CHU Time Station : Western Canada Coverage Proposal // Fax to NRC is Ottawa SVP
 

CHU Time Station : Western Canada Coverage Proposal

The CHU time station is Canada's domestic shortwave time signal station.
CHU existed long before the Internet and satellite navigation systems like
(GPS, GLONASS, Galileo).

CHU provides most of the functionality of the US WWV & WWVB (Bolder,
Colorado) and WWVH (Kauai, Hawaii).

Problems with CHU's configuration that this proposal addresses

* The 3.3µs per km of path that makes CHU's signals problematic for users in
Western Canada. Even the NRC realizes this: "for all distant users of CHU,
the dominant source of time error comes from the radio wave path reflecting
off the ionosphere as the radio signal travels from the transmitter".

* The poor quality of CHU reception in Western Canada and the Artic, North
of 55º Latitude.

It is suggested that the 7335 kHz frequency be reused, but it may be
advisable to find alternate frequencies. The CHU signal format may need to
be tweaked so as to take into consideration 2 transmitter sites.

- A new set of atomic clocks will be needed, as well as equipment to sync
them to NRC's atomic clocks.
- It may be possible to obtain secondhand atomic clocks from UBC (Vancouver)
or other universities in Western Canada.
- This proposal could be replicated in Newfoundland using another existing
CHU frequency, as Eastern Canada has CHU coverage problems as well.
- Universally upgrading CHU's Ottawa transmitters to 10 kw may not fix CHU
coverage problems in Western or Eastern Canada.

[...]

http://cbc.am/CHU.htm