Can atomic clock in Houston receive NIST signal?

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 15:01:57 -0800, zeytuntsyan wrote:

Knowing that the WWVB bounces their signal off the ionosphere
No, it doesn't. At 60KHz, propagation is almost entirely ground wave,
which is why they picked that frequency to do the job, since you don't get
the phase distortion associated with ionospheric propagation.

--
Then there's duct tape ...
(Garrison Keillor)
 
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:47:48 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

So you use an electrically-shielded loop antenna.
Nice big chunk of ferrite's good.

How the hell do they get antennas that work inside those radiocode wrist
watches? Do they craftily use the strap?

--
Then there's duct tape ...
(Garrison Keillor)
 
On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:59:34 -0600, Voice of freedom
<VoiceFreedom@freedom.naa> wrote:

I've had all kinds of problems with mine too, and I live in Denver, fer
pete's sake!
Pick up the phone and dial 303-499-7111! :)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 
<zeytuntsyan@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1109990603.199306.98080@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
DaveM wrote:
WWVB at 60Khz is a ground wave over the coverage area. That's why a
VLF
frequency was chosen for the broadcast. Typically, frequencies below
1 MHz
are not reflected by the ionosphere. Propagation is best at night
because
the D-Layer of the ionosphere is heavily ionized during daytime hours
by the
sun, and causes heavy absorption of the radio energy. Since the
sun's
effects are minimal at nighttime, the broadcast signal is least
absorbed,
increasing signal strength over the area of coverage.

--
Dave M
MasonDG44 at comcast dot net (Just substitute the appropriate
characters in
the address)

Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!

I am not really aware of the technical details but I did read that "The
LF signal propagates by groundwave, following the curvature of the
earth; the HF signal propagates by skywave, and bounces off the
ionosphere. All signals travel at the speed of light." from
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/stations/overview.html

Which I must honestly say confuses me even more...How come there is
mention of two signals? Does that mean the information is simulcasted?

(This clock has taken up more of my time than I'd have expected...)
The time signal is not simulcast on ground wave and sky wave. The ground
wave and sky wave are phenomena based mainly upon transmitted frequency.
Since the VLF broadcast of 60 KHz is far below the frequencies that are
affected by the D-Layer of the ionosphere, its propagation is almost
entirely by ground wave. It isn't reflected back to earth by the
ionosphere.
The HF broadcasts of WWV and WWVH are reflected by the ionosphere and,
although there is a ground wave present in the HF broadcasts, the sky wave
is predominant. The signal that is reflected by the ionosphere is called
the "sky wave". That's why LF and VLF broadcasts have significantly shorter
range than HF broadcasts. Amateur radio broadcasts in the HF bands can be
heard around the world because of the signals bouncing between the
ionosphere and the ground. Since the 60 KHz signal is not reflected by the
ionosphere, it doesn't enjoy the wide coverage of the HF broadcasts.

--
Dave M
MasonDG44 at comcast dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in
the address)

Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!
 
Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> wrote :

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 14:36:01 +0000, Fred Abse
excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:47:48 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

So you use an electrically-shielded loop antenna.

Nice big chunk of ferrite's good.

How the hell do they get antennas that work inside those radiocode wrist
watches? Do they craftily use the strap?

I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me.

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.
That's the frustrating thing, I have an atomic watch and it never fails to
synch right, but that Atomix clock in my room will unsynch all the time and
I can only keep it in one place in the room for it to work most of the
time, I can't even hang it on the wall where I want it.

--
A Voice Of Freedom in the
United States of America
 
On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 08:32:40 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.
I wear a $120 Bulova. 15 seconds slow since November. I sync it about once
in six months.

About the same accuracy for six times the price :)

--
Then there's duct tape ...
(Garrison Keillor)
 
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:04:50 +0000, Fred Abse
<excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 08:32:40 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.

I wear a $120 Bulova. 15 seconds slow since November. I sync it about once
in six months.

About the same accuracy for six times the price :)
I have a $9.95 walmart watch/stopwatch. It's dead-on accurate.

