2025-03 – Early Sun, Flag, and Drone

Weather

It’s got sunny about a month earlier than normal here. The snow is melting on the fields and around the buildings, with icy patches in the shade. This might sound good but it also means all the winter sports have stopped early with the melting snow. It was still between +2C to -8C each day for most of the month. Because it is so dry that temperature doesn’t feel as severe as in the UK. I can go out in a hooded top on sunny days without winter-specific layers.

The snow melting in the garden exposed the plants. I would have preferred the snow to stay a bit longer in case of cold storms that might frost-damage the plants. With the bright sun and cold temperatures, the solar panels are doing great. Summer has more sun but the panels get losses from overheating. The vertical panels on the garage also work especially great about this time of year. This is due to the position of the sun which is currently low on the horizon and the light is bouncing off the snow. In weeks 3 and 4 of march we have about the same daylight duration as the UK. We’re generating an electric surplus by the time we wake up.

It would be great to be self-sufficient for electric year-round, but this far north the winter is too dark. No matter how many panels we had, we’d need a hydro-electric source to be off-grid during winter. With a bigger battery we could be grid-independent for six months of a year. Eight at a stretch with more solar, but it’s not a financial priority.

Cafe

This month we’ve been going to the local cafe each Saturday in the next town up the coast. It is a chocolatier with a full-time chocolate maker. They are open all year round and it’s warm and quiet during the winter.

Stugga Flag Replaced

We walked through the forest and put a Swedish flag up at a community cabin nearby. The old one had fallen apart with age. My Swedish friend in the village found the group that look after the cabin. I messaged them explaining about the new flag and they seemed quite happy. We tried putting the new flag up on previous visits, but the rope had been frozen at the top of the mast. The new flag is a bit big for this flagpole but this was the only size in the shop at the time.

Drone

We purchased a drone to take some pictures of Sweden from the air. There are quite a few rules around done flight and taking photos. The specific rules depend on lots of factors such as what you’re taking photos of, where you are flying and what size of drone you have. We registered as a drone operator. The registration was approximately £16 (200 SEK) for the lightweight drone category. I wrote to ask the neighbour for permission to fly in their field which they were fine with.

It took roughly 5 minutes of flight before the wife started getting the hunger for more risky flying. The drone went underneath garden furniture and rose-arches. Conversation then turned to the challenge of flying the drone in and out of the greenhouse. It’s more of a general purpose light drone with a good camera, so not really ideal for stunt flying. The first crash took about 10 minutes and then we agreed to send it high in the air and practise normal flight for a bit. I have lots of spare propeller blades in case, and they are cheap. I was happy to inspect the top of the chimney to check the anti-bird grating was in place without climbing the roof.

The neighbour then contacted us. They asked if the drone could photograph the mounting points on their solar panels. Their barn had solar panels mounted high up. To access the roof would need safety gear to inspect manually. We fired up the drone and were able to use the camera to inspect the mounting plates for each. We could then send them the videos and photos afterwards. It was good to get to help someone else.

The maximum height the drone can fly with our current license is 120m high, which more than enough. For distance we’re allowed line of sight. The controller software itself restricts flight with limits of 120m high and 2km distant.

IT Stuff

I’ve fairly neglected to do any home IT development tasks for a couple of years. I figured I’d stop waiting for the perfect wiring and hardware to be in place. Instead I’d try to improve some things even if the result was imperfect.

I setup a host for virtual machines using software called Proxmox. On this I created a virtual machine that would look after the home wireless access points. Essentially it allows access points configuration and the application of occasional security updates. I also setup a virtual machine for HomeAssistant. HomeAssistant detects household devices on the network and shows them on a central dashboard. From here you can make commands and automation to control them.

I wanted to migrate the network to a different layout. Specifically I wanted to separate all the random “house” devices to their own network. This requires some special configuration on the network. Although I’ve done this configuration on Cisco hardware before, it’s more complex on the Mikrotik hardware I have. If I made a mistake it might cause an interruption and stress for us as we both work remotely. When I get some spare time I will make a virtual practise network using some software for that task called GNS3. I’ll practise on that first to become more familiar with the Mikrotik workflow.

Wireless network signals sometimes have a hard time in our house. This is due to a large brick chimney stack inside the house and a metal facade around the outside of the house. The currently access point layout seems to have 95% fixed this. There is a wireless access point downstairs and one upstairs, and one outside. Wireless to the garage is more problematic. For some reason an access point in the garage in mesh mode initially works and then fails. It’s possible that there might be a source of electrical interference. I’d really like to run a fibre cable between the house and garage but the local fibre installer thought I was insane when I asked. That is a shame because for the cost of a minor installation it would have fixed the problem permanently. I will likely have a go myself in the summer but it is important to known and follow all the building rules and cabling conventions. Without experience and it would be easy to accidentally do a bad job.

Visit to Örnskoldsvik

I had to go up north for an appointment and we took the opportunity to visit a few shops. We went to a gigantic pick-and-mix sweet shop. We visited a pet shop to look at fish and Guinea Pigs. We noted the price of straw in the pet shop. We wanted some for the strawberry patch, but it was too expensive for a small amount – straw has been hard to get for some time.

We also visited the major building supplies centre. It had lots of household supplies that we’ve thought about but now we could get to touch and feel them and try them out.

We had a good look through all the various showrooms. As we looked we also talked together about the house and some problems or things we’d like to improve. One example is the windows upstairs. The windows are letting through a lot of noise from the heavy vehicles during winter. The lorries park up nearby. They have to run their engines overnight to keep power supplied to trailers or to keep the systems warm. The diesel engines create a low rumble that can get intrusive. So maybe this year we save up for a couple of modern windows and fitting.

Seeking Another Stugga….

Towards the end of the month we tried to reach a different stugga (open cabin) to the east that we have never been to. I spotted it on a map while looking for areas to ask for drone flight permission.

It was a great sunny day but we headed back about half way. We went the wrong way at first due to missing the start of the trail in the snow and lost a bit of time and confidence.

Although a lot of the paths and roads were clear of snow, it was still deep in sections. Up the hill we were putting our feet into knee-deep snow patches and hadn’t got snow shoes with us.

We gained some experience about reading spring conditions. We’re also now familiar with finding the start of the trail which will make us faster next time.

Other

This month is when the Swedish tax agency writes to everyone and tells them what it thinks they owe. Everything from bank interest to solar generation amounts self-report to the tax agency. As a result everything of mine is already filled in on the tax form. It is a few clicks in the mobile app to accept the decision if you’re happy with it. It seems I get a bit of money back this year which is a welcome situation. The first few years the tax return process was difficult with cross-border problems and manual tax returns. It got a lot easier once our company finished setting up a Swedish payroll. I still have to do a UK self-assessment tax return each year but all the amounts are zero. I’m hoping the UK tax agency tells me I don’t need to complete self-assessment in future years.

We haven’t yet found a replacement car but have been looking. I’ve seen a likely candidate and I’m waiting for payday to go visit it.

The garden centres are starting to open and we’ve been collecting a few things. It’s still some time before they are in full swing.

I’ve been resting my legs after I injured them when skipping. After a couple of weeks of them feeling ok I got frustrated and tried 30 jumps . About 2-3 hours later the tendons on the back of my knees were angry. It seems they are sensitive to any amount of skipping and there were still angry days later. We have some scales that track your weight and body fat percentage over time. It is super-frustrating to see my bodyfat percentage going up a tiny bit each day. One of my goals this year was to get it down and I was seeing progress before I got injured. I’m using ice packs and ibuprofen but I might have to visit the doctor as there is an operation they can do to fix bad cases.