[time-nuts] OOPS on my wwv legal post

[John Marvin]

I was under the mistaken impression that WWV/WWVB had some type of 
direct line to NIST in Boulder. However, when I toured the facility in 
Fort Collins earlier this year, I learned otherwise.  The signals and 
carriers are derived/synced from "ordinary" HP (possibly some more 
recent Symmetricom's) cesium beam atomic clocks.  I wish I remembered 
the details, but I asked how they synced them with NIST. I believe the 
answer was that at one time they had some type of connection to Boulder, 
but now just use a GPS based solution.

The WWV and WWVB stations in Fort Collins are old, and run on a fairly 
tight budget, with a very small (but dedicated) staff. They are not on 
the cutting edge of timekeeping technology.  I'm not trying to imply 
that WWV/WWVB is "inaccurate", but there is nothing special there. Many 
of the participants on this list, if they were determined, could put out 
a signal every bit as accurate as WWV or WWVB, they just wouldn't be 
able to do it at the power levels (especially WWVB) that WWV and WWVB 
signals are transmitted at. The antenna's and transmitter's are some of 
the most impressive parts of the WWV / WWVB facilities.

Regards,

John

P.S. I was also impressed with their backup generator, although I now 
can't remember if that only provided power for the WWVB station, or for 
both WWVB and WWV (they are separate facilities, although in easy 
walking distance of each other on the same property).


On 8/29/2018 7:24 PM, Steve Allen wrote:
> On Wed 2018-08-29T19:49:59-0400 Bob kb8tq hath writ:
>> A few more details about “traceability”. USNO is by statute the official source of time for the US.
> I suggest reading Matsakis, Levine, and Lombardi from this year's PTTI meeting.
> USNO and NIST are both legal sources for the US.
> The USNO site currently has a broken SSL cert, but the paper is also here
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323600621_Metrological_and_legal_traceability_of_time_signals
>
> --
> Steve Allen                    <sla at ucolick.org>              WGS-84 (GPS)
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