John Larkin
Left the GPS clock, right a radio clock:
Waterproof radio watch, supports radio time stations worldwide:
Internet clock, set by NIST time server (same as PC), Raspberry Pi:
I have those mains synced clocks too, just a few month ago the whole thing in W Europe was off by about 4 minutes because of some error in some power station in some country.
Other raspi is set to either GPS time or GLONASS time.
it seemed like the same situation when I was old enough to afford and buy my own equipment (if I had wanted to) in the mid 1990s. That is to say like there were just a lot of jerks and weirdos. Who didn't know that much more about electronics than I did even at that time.
The Internet was a thing even then and I figured if I wanted to chat with jerks and weirdos I didn't have to spend ham radio equipment-level money to do so.
Maybe was different in the 50s, 60s, 70s etc. I wasn't there so cannot say.
I had an old-timer ham pen-pal whom I corresponded with from time to time over e-mail in the late 90s early 2000s when I was big into learning about tube electronics, learned a lot of stuff from him but it was over the Internet he wasn't particularly big into actually sitting on air very much at that time either and preferred to correspond with kids who wanted to learn online.
Why would anybody want one? Everybody has a cell phone these days.
Do you need to plan lunch to the microsecond?
Quartz watches are pretty good too. I doubt that enough people use WWVB timepieces to keep the service alive. It will go the way of dial phones and analog TV.
It's a cool clock. It's no big deal. After we cancel DST, it will be up-to-date again.
Ours cost a couple of K$. It's a good one. I don't need a desk clock to be accurate to microseconds. That's some sort of fetish.
Can you turn out 250 hams on short notice? 250 per town?
Makes sense, if the official radios all go down for some odd reason.
And now that ChiCom radios have
I do have two cubesat companies within walking distance, and I hang out with one of the managers. They are already doing maritime comm. They have cash, their stuff is cheap, and they are always looking for apps.
Things change.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Speaking of solar, HamSCI propagation experiments, conducted during the
2017 eclipse, used both WWVB and WWV to measure dirunal differences in Heaviside layer skip. 73,-- Don, KB7RPU
WE Hams perfected the cubesat.
Funny thing. We had a tornado rip into town a few years ago. FD lost both l andlines after a rough night. The local cell sites didn't have generators t hen. Besides their link to the MTSO was on the same damn pole that was down .
Funny thing, my two meter handheld and a phone patch to a repeater resulted in 911 dispatch rerouted to the neighboring township, which then dispatche d our folks on a countywide shared vhf simplex frequency.
The chief got two patches to AT&T government services to attempt get his li nes restored.
A direct call on my radio to the Ham stationed at the big city dispatch cen ter in the neighboring county resulted in their techs taking on the battle to ensure the tiny, poor, low prority township of 6000 people had their lin es restored.
Our township is surrounded by radio and cellular dead spots from terrain.
Btw, their personal handheld cells had depleated batteries after a long nig ht. They had no spares and slow chargers.
The statewide digital system was maxed out as each county in our area only had two towers on the trunked system.
The debrief with the chief was painful, as I was tired after a long day of manning radios. But before I left he had a draft of a plan for an inverted vertical antenna on his tower for the deadspots, a repaired cable on the b ackup VHF rig, and a written plan on how to restructure his system to preve nt the problems from re-occuring.
The local cell tower has a backup gen now, and lines come in from multiple directions. While dispatch has shifted to the county, a new inverted antenn a went up a few months ago, just in case.
FM Analog Radios work when IP networks quit.
Steve
But not all clocks are cell phones.
I think you're wrong. There are a large number of clocks that have no way to set the time. If WWVB goes away, I'll have to throw away most of the clocks in my house. I kinda like the one in our bedroom.
That's not going to happen either. DST is useful.
Strawman, of course.
Quite likely.
Often happens in disasters.
And more stay the same. The beauty of the HAM backup system is that no one needs to get rich keeping the system working.
Were these guys hams?
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Cell phones are usually in my pocket or in another room. I prefer to have a clock on the wall that I don't need to bother setting twice a year.
"Keep the service alive"??? Not sure what that means. I expect most peopl e who have WWVB synchronized clocks are not aware that the government is co nsidering shutting off the service. If they were they would be pissed.
Lol!
What are you babbling about? WWVB clocks aren't accurate to the microsecon d. That's your made up fake news. They are accurate to the second every s econd of every day. That way I never have to think about whether the clock is losing a few minutes here or gaining a few there.
You just refuse to be educated. Instead of talking like an ignoramus, go o ut and learn about the contributions made by hams in any number of emergenc y situations.
You complain that I am rude to you, but that is only because nothing else r eaches you. People talk politely to you and you spew this sort of repeated nonsense never bothering to learn anything.
The problem isn't just that emergency networks go down, but because public networks go down and citizens can't reach emergency services.
