[time-nuts] Loss of NIST transmitters at Colorado and Hawaii

[Peter Laws]

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 4:50 PM paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mobile phone time is good enough.

And is often pretty darn good.

Should WWVB go off the air (and it's far from certain that it will),
there might be a market for a USB dongle that plugs into a PC that
outputs the correct code on 60 kHz.  I'm sure there is an FCC Part 15
specification that is lenient enough to prevent the transmitter
doesn't run afoul of intentional radiator rules but that still allows
clocks in an average house to see the signal.

The problem with marketing that product is that while there are (say)
10 million WWVB clocks in US homes, there are only 27 people (not
counting time-nuts subscribers and employees of NIST) who know that
those clocks are disciplined by a government radio station.  When they
stop receiving the signal, most of those 10 million clocks will be
discarded because the owners will assume that "the atoms in the atomic
clock finally ran out" ("Ah never did think Mildred was too smart
bringin' in that atomic clock what with the radon and all.")

I'm not certain a product with a potential market of 27 people (plus
time-nuts subscribers and the still-employed NIST employees) is enough
to make it worthwhile.

But if WWVB does go dark, I would like one of the dongles so my mantel
clock will keep good time.

-- 
Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!