WWV celebrates 100 years
Date :
26 /
10 /
2019
Author :
Peter Clee - VK8ZZ
Radio station WWV to celebrate 100 years
Standard Time and Frequency station WWV celebrate its centenary on October 1. Rado amateurs have been asked to participate by taking measurements and sharing their results
The Reporter Herald says:
The world’s oldest licensed radio station, which operates from a location just north of Fort Collins, will turn 100 years old on
Oct. 1
That may sound like a long time for a radio station, but WWV specializes in time.
The radio station is best known for the broadcast of the national time standard — the atomic clock — which is closely synchronized with Coordinated Universal Time, the measure by which clocks are synchronized throughout the world.
It also has played an important role through the years setting frequency standards for other radio operators. In those early days of radio, “people didn’t know where they were on the dial,” Dave Swartz of the WWV Centennial Committee said.
WWV broadcasts over six transmitters, each one dedicated for use on a single frequency. The transmitting frequencies and time signals of WWV, WWVB and WWVH, along with the four atomic (cesium) clocks from which their time signals are derived, are maintained by NIST's Time and Frequency Division, which is based in nearby Boulder, Colorado. WWVB's carrier frequency is maintained to an accuracy of 1 part in 1014 and can be used as a frequency reference. The broadcast time is accurate to within 100 ns of UTC and 20 ns of the national time standard.
The transmitters for 2.5 MHz, 20 MHz, and the experimental 25 MHz put out an ERP of 2.5 kW, while those for the other three frequencies 5 MHZ, 10Mhz and 15MHz use 10 kW of ERP.
Each transmitter is connected to a dedicated antenna, which has a height corresponding to approximately one-half of its signal's wavelength, and the signal radiation patterns from each antenna are omnidirectional. The top half of each antenna tower contains a quarter-wavelength radiating element, and the bottom half uses nine guy wires, connected to the midpoint of the tower and sloped at one-to-one from the ground—with a length of √2/4 times the wavelength—as additional radiating elements.
Page Last Updated: Saturday 26 October 2019 at 10:28 hours by Peter Clee
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