I thought these were the sort of venture capital startups that you expect t o be vacating the office space in a few months???
Yes, things do, but you don't.
Rick C.
"Professors Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University and Bob Twiggs of Stanford University proposed the CubeSat reference design in 1999"
Do you not know the meaning of the term "proposed"??? It is not synonymous with "perfected".
Rick C.
JL wrote
In coastal areas where you are out of cellphone range having a radio watch is a good way to get accurate time, In an emergency when your sat phone has been swallowed by the waves, batteries are simply empty, you only have a sextant,
3 people in a rubber rescue boat, no food, no water, no radio, heading ? nowhere. ;-) cannibalism.... after awhile, the works....Anyways this is the range of the various worldwide radio systems, copyright Casio:
If US does away with theirs, then that simply confirms the demise, the end of that empire.
What was it that you did say a few postings back about 'top down' not working?
And will kill good working stuff so everybody has to buy inferior more expensive stuff... See, that is where uncontrolled capitalism (using snake oil salesmen) is dangerous and will destroy itself, It is not only that F35 where they left out the second engine for profit reasons,,
I have heard that a big solar storm is heading towards your planet one of these days,
I measured a huge unexpected radiation peak last month, could not explain it, looked up
There is also the space junk chain reaction scenario, it goes like this: Launch of next satellite goes wrong, gets into wrong orbit, hits an other satellite, hundreds of pieces of shrapnel travel at extremely high speed every which way, an hit other sats, those cause more beams of fast shrapnel to hit more sat, those... chain reaction, no more or very few operating sats left.
Not even mentioning nuclear war..
Not to mention the cost of launching so many sats to do what a simple radio transmitter can do with better coverage. Satphones do not always work, are very expensive to buy, even more so to use, on the seas SSB radio is better and cheaper, there are services to get grib files via short wave, send and receive email.. Equipment for pointing a dish from a ship to a geosat for weather costs thousand of dollars..
In a way I would laugh if US did away with that radio time signal system, I am in Europe. And all you enemies will have a party.
The situation probably depends a lot on local legislation history.
Here, it used to be a criminal offense to even possess a transmitter, let alone to operate it. In the 70s there were more and more users of imported CB radios that were illegal here. Aside from that there were people transmitting music in the FM radio band.
Something had to be done. People thought those CB users could be turned into radio amateurs, and a D license was introduced in 1975 that was intended as a real "novice" license: valid for 2 years only and allowed operation only on 6 channels on 2M FM. The idea was that those people could get the taste of amateur radio, and chat with others that would help them to get the real license.
That did not really work out, partly because in Dutch tradidion the
2 years limit was never really enforced and the license was extended perpetually, and also because it was now discovered that those new entrants were not really interested in studying electronics.After some time and a lot of pressure from groups like truckers a legal form of CB radio was introduced (1981 I think) which allowed 22 channels on 11M FM. FM was chosen as it was believed to cause less TV interference.
This caused a tremendous popularity of the CB radio and new interest in the radio hobby, so a new influx of novice amateurs. By then it was decided that novice amateurs were a permanent thing (kind of contrary to the name "novice" that is still used for this license) and the license was extended time after time to get more space for the ever increasing number of users: first 1 MHz of the 2M band, then the whole 2M plus 70cm band, and then more and more segments of the HF bands.
So the incentive to ever get a full license became smaller and smaller. Even worse: instead of concentrating on getting a full license, those novice amateurs lobbied (and continue to lobby) for ever more bandwidth. "I cannot do ATV, we need 23cm". "we have only part of 40m so we cannot work the US, we need the whole 40m". "Germany has 80m, we don't. we need to harmonize the allocations" etc are things that are heard at every meeting of the radio societies.
So it looks like the hobby has been transformed from a method to allow technical experiments with radio in a legal way into a glorified form of CB. And the fact that possession of a transmitter is no longer illegal (only the use is) and therefore the registration system on sales of transmitters was terminated did not make things better either. Now, everyone can order a Baofeng on Aliexpress or Ebay and start using it without license without fearing to get caught.
However, the worst is that the social group of amateurs, a friendly group of people who like to discuss about electronics and propagation and the experiments they do has deteriorated by the influx of the people who only talk about daily life, politics etc, and because they come from circles who previously did not care that something they did was illegal (like possessing a transmitter) tend to come from lower social classes.
Today it can frequently be heard on the bands: we all once were pirates so we are not prepared to hunt down persons that now are pirates. Those people often even do not know or understand that NOT all of the radio amateurs once were pirates. That is only part of the group, and unfortunately it appears to be a majority right now.
These people also see the authorities as their (at least former) enemy, so they are not really prepared to help them or even talk postively about what they do.
I don't think they are considering that. The 60 kHz station is called WWVB. This is about WWV and WWVH which operate on frequencies like 5,10,15 MHz.
