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WWV Shortwave Time Broadcasts May Be Slashed In 2019 (qrz.com)
New submitter SteveSgt writes: A forum thread on QRZ.com indicates that the shortwave time broadcasts by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from stations WWV (Colorado) and WWVH (Hawaii) may be slashed in budget year 2019. [One of the proposed reductions includes "$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii."] While the WWV broadcasts may seem like an anachronism to some Slashdotters, they remain a crucial component in many unexpected services, from over-the-air broadcasters and traffic signals, to medical devices, wall clocks, and wrist watches. The signals serve as standard beacons for radio propagation, and as a frequency reference for alignment of a broad range of communications equipment. It's easy to imagine that not even the NIST knows every service and device that could be impacted by this decision.
GPS tend to be more expensive but I'd really like to see a $50 wall clock that's always accurate to milliseconds and, on the other hand, I can place that clock in areas that can't receive a GPS signal. Sure fewer people are wearing watches but it seems to be the norm on all emergency services and military personnel as well as some of us who just enjoy to easily tell the time from a durable device that doesn't need to charge every night. Sure GPS may be better in many situations but there are a lot of valid use cases where WWV still is the best solution, in my opinion.
Be of good cheer, the military-industrial state will soon collapse.
Meanwhile, we must do all in our power to oppose, resist, and subvert
its desperate aggrandizements. As a matter of course. As a matter of
honor.
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They used to be, back when clocks were powered from an AC wall socket. Their gears were synchronized with the AC motor, and the power company worked really really hard to make sure the long-term average AC cycle was exactly 60 Hz. If equipment problems caused the frequency to drop slightly below 60 Hz, they'd run at slightly above 60 Hz for long enough to get the clocks back on the correct time.
Then we switched to clocks running off batteries with built-in quartz timing mechanisms. In theory they're better, but in practice they're never calibrated well enough or their calibration drifts with age and temperature, making them less accurate than the old AC powered clocks. The best quartz watch I had lost a little less than a second a month. Then I got too greedy and killed the golden goose - tried adjusting the quartz timing mechanism myself. After that I could never get it below 2 seconds of drift per month. What I didn't realize until it was too late was that as the error gets smaller, you have to wait longer between each adjustment (weeks) to determine if you had improved it or overshot. With the 60 Hz power line method, only a single clock has to be calibrated to be super-accurate; and all the other clocks powered by AC synchronize off it.
Truly deranged thinking. The defense budget is a fraction the size of social services mostly which goes to fund deadbeats. Defense is to keep our country from being overrun by invaders who literally would love to steal your home, your job, the food right out of your mouth. Ironically the social services which are really driving up our federal debt is worsened by our unwillingness to secure our border and stop the foreign aliens coming in and abusing our welfare services.
It's not that simple.
First it needs an accurate source of time. These days that could be GPS, but it needs to keep working when GPS is not available so you need an atomic clock at each site.
Then you need some equipment to generate the signal. Yeah, a Raspberry Pi could do it, but have you certified that Python script to be correct and to produce a signal that is synchronized within nanoseconds of the atomic clock?
Finally you need a high power transmitter to broadcast it. Actually you need five because it broadcasts on five different frequencies.
Oh, and you need to keep monitoring it, not just at the transmitter but around the country to ensure propagation and accuracy. Conditions change, if you are relying on it for anything important you have to keep checking.
$6.3m actually sounds quite reasonable for such a system.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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It's called propaganda and the US has the most effective propaganda machine the world has ever known.
That's quite a stretch. It's really nothing more than the DoD marketing campaign. I'll agree with you, in that the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other, but I'm also just starting to see signs of a turn back toward the middle. Calling every veteran a hero, and all the "thank you for your service" stuff is a bit much for me, and I'm a veteran...one day a year is enough for me, thank you very much.
Just another day in Paradise