[time-nuts] The USFS Frequency Standard...

Bob Camp kb8tq at n1k.org
Sat Feb 11 14:58:10 UTC 2017


Hi

One *could* make a WWVB “new modulation” receiver with some sort
of MCU demo board and a handful of parts. It would be fine for a basement
lab / learning sort of project. Given the way the semiconductor world works,
the longer you wait to start that project, the better a board you will have
as the base of the project. 

At the end of the project with everything working fine, you still have WWVB
as the “source”. Propagation issues still limit what you can achieve. 
MSF (as far as I know) is still on the air. That still is going to cause issues
if you are in the New England area. Miami is still a long way from Colorado.
If you happen to live in Denver, not much of a problem at all. 

How many people want to spend more than a year on that sort of thing when
a < $10 GPS USB dongle would do as good a job? It’s a back burner project
here. There isn’t a real big push to get it onto the front burner. Yes, following 
the masses like that is a bit sad. There are things that would be learned doing
this sort of thing. Some of them would be about WWVB. A few of the learnings
would be about GPS. As others have very correctly pointed out, diverse sources of time
are a good thing. We are headed towards a GPS monoculture. 

Bob


> On Feb 10, 2017, at 8:02 PM, paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Burt you missed nothing. It would appear that all good intentions did not
> lead to new business. So there you go the old receivers useless and no new
> ones made.
> Certainly all of the old ones can be made to work using the cheatn dpskr
> shared with time nuts. But boy compared to the gpsdo's this lazy time nut
> likes the simplicity and economics. Sure I can't say I am the first kid on
> the block with a USFS but that hasn't been much of a topic lately.
> 
> I do fire up the old wwvb receivers just to make sure the cheatn dpskr
> works and that they still do. But 99.9% of the time its the gpsdo these
> days. Its there until it isn't.
> Regards
> Paul
> WB8TSL
> 
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 3:47 PM, Burt I. Weiner <biwa at att.net> wrote:
> 
>> Technically speaking, the United State Frequency Standard (USFS) is still
>> considered to be transmitted via WWVB on 60 kHz, essentially making WWVB
>> the USFS.  But is WWVB still a usable frequency standard reference since
>> they've gone to phase shifting their signal for time keeping purposes?
>> Will GPS become the "official" USFS reference signal?
>> 
>> Is there a 60 kHz WWVB receiver out there that can still be used as
>> reference?  Is there a commercially made receiver out there that now uses
>> the phase shifting technique of WWVB for accurate time keeping?
>> 
>> Have I missed something?
>> 
>> Burt, K6OQK
>> 
>> Burt I. Weiner Associates
>> Broadcast Technical Services
>> Glendale, California U.S.A.
>> biwa at att.net
>> K6OQK
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