Jack Carroll
I'm a semi-retired electronics engineer, with 40 years of extremely mixed experience, mostly in industrial and medical electronics. I've had a ham license for 50 years; present call sign is W1PK and I work 2 meter and 440 MHz FM.
Other major interests (besides science fiction, of course) are American history, technology in general, music, photography, and getting out and appreciating nature.
I've written roughly 50 songs, about half of them sea songs and half filk, with one 1632 song stuck in writer's block ("I Work at Braun & Scharff").
Published works are in the NESFA Hymnal Volume 2 and Northeast Passages, probably available through www.massfilc.org. My chosen instrument of torture is 12-string guitar.
I do some beta testing for the Debian Linux project. Military service was with the U.S. Air Force, 1965 to 1969, 18th Comm Squadron, Westover AFB Mass. I live with my wife and our cat in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Proposal and Counterproposal
Late Summer, 1634 The bell at the Torre dell'orologio, the clock tower, struck the hour. Conrad Ursinus gestured meaningfully at the fifty yards of tiled pavement that still separated the party from the doge's palace. "Half a minute late. You think it's better...
A Most Compelling Proposal
Venice Late Summer, 1634 Cosimo van Castre shielded himself as well as he could from the unseasonably cold wind raising ripples on the canal. He declined to even look up at the gray and foreboding sky. It was a godsend to be in among the city's buildings and...
1636: Land Radio Communication in Europe
In "Marine Radio in the 1632 Universe" (Grantville Gazette 52) and "1636: Marine Radio in the Mediterranean" (Gazette 66) we explored the possibilities for communication across salt water. We also considered, briefly, a few overland paths of special interest to the...
1636: Marine Radio in the Mediterranean
In “Marine Radio in the 1632 Universe” (GG 52) we took a broad look at what would be possible in the way of long-distance radio communication during the seventeenth century’s prolonged deprivation of high-frequency ionospheric skip. Much of the focus...
Customs
St. Pietersberg, Netherlands Midsummer’s Eve, 1636 The road into Maastricht wound along between the river and the foot of the steep-sided hill. Joris de Groon was perfectly content to trail along at the end of the party—the half-dozen men weren’t raising...
The Ice Queen
The Mountain Top Baptist Bible Institute August, 1636 One sunny afternoon in the front parlor . . . Nora MacDermott found herself brought up short, wrestling with two variant texts of the same scripture passage, texts she would never have even imagined had her...
Penitence and Redemption
West Virginia County Courthouse September 20, 1634 James Rothrock interrupted his pacing behind the defense table and turned to the rail dividing the room when his old tutor William Oughtred came up to it and leaned across to be heard above the spectators' murmuring....
Making an Impression
Mountain Top Baptist Bible Institute West Virginia County Early summer, 1636 John Stewart rolled over again. The moonlight on the wall was in a different place from where it had been the last time he looked. He growled to himself, keeping it under his breath. Plain...
