apple pie and preserve the skin, I reasoned, it would be necessary to chop — or mince — the apples. That sent me to Google looking at recipes for mincemeat pie. Most recipes for mincemeat pie don’t have any meat in them. Minced apples — skins intact — are the main event, plus other fruits such as raisins, currants, and even cherries. Some call for suet; some call for butter. Rum seems de rigeur. Almost all the recipes required making the filling, then leaving the filling in the refrigerator for at least three days, but up to six months. That made me wonder whether, especially in the days before refrigeration, the filling for mincemeat pie was allowed to ferment. Does anyone know?

In any case, it was a very good pie. But I would have to say that my first mincemeat pie would never beat my apple pies in a baking contest.

Note 1: In Erma Rombauer’s 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking, she seems to take the “meat” part seriously in one of the recipes, which calls for ground beef. Gross. Hold the meat. I’ll just have the mince.

Note 2: I thought that, as long as rum was on my mind, I might as well flambé the pie, since it has been a long time since I had set any food on fire. But I couldn’t get the rum to light in the evening breeze out of the deck, so I just had the rum.

One-pot cooking

I don’t often do one-pot cooking. But, when I do, I wonder why I don’t do more one-pot cooking. I have a certain bias, I suppose, toward at least three things on the plate and lots of dirty dishes.

Earlier today I came across this recipe at the Washington Post. I went downstairs and made it immediately. It’s another way for me to use the little pumpkins I grow each year. I’ve written about these pumpkins many times in the past, for example, here. Their proper name is Long Island Cheese Squash. Not only are they the best pumpkins I’ve ever had, they keep all winter and then some. I save seeds for next year’s crop. Anyone who sees my little pumpkins asks for seeds, and now many of my neighbors grow them. They’re bound to be very nutritious. They’re rich with pumpkin oil, as you will see if you roast them. You can order seeds from Baker Creek, if they haven’t run out. The demand for seeds has been so high that Baker Creek stopped taking orders for a while in January to catch up on shipping.

As always with recipes, substitute, substitute, substitute. I used pinto beans instead of black beans, and brown rice instead of white rice. I didn’t have a ripe avocado for garnish. But undersalting the pot a bit and applying soy sauce and sour cream at the table worked great. Next time I make this, I think I’ll use pearled barley instead of rice.

I’ve written in the past about how good the Washington Post’s food department has become, good enough to rival the New York Times’ food department. The link to the recipe may be behind a paywall if you’ve used up your ration of free articles for the month. But, even if you subscribe to only one newspaper, the Washington Post would be a good choice.

The temperature at noon today was 45F, and, yes, I had lunch on the deck.

Understanding 5G


Source: Apple

A great many articles have been written about 5G. Few of those articles are technical enough to help you understand the arguments over 5G safety. In addition, few of those articles are technical enough to help you understand which 5G cell phone is right for you, and which 5G cellular provider (such as Verizon or T-Mobile) is right for you. So, at the risk of boring you, let’s get just a little technical.

Safety

First of all, the notion that 5G causes Covid-19, or that 5G involves some kind of new hazard that warrants banning it, is silly in the extreme.

Remember when microwave ovens came on the market? Many people were afraid of them. Now just about everybody has one, and nobody worries about them. Those who tried to promote fear of microwave ovens back then used the same scare word that 5G paranoiacs use now. That word is radiation. If you come across an article about 5G that uses the word radiation, then that article is probably propaganda.

Radiation is all around us. Our bodies themselves at this very moment are producing radiation, mostly in the form of heat. Without the radiation from the sun, there could be no life. We have been immersed in radio waves for more than 100 years. Yes: Life depends on some forms of radiation, and other forms of radiation are dangerous. The difference is in the frequency of the radiation and its intensity.

As far as I can tell, 5G is said to be dangerous because 5G uses frequencies higher than 4G (4G is also called LTE). It is true that 5G uses somewhat higher frequencies. But those frequencies are still (obviously) in the radio spectrum. The properties of different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum (of which the radio spectrum is a small part) have been understood for a long time. There is new technology and somewhat higher radio frequencies in 5G, but there is no new science.

Some easy physics

Only one point of physics needs to be understood. That is that electromagnetic emissions of higher frequencies contain more energy than emissions of lower frequencies. A reasonable analogy, I believe, would be a comparison with a spinning flywheel. A wheel spinning fast contains more energy (in the form of angular momentum) than a wheel spinning slowly. Electromagnetic emissions become dangerous to the human body when they contain enough energy to cause either chemical or molecular changes in body tissues. Here we must consider the concept of ionizing versus non-ionizing radiation. The entire radio spectrum including 5G is non-ionizing radiation. When the body is exposed to energy in the radio spectrum, heat is produced. It is not dangerous unless it’s intense enough to cause burns. We’re talking here about an ordinary burn of the same type you’d get if you spilled hot coffee.

