Total failure

Day: 181-183

Sunrise:
09:16/09:14

Sunset:
17:51/17:54

Total kilometers:
1281

Soil condition:
Ice, snow

Temperature – Day (maximum):
minus 15°C

Temperature – day (minimum):
minus 28°C

Temperature – Night:
minus 41°C

Latitude:
51°33’336”

Longitude:
099°15’341”

Maximum height:
1981 m above sea level

“What are you going to do all day if you live in the taiga? You must get terribly bored?” we were asked again and again before the trip. As this was not our first time living in solitude, it was clear to us that monotony and monotony do not occur in the wilderness. Maintaining life requires sufficient energy expenditure. Tanja, for example, fetches snow every day and then melts it on the stove. As already mentioned, she keeps the coffee and catering service going for our camp members, cooks lunch and dinner, bakes bread, prepares food for Mogi, translates texts into English, does the laundry, washes the dishes and dries them, fetches firewood from the taiga with me and much more. For them, the word boredom is definitely a foreign concept.

I feel the same way. In the morning, when it is still minus 18 °C in our yurt, I get up, put on my headlamp and clean the stove of the ashes from the previous day. Then I fetch and arrange firewood in the potbelly stove and light it, put on some tea water and put the fresh grain porridge Tanja has prepared on the small hotplate. Before I slip back under my sleeping bag, I sweep the snow off the solar panels and the dirt out of the yurt. At 9 a.m., after it is pleasantly warm in the yurt, I start my back exercises. We have breakfast at 10:00 or 10:30. Then I write about our experiences. In the afternoons, I go to cut down dead trees, saw them into portable pieces with the chainsaw and chop them up later. The days are still short and usually not enough to complete all the tasks that need to be done.

After Tanja and I have dragged some thinner tree trunks into camp today, I set about chopping up a cow leg that we had bought from Ayush and portioning it for meals. The fat pieces and the large bone are left for Mogi.

Then I start sawing up the tree trunks. Unfortunately, the chainsaw gives up the ghost after just a few minutes. I carry it into the yurt, clean the air filter, sand the sooty spark plug, oil the chainring and readjust the carburetor. Nevertheless, the Chinese chainsaw has decided to go on strike today. “Well, I’ll finish my story,” I mutter to myself, pushing the chainsaw under our bed and plugging the 12-volt power cable of my laptop into the battery connector. I am surprised when the indicator light on the power supply unit does not light up. Using the measuring device, I find out that the cable is defective, so I connect a new one. Once again, I plug the new cable into the socket. Same result. I then try using the power supply unit from our other notebook. The indicator light does not work either. “Maybe the new cable is defective too?” I think and check it with the measuring device. “Go,” I mumble in surprise and connect a battery charger. Also no signal light. That seems Spanish to me. I connect all three devices to the energy box as a cross-check, but the lights stay off there too. “What a bloody mess,” I grumble and sit down in front of the batteries and energy box, brooding and perplexed. “Why have the power supply units suddenly stopped working? Is the polarity of the new cable wrong?” I wonder aloud.

Paying attention to the polarity this time, I check the voltage again with my meter. “You don’t believe it!” I exclaim in amazement. “What am I not supposed to believe?” asks Tanja, who is now also excitedly following the course of the technical nightmare. “Well, the brand-new cable was already incorrectly polarized at the factory. Where plus should be is minus and vice versa. That means I’ve shot the two power supply units and the battery charger,” I realize. “And now?” asks Tanja. “If the fuses in the appliances are blown, I’ll replace them. Just in case we have enough spare fuses,” I explain and rummage in the bag with the spare parts. “Great!” I say happily after I’ve found what I’m looking for. I quickly replace the fuses that have actually blown, take my last replacement cable, not without first checking the correct polarity, and plug in a power supply unit. The indicator light flashes briefly and goes out again immediately. Fuse is broken again. Without further ado, I replace the defective fuse and connect the power supply unit to our power box. A brief, small flash and the entire energy box is dead.

“Oh no!!! Now our entire power supply has died. Nothing works anymore!” I shout. “You mean we can no longer charge laptops, flashlights and cell phones?” asks Tanja, visibly nervous. “That’s how it is. No more reporting, no more cell phones. Our coverage has completely died. I don’t know why. You’d think someone had sabotaged our technology in our absence,” I say desperately. “You’ll find the mistake,” says Tanja confidently. “No idea how? I don’t even know why the power box has failed now? One system has absolutely nothing to do with the other. And yet everything has died,” I reply, deeply saddened. Unfortunately, I no longer have any fuses to replace them. I resort to a trick and wrap silver foil around the fuse. This allows me to test whether the power supply unit is still OK. As soon as I have connected it, a huge short circuit occurs which immediately causes the cable to melt and burn. I tear it off the battery and am now completely desperate.

After another hour, I realized that the short circuit caused by the incorrectly polarized cable had destroyed the power supply unit in such a way that this in turn had put the power box out of action. I put the defective power supply unit to one side and open the power box. In fact, a fuse has blown there too. I swap them and switch the system on. Result: The disassembly has caused a loose contact. Another hour later, I find the broken cable lug. I try to solder the cable with my gas soldering iron and the last bit of solder. However, the soldering iron does not have enough power to melt the solder. Then I come up with the idea of fixing the broken cable with a cable tie. “It works!” I say with satisfaction. “Is our energy box working again now?” asks Tanja. “Yes. At least we can charge our phones, flashlights and camera batteries again.

At midnight, the fault is completely localized and around 80 percent of the total damage is repaired. I was able to build a new cable with individual strips using the last bit of solder. The power supply unit of the replacement computer works after replacing the fuse. The power supply unit of the new laptop, which found its way back to us after the hard disk crashed, was repaired in Germany and took six weeks to travel around the world, is irreparably damaged. The battery charger can also no longer be revived.

“That was a great job Denis,” Tanja praises me. “Hm, thank you. I feel like I’ve just completed my journeyman’s certificate in 12-volt technology,” I reply, sitting on the yurt floor, tired but satisfied. “If our people in Germany work well, the necessary spare parts will arrive in Mongolia in a few weeks. Then we just have to figure out how to get them from Mörön to the remote Tuwav camp,” I say. “It will work out,” says Tanja confidently.

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