The AM Forum

Hey guys,  QST!

Long time, no QSO.

I don't know if this has been brought up here before or not. I didn't find anything in a quick search. I also don't know what's going on with the forum. I hope it's being backed up and this post makes it to the main database.

I just found out something very important that affects us all as hams, swl's, and Harry homeowner too. In the 2019 US budget they have proposed to shutdown WWV and WWVH. As you know this is very important to us. You all understand the benefits of these stations here so I probably don't need to explain much more.

I just found out about this, and I hope it's not too late to stop it.

I created a White House petition to possibly prevent this from happening. Please digitally sign this petition!

All you need is a name and a valid email address to sign. It will email you to confirm and you're done!

We need at least 100,000 signatures (the more the merrier) between now and Sept. 17th 2018 for the White House to consider this petition. Time is ticking for WWV!

I know this will affect me because I use WWV often, all my clocks other than computers, are also radio controlled and I'd hate to lose that convenience.

The petition is located here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/proposed-shutdown-nists-wwv-and-wwvh-radio-stations

Here is the article on the NIST website:
 
https://www.nist.gov/fy-2019-presidential-budget-request-summary/scientific-and-technical-research-and-services-2

TNX for signing, GL to us all.
de RAndy, N3LRX/8

BTW... Already a petition started here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/maintain-funding-nist-stations-wwv-wwvh

That's good to know, thanks.

The site isn't designed very well it doesn't show recent or current petitions first. So I didn't see that one.

I haven't used WWV to check the time in many years.  All gadgetry is now linked somehow to time standards, so I just need to look at the cell phone. 

I have used it though to check propagation on the different transmitting frequencies.  But really, now that QRZ.com gives us the bad/good report per band on their homepage, we're probably all set. 

Actually, I can oversimplify things even more with the ka1tdq propagation report:

"Propagation will be really really bad for the next 4 years!"

Jon

OM,

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. We could debate endlessly about the "need" for HF time signals, but our taxes are paying for the GPS satellites, which deliver time more accurately than WWV ever could.

With the Congress floating trial balloons about cutting Social Security and Medicare to "balance" the budget, this isn't the time to defend an outdated technology when its time has passed.

I'm sorry about your clocks - I had one too, along with a Lampkin 105B - but WWV and WWVH are wartime relics from the analog age.

FWIW. YMMV.

Bill, W4EWH

[Edited 2018-08-19 08:55Z to remove political opinion]

Hey Guys, One of the great things about this site is no politics. Lets please keep it that way. Many thanks.

Mike / KE5YTV

They are already throwing things away.  I have a friend who works at the facility.  He's pulled quite a few 4cx15000s out of the garbage.

The low freq station in the island also went  solid state this year. 

Here's the kids looking over a pair. 

--Shane
KD6VXI

Relying in satellites today is pretty much last years technology.

People are going back to hf.

Even short traders are setting hf circuits up to either replace or supplant fiber links.

I believe TCI was the company marketing antennas for short delay in propagation (low angle of radiation, I assume).

The Chinese and others (assumable) can shoot satellites out of orbit.  The government is supplementing GPS as its been shown to be very easily hackable.

Destroying our hf circuits for anything is pretty short sighted.

--Shane
KD6VXI

Yes, thank you very much !!

I signed the petition. 

It doesn't matter if the VLF signals transmitted by WWVB (I think that's the one) is "old" technology.  There are hundreds of millions of clocks and other devices that USE this technology and that is as good a reason as any to keep it going.

The American public has invested most likely a billion dollars in these types of devices, and they deserve to be able to keep them functioning.

I have 4 such clocks in my house and I'm just one person.

Could you get me an atomic clock please?
If it's not too much trouble of course.  8-)

Yep, let’s just throw all the radios away also.. Because it’s old tech. Buy a cellphone. It does it all..