Ionizing radiation is much more powerful. Intense radiation at ionizing frequencies will knock electrons out of an atom’s shell. (An atom with the wrong number of electrons is called an ion.) When electromagnetic energy is energetic enough to start altering atoms and chemical molecules, then our cells and our DNA are in danger. If you look at the chart below of the electromagnetic spectrum, you’ll see that the entire radio spectrum (which of course includes 5G) is in a frequency band lower than your microwave oven. And your microwave oven, in spite of its higher frequencies, still produces only heat, because its emissions are not energetic enough to cause ionization.

Life on earth has always been exposed to ionizing radiation in the form of ultraviolet light from the sun and gamma rays from outer space. At low levels, the body can repair molecular damage faster than the damage is done. The problem is when ionizing radiation causes cellular damage faster than the body can repair it. The three factors that determine the degree of danger are, how intense was the source of ionizing radiation, how close were you to it, and how long were you exposed. Tanning beds are far more dangerous than microwave ovens. And medical X-rays are deemed safe as long as the exposure is low and the body’s cells have time to do repairs between exposures.

But that’s enough about ionizing radiation, because 5G emissions — in fact, no radio emissions — are energetic enough to cause any reaction in the body other than hot-coffee heat.

How is 5G different from 4G?

The difference between 5G and 4G that concerns us here is how 5G uses the radio spectrum. Now we need to talk about bands of radio spectrum.

Like 4G, 5G uses multiple ranges of radio frequencies. In fact they use the same frequencies except that 5G uses some higher frequencies, up to 39Ghz. Frequencies that high have advantages as well as disadvantages. The advantage is that there is a hugh amount of bandwidth at those frequencies, so 5G speeds can be faster than 4G. The disadvantage is that frequencies as high as 39Ghz don’t propagate well. Their range is limited, and they don’t penetrate walls as well as lower frequencies. Thus 5G cellular towers that use those higher frequencies must be much closer together.

But 5G works just as well at lower frequencies. The lowest frequencies used by 5G are in the range of 650Mhz to 850Mhz. That’s much, much lower. I call it “low band.” Radio waves at those lower frequencies propagate much better over longer distances, as well as around and through obstacles. Those are the frequencies that were used by broadcast television, until the FCC reallocated frequencies to move broadcast television off those frequencies and reassign the frequencies for cellular communication.

Now you can see why 5G benefits both city people and rural people, and why where you live should factor into your choice of which 5G service provider you want to use.

Verizon vs. T-Mobile

Verizon and T-Mobile took different strategies with 5G. At FCC auctions for 5G spectrum, Verizon’s strategy was to buy licensing for the higher frequencies. T-Mobile, on the other hand, bought as much of the old broadcast television spectrum as it could get its hands on. T-Mobile bought Sprint mainly to acquire Sprint’s spectrum. Keeping in mind that all 5G providers have a range of spectrum, Verizon’s spectrum is on the whole more beneficial to those who live in cities. T-Mobile’s spectrum is on the whole more beneficial to those who live in rural areas. That’s why Verizon’s CEO joined Tim Cook at Apple’s iPhone 12 rollout and boasted that Verizon will have the bandwidth to feed a stadium full of cell phone users. T-Mobile’s advantage for rural users is not yet widely understood, partly because T-Mobile is still in the process of upgrading its rural towers to support low band 5G.

I should mention here that no individual or corporation owns radio spectrum, though we speak of it that way sometimes. In all countries, radio spectrum is seen as a publicly owned natural resource to be managed for the public good. So corporations don’t buy spectrum, they buy a license to use that spectrum. And all licenses have a start date and a termination date and thus must be relinquished or renewed.

Latency

You’ll often hear the word latency in discussions of 5G. Latency refers to the time it takes — the delay — in getting data from one place to another. The latency is lower for 5G. Most people won’t notice any difference. Gamers will. And low latency is a requirement for any device that is being controlled from a distance or that needs to exchange data very fast — self-driving cars, for instance.

Phased arrays

The concept of phased arrays is very exciting for nerds like me, but it’s not something that needs to be understood to make decisions about 5G phones or 5G service providers. So this section is for extra credit.