I wear it about 4 times a year.

Mike Smith
 
9:35am Pacific Standard Time, Clock has successfully (finally)
synchronized as denoted by a solid tower icon on the clock. Checked
with online NIST time down to the second the time is exact. Los Angeles
had clear skies today for the first time in over 2 weeks I don't know
if that means anything but just thought I'd note the fact. Also, the
unit was not moved or changed in any way from the way I left it.
 
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:26:02 +0000, Mike Smith wrote:

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:04:50 +0000, Fred Abse
excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 08:32:40 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.

I wear a $120 Bulova. 15 seconds slow since November. I sync it about once
in six months.

About the same accuracy for six times the price :)

I have a $9.95 walmart watch/stopwatch. It's dead-on accurate.

I wear it about 4 times a year.
What do you wear the rest of the time? ;-)

--
Then there's duct tape ...
(Garrison Keillor)
 
Mike Smith <mws@wt.net> wrote :

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 21:56:19 -0600, Voice of freedom
VoiceFreedom@freedom.naa> wrote:

Jim Thompson <thegreatone@example.com> wrote :

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 14:36:01 +0000, Fred Abse
excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:47:48 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

So you use an electrically-shielded loop antenna.

Nice big chunk of ferrite's good.

How the hell do they get antennas that work inside those radiocode
wrist watches? Do they craftily use the strap?

I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me.

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.

That's the frustrating thing, I have an atomic watch and it never fails
to synch right, but that Atomix clock in my room will unsynch all the
time and I can only keep it in one place in the room for it to work most
of the time, I can't even hang it on the wall where I want it.


Return it.
I can't, I bought it 2 years ago, and it's been a pain ever since. I just
won't buy Atomix ever again, especially since they ignored my request for
help with it. It may have been a bad model and if they supported it, they
could have gone under. Let them go under, I won't buy an Atomix product
ever again.

--
A Voice Of Freedom in the
United States of America
 
On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 18:13:01 +0000, Fred Abse
<excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:26:02 +0000, Mike Smith wrote:

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 16:04:50 +0000, Fred Abse
excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 08:32:40 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.

I wear a $120 Bulova. 15 seconds slow since November. I sync it about once
in six months.

About the same accuracy for six times the price :)

I have a $9.95 walmart watch/stopwatch. It's dead-on accurate.

I wear it about 4 times a year.

What do you wear the rest of the time? ;-)
Clock-wise... nothing, but I do have a cell phone in my pocket... :p

Mike Smith
 
yong321@yahoo.com wrote:
[cross-posted to sci.electronics.misc, houston.general]

I bought a Ravinia atomic travel alarm clock from Wallgreen. It's small
and has built-in antenna. I set timezone and pressed the button to
manually synchronize. It showed flashing tower icon for about a minute
(searching for signals). Then it showed flashing wave tower icon
(receiving signal) and just tower icon alternately. A few minutes
later, I expected to see stable wave tower icon (synchronized). Instead
I see no icon at all. I tried this outdoors and indoors holding in hand
turning in different directions. I let it sit overnight (indoors).
There's no change. Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak,
Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the
unit is too cheap (<$10)? Thanks for suggestions.

Yong Huang
yong321ATyahoo.com

If antenna icons mean the same as those of an Oregon Scientific unit,
your clock's losing the icon altogether means the clock did not receive
(enough) usable signal.

Here, near the PA/ NY border, my two different Oregon Scientific clocks
have no trouble receiving WWVB. TX is much closer to Boulder so one
would think that WWVB would be stronger than here in NY. However, I
read - from a person who seems to know what he's about when it comes to
electronics - that where he lives (even closer to Boulder than TX) WWVB
reception varies between poor and non-existant.

