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-4373 or go to hamstation .com. everyone. It's
time for another episode of HamTalk Live. It's
number 78. Some new happenings at WWV, recorded
live on Thursday, August 24th, 2017. I'm your
host, Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in
to another episode of HamTalk Live tonight. We're
joined by Matt Deutsch, N0RGT, the Chief Engineer
at Radio Station WWV. And we'll take your calls
live in just a few minutes. And if you missed
the show last week, Ken Olke, VE6AFO, was here
to talk about the Quarter Century Wireless Association
and some of their youth activities and heiress
donation and more. So if you missed that, check
us out anytime. Just go to HamTalkLive .com and
pull up the episode you want to listen to and
hit play. Or you can catch our podcast version
on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Google
Play, TuneIn, SoundCloud, or we're also over
on YouTube. Before we take a quick break here
and get started, do want to mention I got an
email from LloydKC5FM just a few hours ago. uh...
means with the uh... voice over i p hurricane
net uh... that uh... they're going to be uh...
activating tomorrow Harvey has been upgraded
to a Hurricane now and that's down in the Texas
area and so they are looking for net controls
for the Voip net and so that's going to take
place looks like tomorrow afternoon is when that's
going to happen if not before so make sure you
check that out if you're on that kind of thing
if you're just on 20 meters the Hurricane watch
net on 14 .325 has already started, so please
try to stay out of their way. Unless you have
something to report and it's a good place to
to listen as well and over on the VoIP side Check
out VoIP wx .net. That's v -o -i -p wx .net and
Lloyd just mentioned check out humanity road
org humanity road org check that out also and
I wanted me to mention that so Take a look there.
They're going to be on the air doing some communications
for Hurricane Harvey. I just wanted to let everybody
know that that is coming up. And again, the Hurricane
WatchNet is already going. So we're going to
talk WWV here in a minute. So get those questions
ready to go. We'll talk to Matt for a little
bit. And then you can call us. The phone number
to call when I tell you to is 812. netham126384261
or you can Skype us at HamTalk Live. You can
also tweet us tonight. Our Twitter handle is
at HamTalk Live and I'll let you know. when it's
time to call in and be back with Matt right after
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live the ham station They've got you covered
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at HamTalkLive .com and of course you can catch
our replays as well. Well tonight our guest is
Matt Deutsch. N0RGT has been the chief engineer
of WWV and WWVB for the National Institute of
Standards and Technology in Fort Collins, Colorado
since 1989. From 1979 to 1991 he was an electronics
technician for the Coast Guard and Matt received
his amateur radio license in 1992. So Matt, thanks
for joining us tonight. Well, thank you Neil
and greetings from the oldest continuously broadcasting
radio station in the world. I am ready to go
All right, and we've been we've been trying to
get you on here for quite a while now and you've
had some projects you've been working on that
you wanted to finish up before You talked about
those so we're we're excited to have you on but
when I first was trying to get you on we had
time where WWV was off the air and and that that
really caught me by surprise because it seems
like WWV is my my go -to reference and I think
a lot of people are that way is Okay, let's see
if this antenna works. Let's see if I can get
WWV and so All of a sudden there was silence
on one day, but it was a lot shorter than you
thought it was. So tell us about being off the
air for a while. What was going on with that
and some of those upgrades that took place during
that time? Yes, it was certainly as uncomfortable
for us as I'm sure as it was for the listeners.
We actually received word that we were going
to get enough money to upgrade the generator
and the switch gear and the backup UPS for the
radio station. So we were able to contract that
out, purchase a generator and but to do all the
electrical work we needed to shut down the station
for the safety of the contractor, needed to disconnect
the station from commercial power and of course
the generator was uninstalled so we had no power
and he did a really good job and Actually got
it done in less time than he said he would and
so we were back on the air like you said a little
earlier than we anticipated but certainly Do
not like to be off the air for that amount of
time and but the upgrades were sorely needed
we were using a Caterpillar diesel generator
that had been around since the 1960s when the
station was first built and the associated switch
gear that went with it. We were just starting
to have a lot of problems with the generator
and switch gear, though our power quality has
improved over the years. The generator and switch
gear were showing its age by sometimes we'd lose
commercial power and the generator wouldn't start
or it would start and not transfer to the building.
And so the division said it's time to solve these
problems and install a new generator. So we're
very happy to do that. And of course, right before
you guys were getting ready to do that, what
happens? But the station goes off the air. Yeah,
we, well, we did have, uh, during the, uh, you
know, after everything was hooked up, we had
a big snowstorm and, uh, that actually did knock
us off the area and we lost commercial power.
Every, everything was hooked up, but the generator
wasn't ready to go and hadn't been, uh, completely
installed yet. And so we're off the air for two
or three hours. And so our transmitters are off
because we have no generator. But we do have
a UPS that keeps our timing equipment alive.
