[amsat-bb] Fwd: White House wants to eliminate WWV

[Graham]

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/   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
>