Shutoff of WWV-WWVH: two days left to the end of the subscription

Take a minute and read through the petitions on the Whitehouse.gov Website that have received the 'required' 100K votes -

Most of them are a joke, just another social media boondoggle to make people 'feel like they're doing something meaningful' when it accomplishes absolutely nothing.

 

So only 19,000 signatures. That’s a shame, another bit of history lost. If each of you that signed would donate $110 thats about enough to keep it running for a year. Maybe, I’m off on the math, I thought I read somewhere that it was $2M per year to operate. Of course that’s with government overhead, salaries, etc, etc...

Why don’t we amateurs just buy WWV? Or better yet just take it off the hands of the government so they don’t have to dispose of the stations? We could probably run them for one tenth the cost or less with volunteer efforts and such. Seriously, if we really want to keep WWV on the air let’s take over the operatation and maintenance of the stations. It’s right up our alley after all.

Where the heck is the ARRL right now? For less than 10 bucks per year to our membership fee we could probably pull this off.

Dave, Ki7AAR

 

its a waist of old tech stuff. And money we dont drive model t's to work anymore. nor ride horses for everyday of life because time moves on . So its time to close it down and aim for new stuff for todays needs and standards

 

sell your old radio clocks and move to newer internet clocks. and blue tooth devices.

 

click----------------------------------------------------------silence can be wonderful---------------------------

 

It is a shame that all of the clocks and watches out there that are radio controlled will no longer be accurate. Citizen watches will be one of the many affected.

 

Last heard on the WWV/WWVH frequencies: Chicago's "Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?". I have used and continue to use WWV for setting my clocks precisely and for checking band conditions. What a shame to lose it for relative chump change.

 

As long as I keep it on my wrist (and warm), my cheep Timex wristwatch keeps pretty good time. Before that, I had a Seiko that was the same way. Whenever I feel the need to check/reset it, I typically use my computer clock (synchronized to time.nist.gov) or my cellphone.

 

When millions of clocks and clock radios don't reset there will be a lot of pissed off people!

 

They could probably get a lot more signatures if whitehouse.gov didn't make you go through a time-consuming registration process just to sign a petition on the website and then you have to click a link in an email to confirm your registration and then again to confirm your vote on any petition you sign on the website. A lot of people won't take the time to do that. They certainly don't make it easy for you!

 

Can't cut health care, millions would be left uninsured.
Can't cut nutrition assistance, millions would go hungry.
Can't cut housing and energy assitance, millions would go homeless and freeze.
Can't cut disability, millions would starve.
Can't cut social security, millions wouldn't be able to retire.
Can't cut college loans, millions wouldn't be able to go to school.
Can't cut National Endowment for the Arts, we wouldn't have offensive pieces to look at.
Can't cut discretionary spending, there's not much left to it anyway.
Can't cut federal commercials to promote Christmas trees, millions wouldn't know what to do around December 25.
Can't cut federally funded yoga classes for federal employees, millions wouldn't get their exercise.
Can't cut studies to find out why American's don't want to use the metric system, millions still don't know how long a meter is.
Can't cut federal funding for Pakistan kids to come visit space camp and Dollywood, ... well, why not?
Can't cut grants such as studying the 1972 video game Pong, ...
Can't cut funding for a professional cricket league in Afghanistan, ...
Can't cut funding for a wine-making curriculum for community colleges, ...
Can't cut funding to research the effectiveness of golf equipment in space, ...

I could go on. There're out there with some google searches.

And we can't cut WWV/B/H, millions of clocks would lose time and cause an unending cascade of problems for people because they don't know what time it is.

www.usdebtclock.org

I've been playing around with an NTP server. Attached a cheap USB GPS receiver as a time source.

Looking at a WWVB clock on the wall and looking at what time GPS says it is, I can't physically tell the difference.

Attaching to NIST time servers in Colorado and Maryland over the internet, they're off by about 300 milliseconds (compared to GPS)(Internet delay...)

Attaching to the NTP time server pool in the U.S., they're also about 300 milliseconds off from my GPS. (Again, internet delay...)

Other HF time/frequency references (other than WWV/H)

Canada, CHU, 3330 KHz, 7850 KHz, 14670 KHz
Ecuador, HD2 IOA, 3810 KHz
Moscow, RWM, 4996 KHz, 9996 KHz, 14996 KHz
Spain, EBC, 4998 Khz, 15006 KHz

There are probably some others.

 

How do I add NTP to my Citizen Navihawk watch?

 

Well..there is always CHU 7850khz Canada we can count on for time signals

 

That can be a benefit. It makes it useful for checking propagation conditions.

WWV-B receivers are still cheaper than GPS is receivers and there are tons of products that rely on them and cannot be upgraded.

Not to mention satellites could be destroyed by a large solar event. Ground transmitters are much more resilient and can be repaired much faster than a satellite.

 

That's a good thing, if the ONLY paths you're interested in are to/from WWV(H). I'm not, and use DX clusters and reverse beacons to see where propagation exists (or doesn't).

Thankfully, a GPS receiver is only a ONE time cost. A GPS receiver can be used to lock a reference oscillator, in the same manner as a WWV receiver.

Yes, a GPS satellite can be destroyed by a solar event (or other). Thankfully, there are several.