You ignored the question and asked a separate question that makes no sense - "Name what you and the Military would need WWV for when most GPS SATs are killed off."?? What we would "need for"? That makes no sense. If the GPS infrastructure ceases to exist, making sure my Drake TR-4CW is within 100Hz is the least of my worries. I'd love to see WWV stay on the air, but from an practical, economic standpoint it really only serves a very small group these days - hams without their own reference. I can't think of any commercial products that use or need WWV. If you complain about special interest groups making noise about minority "needs", well, this is the textbook case right here.
Gents, On the note of WWV being potentially shut down, if you are free to sign in, I have created a petition in the attempt to get the attention of the powers that be in Washington. Regardless of the age of the system, the WWV/WWVH systems are a known quantity, and have been for decades. Their legacy is simply unmatched, and I think it is safe to say they would be missed should they be deactivated. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-funding-nist-stations-wwv-wwvh
How about the millions, and yes I do mean "millions" of commercially manufactured radio controlled clocks in use all across the country? Are you conveniently ignoring these commercial products exist?
Living next to the site has its advantages, I just checked my oscillator and have it trimmed to 1/14 of a cycle on 20MHz. If anyone is interested, photos are on my QRZ of the transmitter and atomic clock referenced in 1962, along with the WWVB tuning section when I was at the site a few months back! Very cool! KA0KA
re: "it really only serves a very small group these days - hams without their own reference." Another "Trust but don't verify" guy. Have you ever verified the supposed accuracy of your lab standard against something NIST traceable? OR do you just take it on faith?
Well, we still have CHU in Canada for now. I agree that $6.3 M is a rounding error in the scheme of big government. If NIST does not want to continue to operate these stations then turn it over to another agency. I am sure there is some beurocrat out there that wants to grow his little fiefdom. The other option is for the Amateur radio community to take over the licensing and operation of these very important stations. Having worked in government for about 15 years we could cut the fat and operate the stations much more efficiently. To pay for this we would charge a $10.00 fee for each ham license and apply that to the operation of the station and only to the operation of the stations. Not only that I am sure that there are companies out there that would love to sponsor the operational efforts to say that they helped save WWV and WWVH . Just something to think about. In the meanwhile keep those letters coming to your representatives, not that they care or will do anything. Just some thoughts.
What could be done is to declare those wwv sites as national parks. That way, the nps could continue to operate them as an educational investment for the chidruns. Or, fund and operate them like some of the defunct maritime hf stations do....all with a bit of gubment hep.
I haven't read the thread, so apologies if someone has already explained this. Remember that Congress has completely rejected the President's budget and has generally set funding levels far higher than requested, especially for agencies involved in science and research, like NIST. In this case, the House and Senate appropriations bills have funding levels for this account that are nearly $150 million higher than NIST requested. That makes a shutdown of WWV services unlike in FY 2019 as they won't need to make cuts to deal with a reduced budget. Specifically, while NIST requested $573,429,000 for Scientific and Technical Research and Services in FY 2019, the House Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill gives them $720,000,000 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5952/text). The Senate version of the legislation gives them $724,500,000 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/3072/text). It's certainly worth it to make our voices heard that we want these services to continue, but there is little actual danger of them being shut down over the next year.
Let me address your question first. My current shack standard is an HP 8924C with an OCXO, which has allowed me to get sub-Hertz accuracy in ARRL FMT's - http://www.b4h.net/fmt/fmtresults201204.php Recently, I acquired a GPSDO for about $45 that I have used to check the accuracy of the HP's OCXO, and it's most definitely "good enough" for what I am doing. NIST considers the GPSDO approach as a worthy frequency standard: "...because the time and frequency outputs of a GPSDO are continuously steered to agree with UTC, they will have better long-term accuracy and stability than any free running oscillator (including a cesium standard). Therefore, from a technical viewpoint, a well designed GPSDO should be able to deliver traceable time and frequency measurements as well or better than any standalone frequency standard." - https://ws680.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=842479 Which gets me back to my point. Ham's don't need NIST traceable frequency standards, unless they want them. Many rigs today utilize TCXO's that have better than 10 ppm stability specs, the IC-7300 is rated at "less than ±0.5 ppm", for example. 30+ years ago, periodic tuning of your calibrator in your analog rig was necessary to keep your VFO accurate for in band operations. This isn't the situation with modern rigs, and cheap frequency standards are available to hams that would be the envy of national lab 30 years ago. ALL of that said, I'd like to see WWV remain, but it doesn't fill the "need" like it did 30 years ago. Steve KV6O
I am not conveniently ignoring anything, you are mixing up the services they use. The "millions" of radio controlled clocks use WWVB, not WWV. WWVB is in the LF spectrum, WWV is in HF. https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/radio-stations/wwv https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/radio-stations/wwvb This thread was about "WWV discontinuing operations". Shutting down WWVB would be very disruptive the the millions of clocks and watches out there - I have several clocks and a watch that synchronize to WWVB, and certainly don't want to see it shut down!
The thread was amended many times to include the observation the wording in the NIST proposal that started this whole topic quite clearly includes the elimination of WWVB as well. http://www.osec.doc.gov/bmi/budget/FY19CBJ/NIST_and_NTIS_FY2019_President's_Budget_for_508_comp.pdf “NIST will discontinue the dissemination of the U.S. time and frequency via the NIST radio stations in Hawaii and Ft. Collins, CO. These radio stations transmit signals that are used to synchronize consumer electronic products like wall clocks, clock radios and wristwatches, and may be used in other applications like appliances, cameras, and irrigation controllers.” Emphasis added. The reason for the omission in the original post is based on the ARRL parroting, without any vetting whatsoever, the article on SWLing.com that didn't notice the wording more aptly describes the WWVB broadcast. It's been a gossip train every since. The ARRL isn't very good about checking sources for their news items, but many folks take them at blind faith. Thankfully, this may well be an example of Washington Monument Syndrome and may already be overcome by events thanks to the reports of N8HM and others on this thread. [ADDED] Just noticed the post from KC8VWM so sorry for the duplicate info.
As others have mentioned, I doubt any of this is going away, this is just a budgeting exercise by NIST. However, my posts were specifically addressing WWV, not WWVB. They plainly state that they will discontinue, and then list the impact - which would be pretty severe! It's a "OK, you ask me to reduce my budget, here's the plan and impact" statement. My point is the impact of discontinuing VVW (what this thread was about) would mainly be felt by hams, not many other user out there "need" WWV. Agreed, the impact to WWVB wild be much more severely felt across the country.
