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)