Federal Time Control failure

Federal Time Control has apparently not made contact with my atomic clock lately. It's still showing DST.

Now I'm getting worried. I suspect Federal Mind Control hasn't been making contact with my brain lately either. All I know is that I've been feeling listless and rudderless since the switch from DST. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, and I'm only suffering jet lag from the time zone change.

Yeah, you might try making a manual ajustment ±1 Minute, that way you'll know when it's made contact.

The process actually works in reverse. Most clocks search for the signal (just a standard LW-type radio signal) late at night when it is at its best strength. Put the clock in a windowsill or near the window overnight and see what happens. Maybe your clock doesn't adjust for DST automatically?

*edit*
Sorry, it's longwave as Empath pointed out, not shortwave. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ohgeez.gif Too much talk of the $10 shortwave radios from county comm I guess. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

The signal isn't shortwave; it's longwave. There are shortwave WWV signals in the shortwave range at 5000 khz, 10000, etc., but they're not the signal that provides the information. The signal is at 60 khz. If you have a scanner, you could program it to 60 khz, and then search for an area of your home with the least noise and best reception. If you're within 500 miles of Fort Collins you don't have much problem. Beyond the 500 miles avoiding the noise a poor reception areas and directions become critical.

It's interesting that the earlier models of clocks that tuned the atomic time had external antennas that permitted better orientation and placement. Those antennas proved unpopular among the consumer, and the manufacturers have been trying to "get by" with what they can build internally.

My "atomic clock" checks with Fort Collins at 0055 each night, right at the peak of average signal level here. If it's doesn't get a signal in the ten minute window it uses, it checks for ten minutes every three hours until it gets a signal.

Once it has received a signal, it goes back to it's regular 0055 check-in.

I expected it to "know" thr date to change over to PST, but it didn't. As usual, it checked at 0055, got it's signal, and stayed at that seting (DST) until the following night when it corrected itself by an hour at 0055.

In other words, it was an hour off for about 23 hours. (Yes, I could have corrected it manually, but I wanted to see what it would do by itself.)

My computer, however, did it's usual and went like so:

01:59:57
01:59:58
01:59:59
01:00:00
01:00:01
01:00:02
etc.

Here's an interesting one for you: Both my "Atomic Clock" and my computer are tied to a signal traceable to the NBS standard, but they are consistantly 2 seconds different (the clock is two seconds behind the computer).

Why the difference?

My guess: The clock is synching to the received radio signal which has whatever delay there is between Fort Collins and here (about 1300 miles groundwave, double that, skip?).

The computer is synching to the same standard, but does additional validations using round-trip signalling delays to figure out and compensate for the delay in the 'net.

That still leaves me with "Why two seconds?"

(Trivia: The "Telephone Time Lady" was within plus or minus 1.5 seconds when working with specification, and normally within 0.5 second.)

[ QUOTE ]
Empath said:
It's interesting that the earlier models of clocks that tuned the atomic time had external antennas that permitted better orientation and placement. Those antennas proved unpopular among the consumer, and the manufacturers have been trying to "get by" with what they can build internally.

[/ QUOTE ]

I gotta "chime in" on that, so to speak.

I had nothing against the external antenna, but the newer non-antenna version seems to receive better. Maybe that's due to better design elsewhere. Each of my three little kiddies, however, loved to drag that poor older clock around like a puppy on a leash, scratching it on the wood floors and banging it around the door frames. That poor little clock. I could find no place for it that it was usefully close yet was also far enough out of reach of the kiddies. There was something very attractive to them about that antenna.

Mercifully, the newer one which is fancier with temp, humidity, etc, but no "leash" for an antenna, has been left alone. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

More info on WWVB...
WWVB Home Page


Time Code Format

Thanks guys. I actually started this thread as a joke more than anything else, but it's interesting anyway.

Tomas, I believe the WWV signal actually transmits the DST information, so your clock doesn't have to know when to switch. At 0055 it was still DST. If your clock works like mine, you could have powered it off and back on after 2am, and it would have immediately searched for the signal. If it then found the signal, it would have corrected itself. And remember that Congress can change the dates when DST is in effect, and often does.

My clock also displays a "DST" icon when DST is in effect.

And it flashes the "tower" icon while it's receiving the message. It seems to take a couple of minutes, after which time the "tower" icon remains on if the signal was received correctly.

I think the reason my clock hasn't been receiving the signal lately is because I moved it to a window sill where it's about 6 inches from a CRT monitor and about 6 inches from my homemade digital outdoor thermometer readout. That thing has 3 inch high LED seven-segment digits that adjust their brightness according to the ambient light. To keep everything cool I built a homemade switching power supply for the LEDs with a voltage comparitor IC, a power MOSFET and capacitor, but no inductor. Actually the wall wart is the inductor I guess. It's supposed to put out 12 volts AC, but the peak rectified voltage is around 32 volts. Anyway it works great but it probably puts out enough RFI to disrupt radio communications for miles around.

Mine has a radio tower icon too. I don't know if it's just smart or what, but so far (I've had it a little over 3 years now I think) it's ajusted itself on the right day, but at 6 or 7 PM. Strange considering the switch doesn't happen until 2 AM...

" ... At 0055 it was still DST. If your clock works like mine, you could have powered it off and back on after 2am, and it would have immediately searched for the signal."

Or I could have simply touched the button below the readout that turns on the receiver for a re-synch. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Thing is I wanted to see how it behaved without assistance.

My display also has the usual 'tower' icon but it animates while "searching" for the signal rather than "setting." There is another icon that shows the signal has been received.

[ QUOTE ]
Tomas said:

Or I could have simply touched the button below the readout that turns on the receiver for a re-synch. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Thing is I wanted to see how it behaved without assistance.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like you found a fatal flaw in the Federation's scheme to control our clocks. I guess the time message should include the time when DST will be turned off or on, in addition to (or instead of) specifying whether DST is currently in effect.

I moved my clock from the rf polluted window sill and it synched last night. I tried synchronizing my computer time with time.windows.com and time.nist.gov, the two time servers built-in to my XP time sync command. I usually got my computer to be about 2 seconds slow. Once I got it 1 second slow and once I got it within a half-second. Of course it's kind of hard to judge by eye.

I'm surprised your computer is ahead of your "atomic clock". Could it be that your wide-band internet connection is so fast that the time packet arrived before it was sent?

Anyway synching time over the internet always seemed like a crap shoot to me.

Heheheheh ... Despite what Comcast might want one to believe their cable broadband connection isn't THAT fast. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

The server time synch feature in this machine, IIRC, does several ACK's with the time server and watches the round-trip time for the response, then subtracts one half of that time from the hack returned ... Supposedly comes up with a better match to the real world that way. Only supposed to set the hack if the average times are consistant, too, so if there is a lot of variability in the ACK times, it tries later to see if the network feels better.

(This is based on my OLD synchronization system, and I'm assuming the newer one now in the system still does things the same way - I haven't been able to find good info on it.)

Actually I forced a re-synch when the atomic clock re-synched and the computer came out only 1 second ahead this last time. that would about match the path delay for the radio signal ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif