[time-nuts] PC Time Servers

[Kevin Rowett]

Richard,

Faros uses a precise time of day to determine the time it took for the beacon signal to reach your location.  It uses this info to determine if the path was the short path, or the long path.

The NCDXF beacons use a GPS receiver to determine a very accurate time of day, and to start their transmission at a precise time.  Faros looks at the clock time when it hears the signal arriving at the receiver it’s listening with. It knows the exact location of the transmitter and your exact location.  Form there, it can calculate the spherical distance, both the “short path” and the “long path”.  With the distance known, and the delay in receiving the signal, Faros can then determine if the signal arrived at your location via the short path, or the long path (or both!).

Faros gets the correct time of day, by using it’s own built in NTP.  It has a list of NTP servers, and it uses the NTP algorithm to determine the “delay” to that server.  Faros ranks the quality of the NTP servers by delay.  

An interesting experiment is to tell Faros a location that’s much different than where it’s receive really is located.

KR


> On Dec 30, 2019, at 6:55 PM, Bob Bownes <bownes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Localhost is yourself. Typically the IP address of 127.0.0.1
> 
> You could use LH to update the time on the machine she is running on. 
> 
> Bob
> 
>> On Dec 30, 2019, at 21:52, Richard Mogford <rchrdm at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> 
>> I have not been on this list since 2016 and have some new time questions.
>> 
>> I am using a program called “Faros.”  It is for ham radio.  It controls a radio receiver and automatically checks 18 transmitting beacons around the world.  It displays the signal strength of each beacon.  This gives the radio operator some idea of whether they could contact someone in that area.
>> 
>> Faros depends on an accurate time source that has consistent delays.  I guess “delay” here means the time it takes for the time signal to get to the PC and Faros.
>> 
>> There is an editable list of time servers in the software.  There is also a test function that checks time source availability and delay.  The only one that has very low delays (e.g., 1 ms) is called “localhost.”  All the other servers have larger delays, such as 38 ms or more.
>> 
>> Can someone tell me what “localhost” is?
>> 
>> I have a simple GPS receiver (from Adafruit) connected to the PC that sends data to Lady Heather.  Is there a way I can use the data from the GPS in Faros?
>> 
>> Richard
>> 
>> 
>> 
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