Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!jade!ucbvax!UDEL.EDU!Mills
From: Mills@UDEL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: WWV update
Message-ID: <8712241211.aa23482@Huey.UDEL.EDU>
Date: 24 Dec 87 17:11:04 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 28

Folks,

A phone call to the WWV Engineer in Charge revealed that yes, they did
realign the timecode generator a couple of days ago, which corresponds
to the time the Heath clocks lost theirs. Happens the ancient generators
(15-20 years old) had drifted from the Inter-Range Instrumentation
Group (IRIG) specification, which does say "10 dB down," not "all the
way down," as apparently assumed by the Heath designers. Well, the
subcarrier has been misadjusted then since before I've been watching
clocks, almost a decade now. Anyway, The EinC kindly offered to return
the adjustment to its "original" state early next week, so our clocks
might get a Christmas present after all.

Turns out Precision Standard Time, Inc., is actively lobbying WWV to
replace their wheezing timecode generators and there is a good possibility
that might come to pass. If so, there may be a good opportunity to lobby
the "advance-warning-leap-second" issue, which comes down again at the
last second of the year and which will cause zillions of clocks all
over the world to hiccup. Therefore, we might do well to widely publicize
our outrage when, as expected, our clocks swish and sway in the first
few minutes to hours after the leap.

Phil Karn, I was wrong. The new transmitters have not arrived WWV yet,
although they have been running at WWVH for about a year. Yes, the reason
for the backwave was continuous phase tracking and yes, today's technology
doesn't need that. If anybody from IRIG is alive today, punch him in the nose.

Dave