On Oct 8, 9:16 pm, Frnak McKenney wrote:
I'm in Richmond, Virginia and I'm trying to noticeably improve my
reception of WWV's 10MHz signal from Fort Collins, Colorado. ...

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:22:07 GMT, Rick wrote:
I am in New Jersey. Propagation from Colorado to here is probably
similar to Virginia.

This morning, Tues, 10/9, I listened to WWV on 10 MHz with the 4
antennas I have at my disposal to see what kind of signal level I
get.

My antennas are 80 meter and 40 meter dipoles, a 20 meter yagi and a
30 meter dipole, all at about 50 feet.

On the first 3 antennas WWV runs about S6-9, and on the 30 meter
dipole it is 10-20 db over 9.

This evening, 6 pm, the first 3 antennas haul WWV in at S9 and the
30 m dipole has it at a rock solid 30 over.

So I agree with the advice you got to string up some kind of dipole
and throw out that loop, there is plenty of signal, you just have to
go get it.

Okay, Rick, you've convinced me. The heck with Oklahoma! (Sorry,
MH.) I'm running my antenna line to New Jersey! grin!

If I've sounded reluctant to put an antenna up in the attic, it's
partly that I'm reluctant to drill holes through walls and ceilings
to run the antenna cable without at least _some_ assurance that the
results would be worth it... and partly that I'm just reluctant to
drill holes, spackle, and paint. I suppose I could run the line
through the attic hatch door rim and down the hallway ceiling...

PS may I throw in a little commercial for my pet peeve? As you read
this did you notice that I did not include any text from previous
posts? Did you miss it?

Well, yes. The original post was a bit long and should have been
trimmed as appropriate, but a couple of lines (see above) would have
made things a little clearer to some poor soul who ran across the
post in isolation.

In any case, thanks for the feedback. Let's see... 300 miles of
10-Base2 cable...


Frank
--
"Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's,
if we are always criticizing trivial actions -- which often are
not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through
our ignorance of their motives..." -- Teresa of Avila
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut minds pring dawt cahm (y'all)

Robert,

Thank you for joining in.

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:35:29 -0700, Robert Smts wrote:
Frnak McKenney wrote:
I'm in Richmond, Virginia and I'm trying to noticeably improve my
reception of WWV's 10MHz signal from Fort Collins, Colorado. It all
seemed so simple, two weeks ago: wind some wire, solder a
connector, and Hey...presto! a clean WWV signal. grin!
--snip--

Frank, can't you erect anything outside at all? A 10 metre dipole,
is after all, only about 5 metres long. And if you can't do that,
what kind of attic do you have? If your house is oriented
correctly, you could even build a three element wire yagi pointed
west inside the attic.

Um... 10m? I was hoping for 10MHz/30m. Or have I missed
something? (Wouldn't surprise me -- my 1st Class ticket expired
several decades back.)

Okay... ARRL Antennas, Chapter 8: Multielement Arrays. We've got
an (approximately, given skip) vertically-polarized 10MHz signal, so
the E-field is moving up and down and the wavefront is a circular
ripple (nearly a straight line by the time it gets to Richmond)
travelling roughly west-to-east, that is, it's hitting my house
end-on.

Dimensions shouldn't be that critical for receive only, and space
the elements at about 2.5 metres. Basically one element at about 47
feet, one at about 49.3 feet, and one at about 45 feet. Split the
47 ft one into two, feed it directly with 50 ohm coax, one side to
the shield, one to the centre conductor, and you have a three
element wire beam pointed, hopefully, west. (Put the longest
element on the east side, the shortest on the west.)

Um... if I label them as A/47ft, B/49ft, and C/45ft, the picture I
come up with looks like this from overhead:

| | |
| | |
--- To Fort Collins | + |
| + |
| | |
| | |
(scale)
|............................................C.A.B


I definitely think I'm missing something, but then, I haven't really
made it that far into the Antenna Handbook.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.


