Re: Time ticks on a computer

From: fvalcho@yahoo.com
Date: Fri Nov 11 2011 - 05:18:17 UTC

  • Next message: Greg Roberts: "Optical 10 Nov 2011 Part 1"

    I spent 6 years at sea using WWV, sunset was the worse for tuning.
    Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
    
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Scott Tilley <sthed475@telus.net>
    Sender: seesat-l-bounces+fvalcho=yahoo.com@satobs.org
    Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:05:36 
    To: <seesat-l@satobs.org>
    Subject: Re: Time ticks on a computer
    
    Hi Jay / Group
    
    I've watched this thread with interest.
    
    Most off the shelf travel shortwave receivers will do the job fine, IF 
    you attach an external wire as the antenna AND use the appropriate band 
    given the time of day and solar/ionospheric conditions.  Generally 
    speaking in the evening use 10 and 5Mhz and night focus on 5 and maybe 
    2.5Mhz.  With elevated solar condx even 15MHz may work at night for 
    quite awhile.  Tune all the time freqs and find the highest one that is 
    working best for you. If it starts to fade out tune DOWN to the next 
    one, etc etc... Given experience you'll know which is best given the 
    time of day and condx.  Now the next issue will be local noise etc, 
    locate the radio and antenna away from electronics and other sources of 
    near field noise for best results, car electronics can be bad news and 
    so can energy saving light bulbs and lights on dimmers nearby!  I use 
    this method when observing from a site that is impractical to use my 
    video system.  I run the shortwave in the background and set my little 
    digital audio recorder by the speaker.  When an event occurs I call it 
    out using 'keywords' to jog my memory later about what they meant with 
    respect to position of the object in question.  Passersby think I'm nuts 
    throwing wire into trees but it works...
    
    Earlier someone mentioned using a GPS receiver with a 1pps output.  
    Buffer the output (use a CMOS gate or even a transistor to protect the 
    internal circuitry of the GPS and provide a suitable drive for the 
    transducer) of the 1pps signal from the GPS to drive any convenient 
    transducer to produce a clearly audible second time pulse, a Piezo 
    transducer element may work nice...  Alas, you don't get a minute mark 
    etc which leads back to the shortwave option for one that provides a 
    complete time code for later retrieval and easy recording with minimal 
    gear...
    
    Good luck!
    
    Scott Tilley
    
    ROBERTS CREEK 1:
    8049 ST 49.4348 -123.6685 40. Scott Tilley
    ROBERTS CREEK 2:
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    On 11/9/2011 5:07 PM, JAY RESPLER wrote:
    > Can you recommend a program for a Windows XP computer that has a voice
    > to announce the time every minute and sound a tick every second, similar
    > to WWV/CHU ?
    > The closest program I have found does give the voice each minute but
    > gives only 1 tick per minute.
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    
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