Clocks referenced to longwave transmitters are still widely sold. Here in the Netherlands they normally use DCF77 on 77.5 kHz.
There is a new potential problem: the EU's drunkard has suggested to change the EU timezone system. He has apparently held a poll in the EU about the DST (summertime) system and got a lot of response that it should be abolished, and now said that when the people want this, it has to be followed (suprisingly, he never held a poll if people wanted him to leave the scene!).
It is still unclear what the result will be, but it looks like the outcome could be that every EU country can decide whether they want to keep the DST or not, and even to which time they want to switch if they don't.
This could make it impractical to use the longwave signal from another country as a clock reference. Those DCF77-referenced clocks will probably quickly end up in the waste disposal system when they categorically indicate a time that is one hour off at least half of the year. (newer clocks sometimes have a programmable offset, but you would need the original manual to find out how that works, things like keeping some button depressed for a long time and then stepping through the available offsets by quick button actions)
It also includes WWVB. Initial reports on the proposed $6.3 million savings didn't mention WWVB, but it is in there.
Just when they get a system working well someone has to change the system.
Rick C.
Well I would consider WWV and WWVH completely superfluous and eligible for takedown but WWVB would be a different topic. I presume people in the US have "atomic clocks" at home as well that are locked to WWVB.
Those other signals are a thing of the past. Motivations like "it has been on air since 1920 so we should keep it" do not really cut it, and from amateur radio organizations these are better not made. (we already have the reputation of being something of the past anyway)
Those time and frequency services on shortwave are not needed anymore, and certainly not for scientific and research facilities. Claiming that is kind of laughable. They better keep their reputation up for the future, when there are real claims to be made.
Right, all rubber rafts are equipped with sextants. And books full of trig tables.
We did invent GPS.
M is Swedish and not very worldly. I had to teach him about the virtues of rum&coke, particularly while downhill skiing. Now he has two.
Cubesats are cheap to make and launch. You can buy a standard bus and put commercial-grade boards in it, like those Arduino things. College classes do it.
A hand-held satphone costs about $500 retail and will make calls from anywhere on the planet. It's reasonable for a police or fire station to have a couple if they could otherwise be cut off.
HF time and frequency services are antiques.
The US killed analog television and obsoleted tens of millions of TV sets. Maybe the government will offer coupons for GPS-to-60KHz converters so all those clocks will keep working.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
In the US, it was considered off-limits for hams to discuss sex or politics on the air. Simpler times.
I knew a guy who was offended by some other guy who swore on the air, always on the same frequency about the same time. So guy1 jammed guy2. An FCC direction finder tracked down guy1, a judge was in a bad mood, and he spent six months in federal prison.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
There are too many people in prison already. But large fines (that are actually enforced via wage/property garnishment) for serious anti-social behavior are fine by me.
I sometimes read the QST magazine where they'd also name-and-shame egregious offenders breaking FCC regulations on amateur radio usage, I recall that these PITAs were getting relatively enormous fines dropped on them, $5000, $10,000, the kind of money that might make people think twice about doing whatever it is they were doing.
I recall in traffic court in the city you'd get these college kids come in with three unpaid 75-in-a-45 speeding tickets and six unpaid parking tickets for little pittance amounts of $50, $75 each. What's $50 when you're living off Mum n Dad's money, anyway.
You'd think at some point around the fourth or fifth one in a year the law would be able to say "okay. that's five thousand dollars now. Clearly you aren't getting the picture about learning to use car"
75-in-a-45 is way more risky to others life and property than trolling amatuer radio...
It used to be like that here when we had a "license". Later that was changed into a much simpler "permit" and now it is only a "registration".
In fact the amateur bands are made part of the unlicensed bands just like ISM etc, with the exception that you may only transmit on those bands using a registered callsign, and you can only register a callsign after passing an exam. But there are barely any usage conditions that are not covered by items like output power and the like. (in the past the license had a catch-all article that said the station had to be used to the minister's satisfaction, but that is no longer there)
Curiously it does not cover automatic operation, which is still as restricted as it always was. So while you can discuss or do anything on the bands as long as it is "manual operation", a repeater or other automatic station (e.g. APRS) requires an expensive special license and violations are tracked and acted upon.
Our direction finder guys aren't any good. So they only act on violations where they somehow pickup the callsign and can send the mail to the registered address. Things like "not mentioning your callsign often enough" are heavily acted upon, but stations without a callsign (or never mentioning it) can go on with willful interference for a year without being caught.
Last week I personally located a long-time offender, unfortunately not to the person but only to the block, and they were very thankful when being passed the information. But they could not locate him when present at that location. (it is tricky because he is only disturbing repeater traffic at irregular moments and always only during working hours for building construction, I was off on a friday but once I arrived there they were calling it a day, which often happens earlier than usual on fridays)
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