Cell phones are just radios. All radios require antennas for receiving and transmitting. The size (or really, the length) of an antenna is directly proportional to the frequency that you want to use it on. The lower the frequency, the longer the antenna. A shortwave radio antenna may need to be a hundred feet long or longer. An antenna for 39Ghz would be less than a third of an inch long, or about 7mm. A half wavelength antenna would be only 3.5mm long. With antennas that small, it’s possible to design some very good antennas that will fit inside of cell phones.

Some antennas emit their signals equally in all directions. They’re omnidirectional antennas. Some antennas — directional antennas — can concentrate their signals into a beam. The television antennas that used to be seen on everyone’s chimneys (some people still have them!) are directional antennas. Technically, they’re Yagi antennas. They manipulate the phase of a radio signal inside an antenna so that the antenna focuses its sensitivity in a particular direction. That’s why those chimney antennas often had rotors. Let’s not get too deep into what the phase is. It has to do with the sine wave pattern of alternating current. All radio waves are sine waves.

It’s also possible to make directional antennas that have no moving parts. The antenna’s beam is directed not by rotating a single antenna but by having multiple antennas (four, typically) arranged in a square and using an electronic circuit to alter the phase of the signal to or from each antenna. The antenna can then be steered by turning a dial, or a computer can steer the antenna.

Some newer cell phones will indeed use tiny phased array antennas inside the cell phone. It’s easy to see how cellular communication can be improved if the cellular tower can steer a signal toward wherever the phone is, and if the phone can steer its signal toward wherever the tower is. This is practical, though, only at the highest frequencies used by 5G, where the antennas are small enough to fit inside a cell phone.

Understanding your phone’s (and carrier’s) specs

As you can see, to make a good choice in buying a phone or in choosing a cellular carrier involves understanding enough about 5G to know which phone, or which carrier, is best for you. In general, Verizon is a better choice if you will use your phone mostly in the city, and T-Mobile is a better choice if you will use your phone mostly in a rural area. I’m familiar only with U.S. carriers, so those who live outside the U.S. will have some research to do.

If you dig a bit, you’ll be able to find a phone’s specifications. Here, for example, are Apple’s frequency band specifications for my iPhone 12 Pro Max. (See here for other countries.)

Note that the iPhone 12 supports 5G frequencies all the way from the lowest (600Mhz, band n71) to the highest (39Ghz, n260). So an iPhone 12 should work well for you on 5G no matter where you live or who your cell service provider is.

Some information is hard to get, though

Though your phone’s capabilities can easily be determined, and though we know in general what 5G strategy the different cell service providers are pursuing, what we don’t know is what kind of 5G equipment is installed and operating at particular locations or on particular towers. Also, cell service providers are rapidly installing new 5G equipment, so the situation is changing. The only way to really figure out what’s best for you is to take a particular phone to a particular place and see what kind of service you get. If you want to be a nerd about it, you can get your phone to tell you what band it’s on. I won’t go into that here because it’s too complicated, but I’ll describe my own case.

Two months ago, I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile, because it was easy to see that T-Mobile is better for me because I live in the sticks. The nearest cellular tower is over two miles away. With Verizon, I could get only slow data. The 4G signal was so weak that an iPhone 11 would often fall back to 3G — pathetically slow, though Verizon 4G was almost as slow. It’s 12 miles from me to the nearest tower with 5G. I can’t receive a 5G signal here yet. But switching to T-Mobile was a major improvement for me because the nearest T-Mobile towers use band 71 (600Mhz) for 4G LTE. With an iPhone 12 on T-Mobile, I can now hold a 4G signal and get data speeds that would seem slow to city people but that are a godsend to country folk — around 8Mbps down. In short, I switched to T-Mobile to get a frequency band that Verizon does not have here — band 71 in the old broadcast television spectrum. My hope is that T-Mobile will soon light up 5G on the 600Mhz band, which should give me some — though probably not dramatic — improvement. Those super-high 5G data speeds are possible only at the higher frequencies.

Caveat emptor

As you can see, making choices in 5G phones and 5G carriers can be complicated. It’s a given that people who work in cell phone stores will give inaccurate and misleading information, not least because they don’t understand what they’re selling. For some people (for example, if you live in New York City), decisions may be easy. But for those of us who live in the sticks, there is no choice but to get some understanding of 5G, to know where your towers are, and to drive around from tower to tower testing phones. I have an extra class amateur radio license, and I’ve been playing with radios and antennas for years. The applicable theories — not to mention the safety rules when you’re around radio-frequency currents — are familiar to me. For those without that kind of experience, the best strategy probably is to read, to always be skeptical of what you’re told (especially from people who work in cell phone stores), and to compare notes with your neighbors who may be using different kinds of phones on different carriers.


Source: Wikipedia