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From: louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.ham-radio
Subject: Re: Will WWV/WWVH always be here?
Keywords: WWV, WWVH, Heathkit, clock
Message-ID: <1990Jan10.175719.8720@haven.umd.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 90 17:57:19 GMT
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I suspect that WWV, at least, will be around for a little while yet.
I spoke an engineer in Boulder a few weeks ago, and he said that
they're in the process of procuring a new time-code generator for the
WWV transmitters. It will allow the WWV transmitters to transmit the
year, along with the day of the year and time as part of the time
code.  They recently did a similar upgrade to the WWVB 60kHz transmitter
at the first of the year, after the leap second.

As far as the Heathkit "Most Accurate Clock", well, its not.  The
RS-232 interface has some severe problems which precludes its
effective use to those persons that want accuracy in the millisecond
regime.  If you're looking for somethat that's accurate to within a
second, you'll have no problem with it.  There are a number of other
WWV based radio clocks on the market, though not "consumer priced" like
the Heath clock.

If you're a time freak, like me, you'll really want to invest in a
WWVB clock.  The propagation characteristics at 60kHz are much more
predictable than the HF propagate at 5, 10 and 15 MHz.  We've got a
Spectracom 8170 WWVB clock in use here, and there are a bunch of other
scattered around the Internet.

louie