Frank
--
"Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to
promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain
but death and taxes." -- Benjamin Franklin
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut minds pring dawt cahm (y'all)

Frnak McKenney wrote:
Not sure what you could be referring to... other than the three
computers, 25" monitor, printer, Atmel AVR development board (8MHz
clock), flourescent desk lamp, and overhead I-look-like-an-
incandescent flourescent helix... all within 3 feet of the antenna
and clock. grin!

With all that hardware, wouldn't NTP (internet time) be a better option? Or if
you are not too deep into steel and concrete a GPS receiver?

Geoff.
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

(Geoffrey S. Mendelson) writes:

Frnak McKenney wrote:
Not sure what you could be referring to... other than the three
computers, 25" monitor, printer, Atmel AVR development board (8MHz
clock), flourescent desk lamp, and overhead I-look-like-an-
incandescent flourescent helix... all within 3 feet of the antenna
and clock. grin!

With all that hardware, wouldn't NTP (internet time) be a better option? Or if
you are not too deep into steel and concrete a GPS receiver?

Sounds like OP is really interested in bringing his father's WWV clock
to life.

But if correct time is the objective, ntp is easy. Over the internet
it is supposed to be accurate to tens of milliseconds. On our network,
1 - 5 ms is typical, but I suppose it is quite well behaved.

A GPS intended for timing gives better than 100 ms accuracy off the
cable. It can discipline ntp on a computer to typically 1 - 10 us
accuracy.

It looks like the Garmin GPS 18lvc us the timing GPS of choice for
hobbyists. You need a pulse per second (PPS) signal. There are other
GPS dongles which don't have PPS on the plug, but you can find the signal on
the circuit board.

More info at TAPR: "http://www.tapr.org". See also the timekeepers
mailing list archive:
"http://fortytwo.ch/mailman/pipermail/timekeepers/".

John Ackerman N8UR is an authority on timing and ham radio.

But again - this is probably not what you're really after :-)

73
LA4RT Jon

Geoff.,

Thanks for adding your comments.

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:34:08 +0000 (UTC), Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Frnak McKenney wrote:
Anyway, thanks for reassuring me that my poor WWV reception really
might not be due to a poor antenna design. If I ever come up with a
Really Good Solution I'll post back here.

What would help you is an outdoor active antenna. For a start look at MFJ's.
It's a metal box with an amplifier in it, and a whip antenna. It uses a
small box at the receiver end to pass DC up the coax to power it.

I looked around and found http://www.mfjenterprises.com/
Their MFJ-1020C looks interesting.

For now, though, I think I want to concentrate on getting as much as
I can from "bare wire".

Placing it outside would help. Placing it outside and away from noise
sources, or on the roof would help more. A whip antenna is used because
it's a cheap commerical off-the-shelf (COTS) item. It could be replaced
with a thin wire. The coax could be replaced with a run of (more expensive)
mini-coax. This would make it easier to hide and you may be able to use it.

The old GC-1000 had a built-in whip; the GCW-1001 doesn't even have
that... just a threaded 50ohm coax connector.

If you are handy with building things, there are lots of designs for similar
devices, the easiest is a single MMIC type amplfier. It may be more difficult
to actually do as they are very sensitive to static.

I'll see what I can find. Thanks for the keyword.

If all you have is a window, a loop around it would do. If it has a metal frame,
and all 4 sides are connected to each other, you can try using it as a loop.
If not, thin wire held up by transparent tape, or that metal tape used by
alarm systems would work.

I like that -- there's a window/storm window about 4' away facing
east.

As to your other post...

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:09:08 +0000 (UTC), Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Frnak McKenney wrote:
Not sure what you could be referring to... other than the three
computers, 25" monitor, printer, Atmel AVR development board (8MHz
clock), flourescent desk lamp, and overhead I-look-like-an-
incandescent flourescent helix... all within 3 feet of the antenna
and clock. grin!