A $10 "atomic" clock? Cool. I would like to take a look under the hood
of one of those. But I have never seen a Walgreens here in NY State.
:-(
 
yong321@yahoo.com writes:

I bought a Ravinia atomic travel alarm clock from Wallgreen. It's small
and has built-in antenna. I set timezone and pressed the button to
manually synchronize. It showed flashing tower icon for about a minute
(searching for signals). Then it showed flashing wave tower icon
(receiving signal) and just tower icon alternately. A few minutes
later, I expected to see stable wave tower icon (synchronized). Instead
I see no icon at all. I tried this outdoors and indoors holding in hand
turning in different directions. I let it sit overnight (indoors).
There's no change. Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak,
Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the
unit is too cheap (<$10)? Thanks for suggestions.

Yong Huang
yong321ATyahoo.com
I have a wall clock (Atomix) and a watch (Casio) that receive it with no
trouble -- the wall clock is receiving the signal about 23 hours a day, from
the looks of it...

--
Patrick "The Chief Instigator" Humphrey (patrick@io.com) Houston, Texas
www.chiefinstigator.us.tt/aeros.php (TCI's 2004-05 Houston Aeros)
LAST GAME: Houston 1, Milwaukee 0 (February 5)
NEXT GAME: Tuesday, February 8 vs. Utah, 11:05 AM
 
Je 6 Feb 2005 07:45:02 -0800, yong321@yahoo.com skribis:

I bought a Ravinia atomic travel alarm clock from Wallgreen. It's small
and has built-in antenna. I set timezone and pressed the button to
manually synchronize. It showed flashing tower icon for about a minute
(searching for signals). Then it showed flashing wave tower icon
(receiving signal) and just tower icon alternately. A few minutes
later, I expected to see stable wave tower icon (synchronized). Instead
I see no icon at all. I tried this outdoors and indoors holding in hand
turning in different directions. I let it sit overnight (indoors).
There's no change. Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak,
Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the
unit is too cheap (<$10)? Thanks for suggestions.
I'm going to guess that either it's too cheap, or that you're too far
from a PBS television station.

http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/1877.pdf

Houston's PBS station is KUHF TV, broadcast on channel 8. If you
can't receive that station over the air, maybe you can take the clock
somewhere closer to the broadcast antenna, but I don't know where that
is. You could probably call the station and ask where it is, and
confirm whether they carry the NIST time signal. 713-748-8888

http://www.houstonpbs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=abt_staff_directory



--
Steven M - unspam@hal-pc.orgwax.invalid (remove wax and invalid to reply)

"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting
otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
-- Theodore Rubin
 
Take a look under the hood, and see if you can tap into the existing
antenna, and add some wire to extend it. Maybe take it apart, scan it, or
photograph it, and someone here can suggest where you can tap into it.

--

--
Kim..."A Man Of True Frankenstinean Proportions"
<yong321@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1107704702.420659.134720@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I bought a Ravinia atomic travel alarm clock from Wallgreen. It's small
and has built-in antenna. I set timezone and pressed the button to
manually synchronize. It showed flashing tower icon for about a minute
(searching for signals). Then it showed flashing wave tower icon
(receiving signal) and just tower icon alternately. A few minutes
later, I expected to see stable wave tower icon (synchronized). Instead
I see no icon at all. I tried this outdoors and indoors holding in hand
turning in different directions. I let it sit overnight (indoors).
There's no change. Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak,
Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the
unit is too cheap (<$10)? Thanks for suggestions.

Yong Huang
yong321ATyahoo.com
 
"Steven M " (unspam@hal-pcwax.org.invalid) writes:
Je 6 Feb 2005 07:45:02 -0800, yong321@yahoo.com skribis:

[cross-posted to sci.electronics.misc, houston.general]

I bought a Ravinia atomic travel alarm clock from Wallgreen. It's small
and has built-in antenna. I set timezone and pressed the button to
manually synchronize. It showed flashing tower icon for about a minute
(searching for signals). Then it showed flashing wave tower icon
(receiving signal) and just tower icon alternately. A few minutes
later, I expected to see stable wave tower icon (synchronized). Instead
I see no icon at all. I tried this outdoors and indoors holding in hand
turning in different directions. I let it sit overnight (indoors).
There's no change. Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak,
Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the
unit is too cheap (<$10)? Thanks for suggestions.

