I've added a link to the survey near the top of my callsign lookup page. I suggest that y'all do likewise. 73, Jim
@W9JEF This is one of the petitions I was referring to. There was another that may have had about the same success ... as in not. Are you aware of these past petitions?
The @W7NSS petition linked by ARRL? http://www.arrl.org/news/concern-ri...io-community-over-wwv-wwvh-shut-down-proposal Due to poor response. it has been closed to further signatures. But it remains archived: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-funding-nist-stations-wwv-wwvh
@W9JEF ... yes, that is the identical link I just posted and is 1 petition is 1 of 2. I don't know where the other is, but there are links to those petitions on this and other ham forums. And, the best that one did was 20K out of the 100K necessary signatures needed to make a difference. This is the dismal response that I am referring to. The point being is that trying to rabble-rouse hams is a fraction of what needs to be rabble-roused.
Is that the best you got? Sounds like a speech a politician would say after he loses a landslide election. Truth hurts sometimes. Fact is there was so little interest in the WWV petition, they quit asking for signatures. Time to pull the plug.
For those that hang their hat fully on GPS... More and more decision makers are distancing themselves from the GPS Only approach given its increasingly obvious vulnerabilities. FAA: Maintaining a skeleton legacy ground based nav capability to counter loss of GPS NIST: Time Distribution Alternatives for the Smart Grid US Congress: National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2017/2018 WWVB clearly has a role to play here. WWV/H likely does as well.
Fair question. Outside of radio amateurs no one would miss WWV not to mention the vast majority do not even know exist or has any use for. The frequency standard reference it provides has been replaced with GPS. Receiving one of the WWV signals is hit and miss, and takes special equipment and antenna systems to utilize. GPS is dirt cheap, received everywhere, and can be fitted in a ring on your finger if needed. WWVB is a different story and is not going anywhere. Even though the public is not aware of WWVB, there is a huge commercial market for and using the service. It is estimated there are over 50 million devices like watches and radio clocks use WWVB. Like it or not times have changed and technology is changing everything. The "Airwaves" have become a commodity as valuable as land, and God is not making any more of either one of them. The solution is easy for WWVB and to that extent WWV is to treat it as a SERVICE collecting a user fee so to speak sort of like Microsoft does with a royalty. Yeah it is a tax. Say $1 for every gizmo sold would more than pay for both WWV and WWVB. But when it comes down to WWV, you can do anything WWV can do plus a whole lot more with GPS. It is just cheaper, better, faster, and must smaller form factor that works everywhere. Using WWV as an argument for Beacon is just a Straw Man because there are many other beacons to choose from. No one would miss it.
But vulnerable... even to other GPS receivers as we discovered during our UAV work. All true, but all proposals to date have not separated the three services: WWVB, WWV and WWVH. It has been all or none thus far in budgetary summaries whether realistic or not. Keep in mind the US time broadcasts exist in protected "standard frequency and time signal" cutouts so those spectrum portions aren't likely to be used for much else whether the US uses them or not. This is some good out of the box thinking. On par with your grounding articles/posts. Point made. I'm happy to have GPS as a backup frequency reference to WWV.
KF5LJW said: ↑ No research needed. Perhaps you should do research and come up to date. With GPS anyone can get accurate time and frequency reference anywhere on the planet. Even your cell phone can do the same thing. WWV is like public television, antiquated long ago along with 8-track tapes. Time to quit wasting public funds on out of date technology. Time to pull the plug. W9JEF said: ↑ Anyone with a cellphone or email account can communicate with anyone else. So is Amateur Radio not antiquated; and continued FCC licensing, a waste of taxpayer money? Why the vitriolic tone? Is the reply not grounded in the same “reasoning” as your tendentious put down of WWV?
There is a danger in only having one standard, no matter what that standard is. Depending on -new-, -cutting edge- technology without a back-up is also very foolish. Another face on this thing is how many other places/nations/countries use WWV? What do they do if it disappears? "Just up-grade!", right? Easy to say, maybe not so easy to do. Okay, here's the obligatory 'cheap-shot'... You wanna get rid of WWV 'cuz it's -OLD-! Just another one'a them ol'farts, right? And just like those ol'farts, they are old because of a good reason... think about that.
WWV Funding Restored, Centennial Preparations Continue "With the shutdown threat ended, preparations continue for marking WWV's centennial this fall."
...and the govt. just reversed a decision to phase out incandescent bulbs in favor of of more "modern" bulbs!