Denny,

Thanks for joining in.

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:00:44 -0700, Denny wrote:
On Oct 9, 6:06 am, wrote:
On Oct 8, 9:16 pm, Frnak McKenney

wrote:

Is it possible that I'm picking up a non-WWV dignal so strong that
it's masking WWV? I tried tuning around 10MHz with a shortwave
radio; it didn't find WWV ...
--snip--
Sounds like it's being masked by some type of noise,
but this could just be from the signal being very weak.
If you can hear other stations ok, it probably the propagation
more than anything. Being that you can barely hear it on a
regular receiver seems to bear this out.
--snip--

Even with my antennas on a 150 foot tower there are times of day
when WWV at 10 megacycles is not audible... This is just the way
the daily propagation cycle is at 30 meters.

Grumph! (but the 150' tower impresses me! grin!)

My best advice is to put up a dipole for 30 meters, even if you have
to bend the ends to make it fit your space...

Well, a halfwave 30m dipole comes out to... 49 feet?

I went back and checked the NIST "Time and Frequency Services" PDF
file. According to this, WWV-10MHz comes off "half-wave vertical
antennas that radiate omnidirectional patterns."

Maybe I can wind my two 24.5' wires into vertical-axis helices?
grin!

... A horizontal dipole
being balanced picks up less vertically polarized noise than
vertical antennas... Getting the wire outdoors will help also...
You are likely picking up lots of humm and buzz inside the building
from various electrical and electronic devices...

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!

The other issue is whether your clock is actually able to synch with
the WWV signal... You may have a defect in the clock... It would
seem that 4 or 5 bars should have done the trick...

If it _never_ sync-ed I'd be strongly leaning toward your way of
thinking. In the past, with a "dangling wire" antenna, it has
occasionally taken months to get in sync; with my two loops I've
managed to get it in sync three times (IIRC) in the past two weeks.
(If I were still rational on the subject, I'd just admit that I
_have_ seen improvement -- all the way from "completely
undependable" to "approaching acceptable" -- even if it's not quite
as much as I'd hoped for.)

Thanks again.


Frank
--
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for
curiosity. --Ellen Parr
--
Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
Munged E-mail: frank uscore mckenney ayut minds pring dawt cahm (y'all)