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Atomic Clocks - Transmitter on the Fritz?
About a week ago two Casio atomic watches and one Oregon Scientific atomic
clock stopped syncing up at night. They were being kept in the exact same location as before, and they synced up reliably every (or almost every) night for a couple years. I can't figure out why this is happening. Have there been any changes in the WWVB transmitter and/or propagation conditions recently? I am located in central NJ, which can be a bit unreliable, but usually once I find a good spot in the house, it stays reliable...until now! - Doug |
It might be propogation. I have my receiver packed ready for my move later
this month, so I have not been listening, but there have been auroras lately and that is never good. Also, do these clocks use a battery ? Maybe they need a new battery. My other thought is whether anything is interfering with the clocks being able to read the signal properly. Hope you solve the mystery. :) Strength and Honor "DougSlug" wrote in message et... About a week ago two Casio atomic watches and one Oregon Scientific atomic clock stopped syncing up at night. They were being kept in the exact same location as before, and they synced up reliably every (or almost every) night for a couple years. I can't figure out why this is happening. Have there been any changes in the WWVB transmitter and/or propagation conditions recently? I am located in central NJ, which can be a bit unreliable, but usually once I find a good spot in the house, it stays reliable...until now! - Doug |
I don't have a lock on WWVB on my normally-very-active big wall clock,
either. But, my little Oregon Scientific shows we had a full scale signal in Charleston, SC in the last 6 hours (It checks time 6 times a day). You can get to the NIST radio people at their email address: http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/index.html and read all about these services from NIST. The WWVB antenna pictures are worth the trip...(c; According to their webpage, this is the outage report: http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq...wvboutages.htm During normal operation, the 60 kHz signal from WWVB is transmitted 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. The table includes all periods since January 1, 2004 when the signal was turned off or intermittent for more than 5 minutes. Date MJD Began (UTC) Ended (UTC) 03-06-2004 53070 1346 1500 01-02-2004 53006 1018 1113 01-01-2004 53005 1232 1328 http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/index.html On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 03:06:23 GMT, "DougSlug" wrote: About a week ago two Casio atomic watches and one Oregon Scientific atomic clock stopped syncing up at night. They were being kept in the exact same location as before, and they synced up reliably every (or almost every) night for a couple years. I can't figure out why this is happening. Have there been any changes in the WWVB transmitter and/or propagation conditions recently? I am located in central NJ, which can be a bit unreliable, but usually once I find a good spot in the house, it stays reliable...until now! - Doug Larry W4CSC POWER is our friend! |
My big La Crosse RC wall clock has stayed in sync, but my small Oregon
Scientific RC clock has sometimes been off by as much as a second. I think the wall clock has a better uninterrupted signal, and the other one has to compete with my computer and radio noise. Still, my forefathers worried about reading the sundial on a cloudy day. I get snippy about a discrepancy of a second. Hmmm. |
Corbin Ray wrote:
My big La Crosse RC wall clock has stayed in sync, but my small Oregon Scientific RC clock has sometimes been off by as much as a second. I think the wall clock has a better uninterrupted signal, and the other one has to compete with my computer and radio noise. Still, my forefathers worried about reading the sundial on a cloudy day. I get snippy about a discrepancy of a second. Hmmm. Watch the La Crosse wall clock on days when they go to daylight time and off daylight time. They have a chip hardware bug that's sort of unique. They'll reset back to the old time at the end of that UTC day, eg. in the fall at 00:00 UTC at the start of the next day, they'll leap forward one hour. So you get 3 time changes twice a year. It's from having to remember the daylight bit until local time reaches 2am but not act on it; they got the logic wrong on turning off remembering in the next day. -- Ron Hardin On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk. |
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