Maintain funding for NIST stations WWV & WWVH 8-16-2018

Maintain funding for NIST stations WWV & WWVH 8-16-2018

NIST station WWV and sister stations are among the oldest radio stations in the United States, having been in continuous operation since May 1920. The station has transmitted the official US Time for nearly 100 years, and is an instrumental part in the telecommunications field, ranging from broadcasting to scientific research and education. Additionally, these stations transmit marine storm warnings from the National Weather Service, GPS satellite health reports, and specific information concerning current solar activity, and radio propagation conditions. These broadcasts are an essential resource to the worldwide communications industry. This petition requests continued funding of these stations be maintained into the 21st century and beyond to ensure future operations.

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The Proposed Shutdown of NIST's WWV and WWVH Radio Stations 8-16-2018

The shutdown of NIST's WWV and WWVH radio transmitters will affect all who use radio controlled clocks, commonly called "Atomic Clocks" . In other words clocks that set themselves and keep themselves on-time. WWV and WWVH transmissions also have several uses for Amatuer Radio Operators and Shortwave Listeners, such as calibrating receivers and propagation.WWV located in Ft. Collins, Colorado (40° 40' 49.0" N, 105° 2' 27.0" W) serves the entire 49 North American states and beyond on 2.5/5/10/15/20 MHz.WWVH located in Kauai, Hawaii. (21° 59' 26.0" N, 159° 46' 0.0" W) Serves Hawaii, the Asia/Pacific and beyond on 2.5/5/10/15 MHz.In the 2019 US budget it has been proposed to shutdown these services. Please do not let this happen!

I signed both.

Are you saying the 'atomic clocks' in widespread consumer use, will no longer function with the accuracy they now perform?

They might still work in Japan or Germany or China or the UK. There are multiple transmitters around the world. The US merely invented the technology. But yes any consumer "atomic clock" would become a normal dumb digital clock. Shame to see the US slip behind. Or maybe the clocks will start running fast and we will get ahead You can see a list of all of them around the world at wikipedia.

If you have a shortwave radio you can tune in and listen to the time being read off. There are also occasional data bursts for the automatic "atomic clocks."

There are enough companies selling these clocks that I expect there will be lobbyist pushback for the proposal. Everything NIST does is too important to national industry to be cut. Based on NIST's summary this is because their budget was cut from $176M to $127M. That budget is a fraction of what is spent on a presidential campaign. If it goes through I will be very surprised.

I wish to know where other $127M go that they decided to blackmail the community... You know, bureaucratic leeches consider themselves much more important than these two stations, so they decided to shut them down and fire low level staff, but not to lose a single penny of their own salary.

Wow I missed this thread. Looks like the petition is closed and did not receive enough signatures to proceed. I like knowing what time it is so I have several atomic clocks. It will be a shame to loose them.