The September/October issue of QEX that just landed in my mailbox has two articles by WB0OEW and WA5FRF describing Doppler measurements of the WWV and WWVB signals compared against GPS disciplined oscillators to measure ionospheric disturbances, the second article describes the effect of last year's solar eclipse on WWV signal propagation. There are other articles in professional journals that I will look up if anyone is interested in reading them. If WWV was not already broadcasting frequency and time signals, ionospheric researchers would have to set up their own transmitter to do the same thing, probably at higher cost.
https://zenodo.org/record/998278#.W4_heLgnaUk https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/weird-signals-listening-eclipse
The February issue of QST published an article by WD8DSB describing a TRF receiver for frequency counter calibration with crystal filters to feed an amplified WWV signal at either 5 or 10 MHz directly to your frequency counter. Internet time servers and cell phone networks do not provide such a frequency reference, and GPS disciplined oscillators are not an off the shelf item. It is also good to have an independent check on the performance of GPS disciplined equipment.
There are also millions of WWVB synchronized clocks that will be rendered obsolete if WWVB is taken off the air. As with amateur radio, WWV and WWVB will work even without a functioning internet connection.
The 6 million dollar proposed savings are well below the noise level of the Federal budget process. The sentence about eliminating "measurement science research that lies outside NIST's core mission space" is Trump-speak for eliminating any climate change research from NIST's budget, WWV is about the only item on the cut list that is not related to climate research.
Dan Schultz N8FGV
"Can we see a list of technical reasons it is worthy of this expense? Sincerely, Marcus Sutliff/N5ZY"
Dan (and all),
Most interesting. I don't subscribe to QEX but I have seen the article to which you provided the link referring to WA5FRF's paper on zenodo. I wonder if the article in QEX is basically the same basic paper formatted for the magazine or is something completely different.
I can't find a link on the arrl.org web site to order just a single copy of the magazine. I think I will email Steve directly for more information.
In any case, I have been doing something similar on and off for a number of years using both WWV and 10 and 15MHz and CHU, I live about 35 miles from the CHU transmitters.
My near real time 15MHz WWV dopplergram grabber can be viewed here:
http://users.aei.ca/~planophore/wwvGrabber/%C2%A0%C2%A0 image is updated every 5 minutes and the web page automatically updates every 5 minutes
archive here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0xwepl183kpgndm/AAD75zIT9bJjj36-d0eKitYua
The displayed bandwidth of the dopplergram is approximately +/- 3 Hz and if you follow it over the course of a day or so you can get a feel for what is happening with the ionosphere over the central US including Es in the middle night
I use an ICOM R75 receiver locked to an ex cell site GPSDO reference
Here are a couple of more interesting scientific uses of the WWV signal (for those who may have interest):
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rds.20056
https://www.faculty.ece.vt.edu/swe/lwa/memo/lwa0195.pdf
cheers, Graham ve3gtc FN25
On 2018-09-05 14:12, Daniel Schultz wrote:
The September/October issue of QEX that just landed in my mailbox has two articles by WB0OEW and WA5FRF describing Doppler measurements of the WWV and WWVB signals compared against GPS disciplined oscillators to measure ionospheric disturbances, the second article describes the effect of last year's solar eclipse on WWV signal propagation. There are other articles in professional journals that I will look up if anyone is interested in reading them. If WWV was not already broadcasting frequency and time signals, ionospheric researchers would have to set up their own transmitter to do the same thing, probably at higher cost.
https://zenodo.org/record/998278#.W4_heLgnaUk https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/weird-signals-listening-eclipse
The February issue of QST published an article by WD8DSB describing a TRF receiver for frequency counter calibration with crystal filters to feed an amplified WWV signal at either 5 or 10 MHz directly to your frequency counter. Internet time servers and cell phone networks do not provide such a frequency reference, and GPS disciplined oscillators are not an off the shelf item. It is also good to have an independent check on the performance of GPS disciplined equipment.
There are also millions of WWVB synchronized clocks that will be rendered obsolete if WWVB is taken off the air. As with amateur radio, WWV and WWVB will work even without a functioning internet connection.
The 6 million dollar proposed savings are well below the noise level of the Federal budget process. The sentence about eliminating "measurement science research that lies outside NIST's core mission space" is Trump-speak for eliminating any climate change research from NIST's budget, WWV is about the only item on the cut list that is not related to climate research.
Dan Schultz N8FGV
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Graham