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Why Your Clock Or Watch May Be "Listening" To This Short Wave Station
Most of us have heard of - or even heard - WWV, the shortwave "all time, all the time" radio station from Fort Collins, Colorado.
You've probably never heard its sister station WWVB, which also keeps track of the time - but on millions of clocks and watches around the world.
"WWVB is now most closely associated with consumer devices, even among people who do not know the station exists. As NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) explains in its retrospective on the station’s 50 years of continuous broadcasting from Fort Collins as of 2013...NIST estimated that WWVB was providing service to approximately 50 million radio-controlled clocks and other devices in the continental United States.
A radio clock receiver detects WWVB’s 60-kilohertz signal at night, decodes the digital time code, and adjusts the clock’s quartz oscillator.”
I really wonder how many of these devices can "hear" the sometimes weak signal in this part of the world. But they say it works, so I have to believe them.
Still miss CHU, Canada's all time station, which was shut down earlier this summer.
One US radio station has broadcast the exact time nonstop since 1923; its 60-kilohertz sister signal now sets millions of radio-controlled clocks.
- Evuguy
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Re: Why Your Clock Or Watch May Be "Listening" To This Short Wave Station
It actually works quite well, even here in Toronto. I have a couple of clocks that use it. It's a very low data rate signal and it does take a while for a clock to sync to it. It provides both the date and time.
- darcyh
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Re: Why Your Clock Or Watch May Be "Listening" To This Short Wave Station
If you ever disassemble one of these clocks you will find a ferrite bar antenna inside similar to that of a transistorized AM radio. Some clocks are more sensitive to the time signal than others; most of them search for the signal every hour starting at midnight, once it is acquired the clock is happy and the process repeats the next night. If your clock will not synchronize try rotating it 90 degrees and they also like to have fresh batteries.
The clocks generally have a switch to adjust for time zone. I'm not sure there are any models that compensate for Newfoundland time. In most cases you cannot disable the daily time signal search so if the clock were used in NF and set manually it will reset once the unit acquires the signal and you time would be off by half an hour. This precludes their use in this time zone.