With all that hardware, wouldn't NTP (internet time) be a better option? Or if
you are not too deep into steel and concrete a GPS receiver?

Both of these would be excellent ways of keeping an accurate time
source at hand, and it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that
that was what I was trying to accomplish. I apologize for the lack
of clarity; let me back up a bit.

When I started out, I simply wanted to learn about how antennas
worked, how an EM wave made it from point A to point B in a way that
would let me... how do I say it? "Fit all the pieces together"?
And, as part of that, I was trying to see how well I could take
basic principles and make-with-my-hands something that demonstrated
that (a) I had understood correctly and that (b) I could actually
build something that worked.

I'd had the MAC-II around for more than three years, sitting in the
background and mildly annoying me because every power hiccup reset
the display to its startup "not SEt" text and it could be months
before it was running again. Mildly annoying, but I didn't have a
serious need to know exactly what time it was.

It occurred to me (eventually grin!) that building An Antenna that
made the MAC-II a more dependable TOD source would be a Really Good
Test Of My Antenna Building Skills... sort of like learning to swim
by jumping off a dock. As silly as that may sound, when you're
venturing into unfamiliar territory (and as a consultant, I do a lot
of that) there's always a new kind of swimming to learn, and there
always seems to be a dock you eventually wind up jumping off if
you're going to learn very much.

So if it looks like my "stroke" is extremely poor at this point,
well, that's likely; on the other hand, I'm not exactly drowning,
either. I'm waving my hands in all directions, learning what seems
to make me move and what doesn't, and listening to helpful comments
from the Peanut Gallery on the dock. Youse guys. grin!

Throwing money at the prob... er, "adopting a pre-packaged
solution" grin! gets me the Time Of Day -- precise, reliable,
hopefully accurate -- but it doesn't help me learn how to swim...
er, build antennas. And, besides, my budget is a bit tight at this
point, which means no new test equipment... I don't suppose anyone
knows how to generate an accurate 10MHz alignment signal by rubbing
a 1.5MHz Function Generator and a Tek465 'scope together? grin!

Okay... I'm sure that's more than most (all?) of you wanted to
know. Please feel free to recycle this post in an environmentally
acceptable manner. grin!


Frank
--
"...in the end, it's simply about telling stories, in conditions
that allow me to do my best work. 'The exercise of vital powers
along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope,' to
quote the Greek definition of happiness."
-- J.M. Straczynski ("Babylon 5") on scriptwriting
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut minds pring dawt cahm (y'all)

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:19:49 -0700, Richard Clark wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:16:37 -0000, Frnak McKenney
wrote:

Am I asking too much?

Hi Frnak,

Judging by the questions and responses, I would have to say "Yes."

To this point you haven't exactly demonstrated you have a problem,
just a complaint of a signal of poor quality to a human's perception.
For the clock itself, that complaint is arguably weak.

Let's just examine the evidence for the problem: There is none!

You have a clock that has 100mS resolution, and yet you have never
said how much it is off. 100mS? 1S? 10S? 1 minute? 1 Hour? All,
or any part of any of these metrics?

It's hard to tell exactly how much the clock is off by.

Every time the power hiccups, or I have to move the MAC-II, or power
down the outlet the display switches to something like this (best
viewed with a fixed-width font):

_ _
_ _ /_ /_ /_ /_
/ / /_/ /_ _/ /_ /_

and it stays that way for weeks. Or months.

As Reggie would have chimed in at this point "If you can't measure it
and express it with a quantifiable, then you don't know anything."

Given the extent of my ignorance concerning 'most everything, that
seems likely. grin!

Of course, your only source of accurate information is the one you are
suggesting has a problem. It probably doesn't have a problem, but
then how does one use this source's accuracy to check itself? You
would need a second clock to check it, and we would be hearing your
complaint in stereo.

Hm... I don't _think_ so. At least, I havent heard of any plans for
a High-Def upgrade to Usenet lately, but with Congress currently in
session I suppose anything is possible.