I'm going to guess that either it's too cheap, or that you're too far
from a PBS television station.
PBS has nothing to do with this.

Those clocks receive a 60KHz signal from Colorado, the low frequency chosen
for good penetration.

And I've never had a problem with my $20 clock from Radio Shack, here
in Montreal, which has to be further away from Colorada than Houston.

Placement can be a factor. I did have to fiddle a bit with where I put it
when I got it a year ago. And there are some places in the house where
I lose the signal, even though the change in location is in yards.

I suspect there is fairly little difference between clocks, with cosmetics
being the big factor. So cost likely means very little.

Local noise can affect reception. Placing it on a tv set likely will mess
up the clock's ability to receive the WWVB signal.

Many tend to only check the WWVB signal once a day, usually in the very
early hours of the morning when reception may be best and local
interfereance minimal. If that's the design, it may not sync up
until enough time has elapsed. Of course, some have a button to press
to sync on demand, which allows multiple attempts as the clock is moved
around.

Michael
 
<yong321@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1107704702.420659.134720@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I bought a Ravinia atomic travel alarm clock from Wallgreen. It's small
and has built-in antenna. I set timezone and pressed the button to
manually synchronize. It showed flashing tower icon for about a minute
(searching for signals). Then it showed flashing wave tower icon
(receiving signal) and just tower icon alternately. A few minutes
later, I expected to see stable wave tower icon (synchronized). Instead
I see no icon at all. I tried this outdoors and indoors holding in hand
turning in different directions. I let it sit overnight (indoors).
There's no change. Is this because the built-in antenna is too weak,
Houston is too far from Colorado where NIST real atomic clock is, the
unit is too cheap (<$10)? Thanks for suggestions.

Yong Huang
yong321ATyahoo.com
Location and orientation are key considerations to making one of these guys
work well. Be sure to keep the clock well away (>8 ft) from any TVs and
computers. Orient the clock so that the antenna is broadside to the
direction of Boulder, CO from your location. Check the instructions to see
which way the clock should be positioned relative to Boulder. If your clock
is placed inside a building with a lot of metal in the structure (steel wall
studs) or surroundings (metal sidng), that may inhibit good reception.

These clocks normally only try to sync with WWVB around midnite, which is
normally the time the signal strength is highest. You might wait until late
at night and try to sync manually. I live in Fla, and have had no trouble
making several of these clocks work reliably.

--
Dave M
MasonDG44 at comcast dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in
the address)

Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!
 
I bought one for $14.98 three days ago which is designed for setting on
a table as well as hanging on a wall. It was shortly after 2:00 PM EST
(I am in Virginia), and I tried everything you did, indoor and outdoor,
EXCEPT manually adjusting the time which started at 12:00 AM on January
1, and nothing worked.

In the following one hour and a half, it attempted to receive the
signal again (by showing the radio tower icon) but failed.

Then I put it on a desk and left home. When I got home after 2:00 AM,
the clock HAD successfully received the signal. Month, Date and Day of
the Week were all right.

So far, everything appears fine.

Roland

yong321@yahoo.com wrote:
Thanks to everybody. It's embarrassing to say but I have to admit
that
I was not patient enough when I posted the original message this
 
zeytuntsyan@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/stations/overview.html

Which I must honestly say confuses me even more...How come there is
mention of two signals? Does that mean the information is simulcasted?
You'll find the answer in the link you posted. In the left panel, click
on 'WWV' and 'WWVB'.

--
John Miller
email domain: n4vu.com; username: jsm(@)
Surplus (For sale or trade):
Tektronix 465B oscilloscope
New Fellowes leather brief/notebook case
 
On Sat, 05 Mar 2005 14:36:01 +0000, Fred Abse
<excretatauris@cerebrumconfus.it> wrote:

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:47:48 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

So you use an electrically-shielded loop antenna.

Nice big chunk of ferrite's good.

How the hell do they get antennas that work inside those radiocode wrist
watches? Do they craftily use the strap?
I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me.

Me, I wear a $20 Timex, that I sync to NIST about once-a-month.
Usually out no more than 4 seconds.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
 

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