[time-nuts] Loran, GPS, Lightning, Timing

[Tom Van Baak]

> I am seriously considering involved as I am a bit of a weather nut too.

I suspect this is quite common. You don't have to get into precise time very deep before you realize that all your timing gear is just pile of environmental sensors in disguise. Before time-nuts began, the first timing guy I met was Doug Hogarth (www.niceties.com) and he was seriously into weather measurement. He later got into the world of ultra-precise weight (mass) measurement. So I guess time-nuts is just a subset of measurement nuts.

A quartz oscillator makes a good thermometer and sometimes a hygrometer and barometer too. An OCXO is a sensitive anemometer (just ask anyone who uses a PWM fan for TBolt temperature control). Quartz also makes an excellent accelerometer, gravimeter, tiltmeter, or even seismometer. An OCXO with EFC is a good voltmeter. Atomic clocks are superb magnetometers. And as Einstein predicted, atomic clocks make good altimeters and speedometers too.

So everything we play with is a sensor. It's no wonder we are preoccupied with environmental sensing. Maybe Time is just what's left over after you shield or attenuate or compensate for everything else.

/tvb

See also:

Quartz Resonators vs Their Environment: Time Base or Sensor?
http://dev.quartzdyne.com/pdfs/quartzresonators.pdf
http://www.paroscientific.com/