I don't know if GPS is "last year's technology," but I can't afford a Cesium standard for my shack, so I use my cellphone for accurate time info. I'm sorry about your auto-set clock, but the one I had, and probably most of the others, was hard-wired to the old Daylight Saving Time transition dates, and was therefore obsolete many years ago.

As for the stock market, I am very curious how "short traders" are planning to use HF instead of fiber links. Please tell me what service this usage will be licensed under, what frequencies they plan to (or are) using, and what advantages HF offers over fiber for high-speed data transmission.

And no offense, but we're not "destroying our hf circuits," merely mothballing unneeded equipment. Everything changes, and although the changes might be inconvenient, the pace of technical advances is not going to slow down: even the captains of major cruise ships keep their sextants only to display to passengers.

I might miss being able to zero-beat my 100 KHz crystal calibrator to WWV, but I'll get over it: even the least expensive oscilloscope I own will provide a more accurate frequency reference. The age of analog has passed: HF will still be there, but although I used to dream about becoming the "Sparks" officer on a tramp steamer, I had to modify my career plans when GMDS came online.

IMHO, WWV and WWVB are no longer serving enough taxpayers to justify their expense.

W4EWH

What is the budget for WWV(H) ...How much money does it really cost to keep going...?

Dennis,

It's appx 6.3 million dollars.  Would be very interesting to compare that against the security cost of the weekend golf junkets.

Two bar graphs showing the numbers outlined in the FY19 budget request vs. FY18 annualized CR
Illustrative program reductions in FY 2019
-$6.3 million supporting fundamental measurement dissemination, including the shutdown of NIST radio stations in Colorado and Hawaii
-$3.5 million for Lab to Market, which seeks to accelerate technology transfer from federal laboratories
-$6.6 million in environmental measurements projects across NIST laboratories, including work measuring the impact of aerosols on pollution and climate change, and gas reference materials used by industry to reduce costs of complying with regulations
-$5.8 million eliminating the NIST Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Measurements program, including Urban Dome research grants to advance the direct measurement of GHG emissions on the scale of cities or regions.
-$6.7 million in forensic science, reducing the program size to $7.3 million by prioritizing measurement science in the NIST labs and eliminating program management functions and external grants for the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science and the Forensic Science Center of Excellence
-$4.1 million in R&D targeting application of NIST quantum breakthroughs to applied measurement needs, including temperature and atmospheric gas metrology

Taken from :  https://swling.com/blog/2018/08/nist-fy2019-budget-includes-request-to-shutdown-wwv-and-wwvh/




As to the other post:  I don't have any automatic WWV sync'ed clocks.  At all.  My clocks are all sync'ed to NIST time server, via an NNTP server I run at home.  I don't need the stations, but I do need the service.  Maybe you where confusing me with someone else or responding to multiple people?

Mothball?  Yeah, like VOA and other stations that where "obliterated" during budgets of Clintonia?  I'm down the street from VOA Delano.  It's nothing but antennas now, the actual transmitters being moved out, scrapped or relocated and given to the CCA.  The antennas they want to pull down.  This isn't mothballs, this is destruction.  Last time they brought it up, they wanted to turn VOA Delano into a homeless camp.  Yeah.

As to traders using HF as a backup, etc:  https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part-i-the-west-chicago-tower-mystery/

There are other "writeups" to back his story up.  One of the members here works for a major HF antenna mfg, maybe he can shed some light on the subject (it could all be Bee Ess as far as we know).

--Shane
KD6VXI

The government mothballs nothing.. Even if they tried. Crack heads would break in and steal everything.. Sounds like the typical mentality of buying supplies for emergencies. By the time an emergency happens, everything is useless anyway.  In the case of radio.. No one would know how to use it. So.. cut the funding somewhere else.. Six million is pennies to the government.

I've signed. Here's hoping.

