On Wed, 21 Nov 2012, coffelt2 wrote:


They certainly don't have much of an antenna system
that befits a 60 khz (kcs, actually), and only seem to be
able to synch here in the dead of night when most of us
are sleeping, and most of the noisiest devices are either
off or at least on standby.

That's a misdirection. Most of those "atomic clocks" will only try to
sync up early in the morning, it's not like they are trying all day long.
Once a day is good enough, the time can't go astray in one day, and it
makes sense if they are doing it only once a day to do it in those early
hours when a lot less junk is out there.

Most can be told to resync by the press of a button, I find it varies
whether they can get a signal during the daytime or not, though it's not
something I try much since virtually every night they do sync up.

My Casio Waveceptor watch is different. Not only will it work with
stations other than WWVB (well if you're in England or Europe, or Japan),
but it checks for an update at midnight local time. If it gets the
signal, it stops checking for the day, if it doesn't then it keeps
checking every hour till I don't know when. I've had it two years and
every so often it misses a sync, but except for early on when I didn't
orient it properly, I think the only times it hasn't sync'd up was when I
still had it on my wrist until way too late, or I did't put it back in the
right place. If it misses at midnight, it generally gets it by 3am at the
latest.

And it has a much smaller antenna than the wall clocks. The wall clocks
must have larger antennas (I've looked inside one) but they require proper
orientation to get the WWVB signal here.

it is interesting that any WWVB receiver in the ham or hobby magazines
over the years have used a large loop.

Michael VE2BVW