[CQ-Contest] WWVB: What time is it? You mean now?

[Maarten van R]

Hi Frank,

I did some Googeling last night and found several articles that did
specifically mention WWVB as one of the stations being shutdown. I must
have overlooked that earlier.

I guess there will be some disappointed people (to say the least) when they
find out their expensive radio controlled clocks or wristwatches no longer
automatically synchronize.

73, Maarten PD2R/OV2T


Op vr 24 aug. 2018 om 00:31 schreef <donovanf at starpower.net>

> Hi Maarten
>
> This is an exact quote from page *NIST 25* of the proposed FY2019 NIST
> budget:
>
> <www.osec.doc.gov/bmi/budget/FY19CBJ/NIST_and_NTIS_FY2019_President
> 's_Budget_for_508_comp.pdf>
>
> *"NIST will discontinue the dissemination of the U.S. time and frequency **via
> the NIST radio stations in Hawaii and Ft. Collins, CO.  These radio
> stations transmit signals that are used to synchronize consumer electronic
> products like wall clocks, clock radios, and wristwatches, and may be used
> in other applications like appliances, cameras, and irrigation
> controllers."*
>
> 73
>
> Frank
>
> W3LPL
>
> ------------------------------
> *From: *"Maarten van R" <pd2r.maarten at gmail.com>
> *To: *ktfrog007 at aol.com
> *Cc: *kdutson at sbcglobal.net, cq-contest at contesting.com
> *Sent: *Thursday, August 23, 2018 7:25:26 PM
> *Subject: *Re: [CQ-Contest] WWVB: What time is it? You mean now?
>
>
> This tread was originally only about WWV and WWVH, no mention of WWVB was
> made. Reading the article again it says “NIST shutting down radio stations
> in Colorado and Hawaii”. For some reason the ARRL article doesn’t mention
> the WWVB signal which is also transmitted from CO.
> If the WWVB signal is also terminated, that would surely cause some radio
> controled clock owners to become very unhappy.
> Fortunately I live in the Netherlands, right between the DCF77 signal from
> Germany and the MSF signal from the UK ;-)
>
> 73, Maarten PD2R/OV2T
>
>
> Op do 23 aug. 2018 om 20:44 schreef <ktfrog007 at aol.com>
>
> > According to an article in Wikipedia there are over 50 million radio
> > clocks and wrist watches that use WWVB.  There's bound to be a handful of
> > unhappy campers in that group if WWVB goes QRT.
> >
> > I have one of the wrist watches and have used it in recent years to
> verify
> > that my WSJT-X timing (from Dimension4) is on the money.  However, it
> uses
> > an obscure watch battery I used to buy at Radio Shack (SK).  My battery
> > died recently and the watch is just sitting on my desk, dead by
> association.
> >
> > Here's something about WWVB that maybe some more knowledgeable person can
> > verify.  It transmits a ground wave signal (which follows the earth's
> > surface) at 60 kHz, a very low frequency, and covers a wide area with no
> > skip zones like the higher frequency WWV sky wave stations.  I assume the
> > path from it to me is a great circle path of constant distance (also
> > considering terrain. bodies of water, etc) from which I could make a
> > latency correction to get the most accurate time.
> >
> > You can't do this with the sky wave stations via the fluctuating
> > ionosphere.
> >
> > My wrist watch's manual warns that the signal is weakest during the
> > daylight hours and there are some areas of the US where reception is poor
> > (East Coast, the Los Angles basin).  It resets during the night, after
> > midnight for me.  I had to take it off every evening and set it on a
> wooden
> > window sill, its plastic case broadside to Ft Collins, CO, to get
> > consistent resets.  If I did that it worked well and always correlated
> with
> > Dimension4 and the WWV stations.
> >
> > WWV and WWVB have been part of the sound track of my life ever since I
> got
> > interested in radio.  But so were Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee  and Johnny
> > Cash, and they went away, too.
> >
> > 73,
> > Ken, AB1J
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Maarten van R <pd2r.maarten at gmail.com>
> > To: Keith Dutson <kdutson at sbcglobal.net>
> > Cc: Cq-Contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>
> > Sent: Wed, Aug 22, 2018 9:38 pm
> > Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] WWV and WWVH may go off the air. 100, 000
> > signatures needed by Sept. 15th.
> >
> > I know that Casio watches use WWVB’s signal from Fort Collins CO. If I’m
> > not mistaken, most radio controlled clocks use this 60 kHz frequency
> which
> > is much better for this application then the 5, 10 and 15 MHz signals of
> > WWV and WWVH. So I doubt there will be many users of consumer electronics
> > that will be disappointed. 73, Maarten PD2R/OV2T
> >
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