Radios and antennas have started to arrive, as the WWV Centennial Committee prepares for a trial run of WW0WWV the weekend of August 24-25, 2019. A tower and beam will be hoisted along with several verticals. We’ll be testing band and notch filtering in an attempt to reign in the extreme RF environment created by WWV and WWVB. On-air tests will start Saturday afternoon, 8/24 and run through Sunday 8/25. We look forward to working available hams across the country who happen to tune us in. We’ll post notes on specific times and frequencies on our website, and hopefully you can get an early QSO with WW0WWV. Please visit http://WWV100.com to learn how you can support this event. The WW0WWV special event station will celebrate the 100th anniversary of WWV starting September 28 and running through October 2, 2019. Operations will be on most HF bands, some satellite, and 6m meteor scatter. Details at http://WWV100.com. (Photo: Greg Ella, N0EMP, uses a 10MHz loop to monitor the broadcast signal of WWV at the site of the special event station. He was able to measure the drift of a GPSDO to about 1 cycle in 90 seconds against the 10MHz WWV carrier.)
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, we often hear strong 20 and 25 MHz WWV signals when Sporadic E clouds are active over the Nevada-Utah area. WWV 25 MHz is consistently an excellent indicator of Sporadic E propagation for us. Here is a recording of WWV on 25 MHz as it was heard on the KPH Point Reyes, California, receiver during one of the WWV comex Ohio event announcements on 17 June 2019. PLAY AUDIO http://hflink.com/wwv/WWV_kph_2019-06-17T07_09_42Z_25000kHz_amn.mp3 As this year is a down-solar-cycle Sporadic E peak, it has been possible here at certain times and days to copy WWV and WWVH simultaneously on every frequency 2.5, 5, 10, 15 MHz and WWV on 20 and 25 MHz. WWV 25 MHz is excellent for calibrating the VFO of HF radios. Using WWV, it is possible to check calibration to better than 1 Hz accuracy, direct to a primary NIST source. That, in itself is extremely valuable, and many RF metrology geeks have long taken it for granted. The trend toward local GPS-based frequency sources is generally good for accuracy, but we still like to have that WWV frequency check.
Looking forward to it, thanks for the effort. The decency of the staff at WWV and its sister stations (as well as CHU) to QSL short wave listeners shows they care about the radio community. So in a sense having this celebration is sort of a "giving back" to the big station by joining with it to popularize the centennial. Despite recent talk of closing the system (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/17/1796554/-Shutting-down-WWV-WWVH-and-WWVB) there's a real need for it. Hopefully events like this will show that enough people understand and use these stations. May they tick on in time.
Please see https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/help-save-wwv-wwvh-please-listen-do-survey.669883/ and enter your survey Tnx 73 KB7CFV
Good morning! The WW0WWV trial run was so successful, we were able to complete our initial tests in 1 day. For those of you hoping to work us yesterday or today (Aug 24, 25) and didn't, we apologize for being efficient! Given the work to date and what we face at the end of September/October, everyone involved agreed we should capitalize on our efforts yesterday with a day off today. Yesterday we were able to verify filtering, which was the big goal, and we even think we’ll be able to pull off 30m with a little struggle. Our 5Ghz computer network is working well with a 10 mile line-of-site haul to our repeater site and backbone. Initial assembly of the SteppIR beams went quickly, and we had one up on our temporary tower in just 2 hours, although more time for final calibration will be needed in September. All in all, a very productive day! We did hand log a quick 25 QSOs on 20m, and we'll upload to LOTW later today. Be sure to listen for us September 28 through October 2, 2019 for the 100th anniversary of WWV. 73, W0DAS The WWVB south array looms over one of our SteppIR 2-element Yagis yesterday at the WW0WWV opearting site
