[time-nuts] HP 117/10509a...

[J. Forster]

Maybe only 'favored' people are getting the inside information. It clearly
would give a commercial advantage.

-John

=================



> On Sat, Jul 07, 2012 at 02:23:56PM -0700, J. Forster wrote:
>> I agree with that objective, but, I have seen peoplwe take BC-611 radios
>> and put cheap CB into the box. That interests me not in the slightest.
>
> John,
>
> 	Depends.
>
> 	For time of day receivers, a retrofit makes a lot of sense.
> Otherwise you need to deal with providing your own serial, IRIG,
> display, etc. outputs.
>
> 	I'm not sure I want to reimplement all that if I can pass
> the time code through and synthesize the modulation.
>
> 	At least in the short term.  Long term, you want to develop
> the whole thing, but this will get receivers working until that
> can happen.
>
> 	[Warning: More whining below.  :) ]
>
>> I agree the LORAN-C shutdown was idiotic, but NIST is essentially
>> obsoleting all phase tracking receivers by going to BPSK. IMO, it is
>> essentially like the change from LORAN-A to LORAN-C, except that it will
>> happen at some defined date/time rather than over the years.
>
> 	No, and that's my biggest problem.  There /isn't/ a defined
> date/time.  We got a week long experiment, then a month long experiment,
> then "sometime in July or August this becomes permanent."
>
> 	If there had actually been a published timeline, as well as
> a published specification for the new modulation, so that we had
> time to work on this in advance, I'd really have no objection.
>
> 	But there are still no docs and we still have no date -- the
> best we can tell is, the change will happen before there is any
> additional documentation besides the PTTI paper.
>
> 	Supposedly this is because they are still testing, but who
> rolls out a change to a production service without knowing what it
> is until the last minute?
>
> 	Here, a lot of people received their notification from
> vendors like Spectracom -- why is a vendor notifying me of changes
> to a government service?  Shouldn't NIST do that themselves?  Why
> not a published announcement on the WWVB website?  (Not just the
> testing announcements, but a real notification that a permanent
> change is pending and what it's going to look like.)
>
> 	Shoot, why not announcements on WWV/H?  There's probably a
> fair bit of overlap in terms of people that use both.
>
> 	After the loss of LORAN, losing the only backup we have,
> without a defined timeframe, and with no ability to develop a
> receiver in advance, is really pretty bad.  Even USCG gave us
> some notice.
>
> 	--msa
>
>