As for testing the clock's accuracy, you're right about needing a
second source ("Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?" or something like
that? grin). On the other hand, as long as the digits are
flashing by, I'm happy to "just trust them".

I've calibrated time standards to the nearest 100nS and it is
accomplished at one sitting, no need for total connectivity such as
you might imagine (unless the clock you have is especially crappy).

Your clock has a resolution of 0.1 second. There are roughly 1
million ticks of the display in a day. A simple XTAL oscillator at 10
MHz would exhibit 50ppm stability and in a day wander up to 0.5
second. The next day it might wander back, the day following it might
slip below by 0.5 second.

If I read the MAC-II manual correctly, each time it "connects to
WWV" (gets a recognizable signal) it calculates and saves an
adjustment value. The front panel has two LEDs labelled "TRIM UP"
and "TRIM DN" to indicate how well it's doing.

... You would be hard pressed to confirm this
with over the air matching to the strike of the WWV gong - except if
the clock is especially crappy (and it could be). The same XTAL might
also exhibit an absolute error of 50ppm and accumulate time error.
This would be far more noticeable over the course of a week (you could
confirm the error by listening to time announcements - but you have
been silent to this issue).

True. And, while I'm sure the _WWV_ announcer hasn't been silent,
_I_ haven't heard anything comprehendable from him/her/it out of my
MAC-II's speaker at any point in the past few weeks.

These worst case errors all presume that the internal circuitry cannot
over the course of 24 hours manage to pull out one of 1400
synchronizing opportunities to phase lock out the error. These
circuits are generally optimized to accomplish just this (they work
fine in watches with a 60KHz signal after all). Your clock may be
especially crappy (but that is unlikely).

Based on the feedback from other posters, it's likely a consequence
of 10MHz propagation. A VLF RF signal like 60KHz reportedly does a
much better job of getting a readable signal to a wide area.

The clock synchronizing circuits don't have to listen to the bandwidth
of noise you hear, the speaker is for your convenience, not the
clock's. I am sure that it works fine with only 1 LED lit - this is
not a case of "can you hear me now?"

No, but (assuming you're subbing for WWV grin!) it would be nice
to know I was going to get a readable message from "you" more than
once every couple of months. (Why do I hear the echo of my parents'
frustration during my colege days? grin!)


Thanks for the feedback. I admit I hadn't thought that much about
the accuracy of the MAC-II; I'm afraid I've been too caught up in
simply trying to get digits instead of "error text" on the display.


Frank
--
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on
arriving." -- Lao Tzu (570-490 BC)
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut minds pring dawt cahm (y'all)

Jon Kåre Hellan wrote:
Sounds like OP is really interested in bringing his father's WWV clock
to life.
But again - this is probably not what you're really after :-)

A totaly different approach occured to me when I found that there
were no time signals readable here. WWV, CHU (if it is still around)
and their European equivalents never seem to be readable here.

The 60 kHz WWV coverage map puts me almost a 1000 miles beyond the edge
of their "weak but occasionaly useable" (my words) propigation. Someone
on another list claims his clock syncs about 30 miles north and at sea
level, but he never answered a question of too what and how often. :-(

What I thought of doing was sort of an radio to NTP interface. Access
the time information via NTP and then modulate a signal with it. 10 mHz
would be more difficult, you might be able to get 60kHz with a sound
card, or something like it. Obviously, you would not need or want
anything very strong and you may be able to couple it directly to the
antenna socket.

I know it would be cheating, but it seems like a fun hardware/software
project. You probably could get a magazine article published about it,
and maybe even sell enough boards to to offset the cost of making them.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/

Frnak McKenney wrote:
. . .
Okay... ARRL Antennas, Chapter 8: Multielement Arrays. We've got
an (approximately, given skip) vertically-polarized 10MHz signal, so
the E-field is moving up and down and the wavefront is a circular
ripple (nearly a straight line by the time it gets to Richmond)
travelling roughly west-to-east, that is, it's hitting my house
end-on.
. . .