I can tell you something about high frequency trading and HF links (I was involved in such a project).  In short, HF is much faster than fiber optic links.  So, if you're doing high frequency trading in London, and you are trading something that is actually taking place on the NYSE, you can get your trade into the exchange in London many microseconds faster using HF (all other things being equal) than over fiber.  So you get there first.  Or you know the outcome of the trade first and get your in before everyone else.

It can be billions of dollars.  This is big money.

Personally, I think high frequency trading at that level (i.e., your servers in the exchange racks have an advantage due to raw speed of data access) should be illegal or better still negated by randomizing all trades from a time standpoint within the exchange which would effectively nullify the advantage of exchange located servers.

I will miss WWV as a frequency standard.  I used it to adjust the high stability oscillator to within 1 hz of the 20 MHz WWV when it was receivable here.  I also have a couple of “atomic” digital wall clocks that are set automatically by WWV.
I could not trust off the shelf test equipment without some sort of verified frequency standard.

I signed the petition. Not wanting to get full blown political here, but isn't it pretty obvious there are tens to hundreds times more of our tax dollars thrown away by our gvt. to less important things? We've seen the national deficit, so how will 6.3 M improve upon that? There are less deserving government fundings out there; trust me.

If this gets pushed through (and it probably will) all I can see this money doing is getting wasted on something stupid, or more likely becoming some bureaucrat's pocket money. At least now, it is somewhat useful and we know what that money is being used for.

There's my two cents worth and remember " Don't feed the sharks".

...Phil

Federal government is looking to potentially shut down WWV and WWVH.

If they outsource maybe they can use this recording.

https://youtu.be/9CpsPgXyIm8

better get your QSL cards.

I remember reading about how GPS satellites are individually updated every day via WWV? The artical went on to say about the importance of exact time be precise and that if the time standard was off of any individual satellite that the entire array would be off by a large amount throwing off the accuracy of any GPS receiver anywhere on earth. I suppose this is done via UHF? Atomic clocks are not the exotic time devices as they once were inasmuch as technology is common place nowadays, so I guess they could be updated from just about anywhere the US government would want to  set up a UHF station to control them?

I also remember that Canada also had a snafu about their time standard being shut down but the citizenry protested and it remains on to this day ticking away up thar in Canada...........

 
Just my 2 cents worth ;D ;D      

Flex 5000 uses WWV to do frequency calibration. I suppose I can find another source. Perhaps CHU. Does anyone know how accurate CHU's frequency is?

JJY in Japan mimics many of WWV's frequencies. When the band is open you should be able to hear it. I can hear WWVH from Hawaii when the bands go long.

There are several master clocks throughout the US, the Naval Observatory clock comes to mind, I wonder is any of the others will be shuttered?  I am amazed at how many different places have master clocks. 

Sometime back I downloaded Dimension 4 and it syncs my computer clock rather than the Windows choices.  It will skip around and pick the site with the lowest latency then sync the computer clock display with more choices than I imagined.

If WWV/WWVH/WWVB are going to be closed that will leave only foreign sources being broadcast which is a shame.  I have signed the two petitions and plan to write my congressmen about this because I have several clocks and a wrist watch that depend on WWVB.  I hate to replace them.  Not only that but National Energency Regloratory commission recently changed the accuracy of the 60 cycle standard to accomodate windmills and solar.  This means your standard clocks will lose time over the month more so than before.

This is kind of he same as when public safety organizations started going to 700/800 mHz trunked systems.  I advised the ones I delt with NOT to  give up their VHF licenses.  Most kept theirs, thank goodness.  700/800 trunking is a fine system if designed correctly and if the nodes [sites] stay up, their links to the system computer stay up, and the computer does not die.  Those that went entirely 700/800 have had some issues; most of which you will never hear about.  Starting your shift with your radio reading "site trunking" does not give you confidence.

NIST has time references on the internet, but looks like they are good for setting your wristwatch mostly.

Murphy should have an additional law in case it has not already been added:  The fancier you make an item or  system, the easier it is to fail or to be made to fail.