Does anybody use LF or HF standard frequency and time signals ?

[chris_leyson]

Given that NIST might shut down WWV, WWVH, and WWVB standard frequency and time signal stations in 2019 does anybody use standard frequency and time signals these days ? In the UK things like Radio Teleswitch count as LF time signals, still in use but due to be phased out in 2020.

[edpalmer42]

I can understand why some clueless politician would suggest getting rid of these services, but I was shocked when I heard that this proposal came from NIST themselves.  Maybe they could justify killing WWV and WWVH, but there are thousands of radio-controlled clocks and weather stations that rely on WWVB for time signals.  Is NIST saying that quartz accuracy is good enough for the public?

Ed

[PA0PBZ]

My clocks use DCF77 and I use GPS and rubidium in the lab.

[chris_leyson]

In the UK by 2020 the "radio teleswitch" contract with the BBC will have run out, if it hasn't hasn't already, so the Droitwich transmitter will have no purpose. MSF Anthorn might get integrated into E-Loran if that ever happens and if E-Loran doesn't happen then you don't need MSF anymore. Your land based LF receiver is more likely to pick up "wall warts" and other switched mode supplies. Not surprising nobody uses "off air" standards anymore, you get better coverage and accuracy with GPS.

 It's funny, I'm sitting next to long case clock that might be 200 years old and that relies on gravity.

[Wolfgang]

For me its a GPS receiver from Leo Bodnar, an EFRATOM Rubidium standard plus an OCXO now running for a few years.

[james_s]

I can understand why some clueless politician would suggest getting rid of these services, but I was shocked when I heard that this proposal came from NIST themselves.  Maybe they could justify killing WWV and WWVH, but there are thousands of radio-controlled clocks and weather stations that rely on WWVB for time signals.  Is NIST saying that quartz accuracy is good enough for the public?

Ed

Thousands? Try tens of millions. I have at least half a dozen devices in my house that get their time from the 60kHz WWVB signal, and one clock that sets itself from the WWV shortwave signal. Additionally the WWV and WWVH broadcasts are my go-to for assessing reception and propagation conditions. To shut lose these resources just to save what amounts to peanuts in the overall budget would be a travesty.

[innkeeper]

meh, unfair you force us to limit to 4... when most could possibly be used. ... then your answers are skewed by what's used most often...

"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play"

[mark03]

Has it actually been established that WWVB is on the chopping block?  All of the reportage I've been able to find conflates the HF and LF stations, making this unclear.  Even a large percentage of hams don't know what WWVB is or how it differs from the HF stations.

[Wolfgang]

Hi,

I have heard from a lot of people that in the US the noise level originating from Chinese wall-warts, LED lighting, PLC, ... has rendered all the LF/MF/HF time services useless, at least in urban areas. I wonder if they will be missed so much.

[edpalmer42]

Has it actually been established that WWVB is on the chopping block?  All of the reportage I've been able to find conflates the HF and LF stations, making this unclear.  Even a large percentage of hams don't know what WWVB is or how it differs from the HF stations.

NIST has been very careful to NOT explicitly list the stations being considered for extermination.  However, they do state that they will see a saving of:

$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii

Since they haven't explicitly listed them, they can always change their minds later and say that they always meant to include or exclude whatever they please.  Typical politician behaviour.  The people at NIST have obviously been keeping bad company. 

Ed

[chris_leyson]

@innkeep Sorry I messed up, added more options and didn't change the allowable number of votes, can't change the number of votes now.

[HB9EVI]

Seems to be a common trend that all kind of public institutions are running saving regimes and cutting their services; still wondering about that my taxes are used for.
However here METAS, the federal metrological agency already shut down LF time beacon HBG in 2010, so now we fully have to rely on german DCF77, GPS or ntp servers on the net

[Lord of nothing]

  I use the Windows Time Server.

[edpalmer42]

I use the Windows Time Server.

Shame on you!  Where's your national pride?  You should be using at.pool.ntp.org !  http://www.pool.ntp.org/zone/at

The only reason that I'm not using the Canadian pool is that I have a system connected to a GPS receiver which makes it a Stratum 1 server.  I point all my devices to it. 

Ed

[drussell]

NIST has been very careful to NOT explicitly list the stations being considered for extermination.

One guess is that it is basically a way of NIST saying "Oh, you want to cut our budget?  Ok, how about we cut this, this and this...  <insert list of valuable things that might cause a stir>"

Some additional discussion about this on SoylentNews last month:

https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/08/26/1548226

[G0HZU]

I still sometimes use my old homebrew 198kHz offair standard here in the UK. It's my own design from over 25 years ago and I now use it to check the OCXOs in my various bits of RF test gear. I sometimes do this a couple of times a year but I do try and do it at least every couple of years for my best RF sig gens. The rest of the time the homebrew standard is powered off and left in a cupboard.

For less critical stuff like this it's actually more suitable than GPS because it is so fast and convenient to use. I don't need anything like the accuracy of GPS and I try and keep the OCXOs within about 0.1Hz of 10MHz. Usually they are within 0.05Hz when checked.

I'm not looking forward to the Droitwich LF transmitter closing down because it will probably mean using GPS in the future. I did try a decent Quartzlock GPS reference a few years ago and it was just too slow to settle and it means having an external antenna and a little shrine somewhere to run the GPS module where it won't get moved or powered off by accident. By contrast, the LF offair standard can be taken out of a cupboard and powered on and it only takes a couple of minutes or so to settle and it does the last bit with a slightly underdamped response across a minute or so. So it does give a warm feeling that it is settling correctly without just looking at a lock/unlock indicator. There's so point having accuracy performance better than this in my case because the OCXO yearly ageing is greater than the accuracy of the OAS. Also, I'm not deluded enough to think I 'need' to fill my workroom with 10MHz cables from a common distribution amp and run everything from GPS 24/7

[richnormand]

I use the NRC and NIST signals for checking my receivers and spectrum analysers at home.
The NIST signal is used with two clocks in the house with the advantage of auto-setting for daylight saving time.
In my lab I use a GPS disciplined oscillator and two rubidium clocks.