I definitely think I'm missing something, but then, I haven't really
made it that far into the Antenna Handbook.

While you're looking at the ARRL Antenna Book, look over the chapter on
propagation. You'll find that when receiving a signal by ionospheric
skip (as you are), the polarization will be randomly oriented. So
there's no point in choosing your antenna orientation on the basis of
some supposed wave polarization. Its orientation will, however, have a
striking impact on its pattern, so you should choose the orientation to
get the most favorable pattern.

The fading in and out of the WWV signal you described in an earlier
posting is very likely due largely or at least partially to polarization
shift -- the signal fades when the polarization rotates to be crosswise
to your antenna, and gets loud when the polarization lines up with your
antenna's. I've seen tens of dB difference switching between a
vertically and horizontally polarized antenna, with the change going the
other way after a minute or so when the polarization rotates. If your
receiver needs a constantly strong signal, you're going to have a hard
time getting it what it needs.

I haven't followed the thread closely, so please pardon me if I've
missed something. Your initial description of the problem sounded like
receiver overload. A sharp preselector would help a lot, although it
sounded like you were using a tuned loop which, if carefully balanced,
should provide that function. If a preselector isn't enough, the next
step is to add an attenuator -- I have to use one between my TV and its
antenna, in fact. You should consider the possibility that the 10 MHz
WWV signal itself is overloading the receiver, in which case an
attenuator is necessary, and the last thing you'd want to do is use a
better antenna. A directional antenna can be used to reduce the strength
of interfering signals if they're coming from directions different than
WWV. But making an antenna which has good rejection in the right
directions can be something of a project.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:12:14 -0000, Frnak McKenney
wrote:

_ _
_ _ /_ /_ /_ /_
/ / /_/ /_ _/ /_ /_

and it stays that way for weeks. Or months.


A whip antenna should be able to sort out WWV for at least one of 1400
synchronizing events in a day. This may be a problem of too much
antenna at one time - and a nearby lightning event at that same time.
Your front end got fried out.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Jon Kåre Hellan wrote:
(Geoffrey S. Mendelson) writes:


Frnak McKenney wrote:

Not sure what you could be referring to... other than the three
computers, 25" monitor, printer, Atmel AVR development board (8MHz
clock), flourescent desk lamp, and overhead I-look-like-an-
incandescent flourescent helix... all within 3 feet of the antenna
and clock. grin!

With all that hardware, wouldn't NTP (internet time) be a better option? Or if
you are not too deep into steel and concrete a GPS receiver?


Sounds like OP is really interested in bringing his father's WWV clock
to life.

But if correct time is the objective, ntp is easy. Over the internet
it is supposed to be accurate to tens of milliseconds. On our network,
1 - 5 ms is typical, but I suppose it is quite well behaved.

A GPS intended for timing gives better than 100 ms accuracy off the
cable. It can discipline ntp on a computer to typically 1 - 10 us
accuracy.

It looks like the Garmin GPS 18lvc us the timing GPS of choice for
hobbyists. You need a pulse per second (PPS) signal. There are other
GPS dongles which don't have PPS on the plug, but you can find the signal on
the circuit board.

More info at TAPR: "http://www.tapr.org". See also the timekeepers
mailing list archive:
"http://fortytwo.ch/mailman/pipermail/timekeepers/".

John Ackerman N8UR is an authority on timing and ham radio.


Why not take the GPS disciplined oscillator (e.g. a Z8301) and use that
to synthesize a fake WWV signal (which you could program up in the AVR),
and radiate that to your MACII. You can easily divide down the 10 MHz
from the oscillator to generate all the needed modulations for WWV (the
tones, ticks, and 100 Hz timecode). Synthesizing the voice
announcements might be a bit more challenging grin "At the tone,
Coordinated Universal Time is...." You could even have a switch to
change back and forth between WWV and WWVH.



But again - this is probably not what you're really after :-)

73
LA4RT Jon