"Chuck Olson" ) writes:
I recently bought a couple of La Crosse Technology digital clocks that are
designed to start listening for the WWVB signal at 60 KHz at midnight, and
every hour until 6AM. I have a ham transceiver IC-765 that receives down to
30
KHz (too bad they don't mention this fact in the specifications of the
equipment) and I've been able to pick up the signal with a loopstick coil
and resonant capacitor using a source follower interface to the receiver
input, with some success, but I would like to qualify other locations in the
house besides the immediate vicinity of the ham station - - hopefully more
quickly than mounting the clock and waiting to see if it updates its
setting.
Ideally, I would like to take apart a small WWVB sync-able clock and tap
into its wiring with an LED driver so that I could see the LED flash in time
with the 1 BPS carrier modulation. Has anyone tried anything like this, and
is there a website that might show details of the conversion? I'm open to
other ways to do it as well and welcome suggestions.
Thanks,
Chuck
So can't you just buy one of the clocks that has an indicated showing
that it is receiving the signal, and make sure it has a button to press
to get it to sync up on demand?
I got a Radio Shack clock back in February, regularly $30 here in Canada
but on sale at twenty. It has both. I got home about 5:30pm, put
in the batteries, pressed the button, and after a few minutes it did
indeed set to the proper time. I've moved it around, and there are locations
where it can't receive the signal, and the little marker on the LCD readout
is turned off.
Given that this was my first WWVB clock, I would expect every such clock
to have these features, or else they'd be inferior.
Michael VE2BVW
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