"Charles Schuler" wrote in message
...

Well, it would be if it worked. The clock synchronizes with WWVB
every night, and I had it working on my engineering bench. But with
it mounted on my air studio wall, it won't sync. I've tried three
different positions -- mounted flat on west, north and east walls. In
each position, I left it there for about a week to see if it would
sync.

I'm in Atlanta, so WWVB is generally west from me. I don't know how
the internal antenna element is oriented, but I assume it's parallel
to the big flat dimension of the clock, so either east or west should
have worked best. Obviously the building is attenuating the signal,
but I really want it to work in that room, so I've got to find a way
to improve the signal reception without moving the clock much from
where it's at.

There are some hints at the NIST website. I live in Florida and the
nighttime signal is much better than the daytime signal. This is also
true
for Atlanta, but not as much variation as at my location. One thing that
helps (sometimes) is to move the clock away from TV receivers and
monitors.
A 60 kHz antenna is a large beast, so there is nothing simple that you can
do in that department.


I have two of those "atomic" clocks, one at home and one at work. Both came
with admonitions in the instruction sheet to keep them at least 10 feet away
from any computers, monitors or TV sets. Naturally, all of these items
generate intense EMI fields around them and would swamp the weak 60KHz
signal from WWVB.
Unless you can satisfy these criteria, or provide an external antenna that
you could couple to the internal antenna of your "atomic" clock, then I'm
afraid you've a couple of boat anchors on your hands. Your clocks can only
syncronize if they have a signal that is strong enough to allow it to
receive the coded information that it needs to set the clock. Antenna
placement is critical for these clocks.

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