It's sort of like the Olympic flame. We've got
to keep the timing going. And so even though
we don't have transmitters to transmit the time,
we do keep the UPS on. But the UPS was running
down because we didn't have a generator to recharge
the UPS. It was a close shave. We almost lost
our timing, but the commercial power came back
just in a nick of time. Well, that's Murphy for
you. You're playing on something, and of course
the thing never goes down. And then of course
when your generator's off to switch this out,
that's the time that this has to happen. Yeah
Well, you're back on the on the air and you've
got the the new generator there, which sounds
like it's working out real Well, so why don't
you tell us a little bit about how you do get
the timing from in it in IST and how you get
that to audio and then how you get that Transmitted
out with with your antennas and ERP and all that
kind of stuff and tell us how you how you deliver
all time all the time. Well, I'd be glad to.
It's a pretty straightforward process, a lot
of redundancy, of course, built into it so that
we don't make timing mistakes. But the actual
atomic clock, the national standard is in Boulder,
Colorado, at the Department of Commerce laboratories
in Boulder. And they got all the fancy stuff,
the Mazers and the fountains and the cesiums
and all that. And so What we do is that we have
a smaller time scale here at the station of bank
of cesiums. And we average the time of all our
cesiums together. So we come up with what we
think the time is. And the folks in Boulder have
theirs. And by definition, they're the correct
time. So they have a certain time. And what we
do is use a GPS satellite as it's going over.
And we compare our one pulse per second. to the
GPS and then the folks in Boulder do the same
thing looking at the same satellite and we compare
the times and it's analogous to say you have
a clock tower in a town with a clock on it and
you agree with someone that you want to compare
times you tell them at exactly 12 noon look at
your watch and see what time it is and I'll look
at mine and so at 12 noon you know the guy looks
at his watch and it's 1159 the other guy looks
at his watch and he is 1201 and if the by definition
the guy that's 1159 is the correct time then
the other guy is two minutes slow and he needs
to correct himself and so the clock tower falls
out of the equation so you know a lot of people
have said oh well you're using gps time it's
like well we use it as a reference we used to
use a tele television signal it was called a
line 10 system to compare the time in the past
but now we use gps and since there's always satellites
up all day long we can compare it continuously
and always steer our clocks to the boulder clocks
quite easily That's common view is what it's
called and then so then we take that to our our
sees our clock then puts out an ultra pure 5
megahertz good to you know one part and 10 to
the negative 13 and that is fed to the both radio
stations WWV is here and WWV be the 60 kilohertz
station Five megahertz is then fed to both stations
and fed to the time code generators. And the
time code generators then slice and dice that.
It comes up with the one pulse per second. The
ticks that you hear is from, we have a counter
inside the time code generator. It takes the
five megahertz, counts five million counts and
puts out a one second pulse. And then that, you
know, we create audio out of that and our carrier
frequencies. and all the other ticks, tones that
you hear, and like I said, the carrier frequencies,
and they feed the transmitters with the audio
and produce the carrier signal. And we actually
modulate the transmitters using desktop signal
generators. We just put the five megahertz in
as a reference. We put the audio in as a modulating
signal, an external signal, and then we can modulate.
whatever frequency we choose, 5, 10, 15, so on.
And then we just send that to the transmitter
at a low level and then it is amplified and the
transmitter goes out to the antennas, which are,
you know, there's always much debate about exactly
what to call them, but they are quarter wave
radiating element and they're on top of a quarter
wave grounded antenna. tower section and there's
insulators in the in the middle that separate
the two and so their feed point is right in the
middle and so the top quarter wave section is
radiating and it has a ground plane that goes
down at a 45 degree angle to give us the 50 ohm
input impedance to the matched transmitters and
signal goes out there omnidirectional Okay, and
what kind of power and what kind of ERP do you
get from all of that? And is it the same on each
band? Yeah, we broadcast, you know, technically
I guess 2 .5 megahertz is not in the HF band,
but we always say it is, and so our lowest frequency
is 2 .5 megahertz, and then we broadcast on 5,
10, 15, 20, and a new addition in the past couple
years is 25 megahertz. The three big ones 510
and 15 are 10 kilowatt radiated power and then
the Other transmissions are all two and a half
kilowatts Okay, very good so we're listening
to to all time all the time and Checking out
to see if we can You know get our in antennas
to work, but you're able to hit all kinds of
devices all over the country with that signal
that sync up to that digital information that
you send out as well. So I'm kind of surprised
that the power is not a little higher than that.
For the HF? Yeah. As I'm sure the ham community,
the people that work on HF, propagation seems
to be king. If you can put out all the power
in the world and not get a signal through, or
you can put out a very small signal, and if propagation's
in your favor, it goes really far. So we had
to reach a compromise at some power level when
they designed the station. And virtually, we
hear from just about every corner of the world.
We've heard from the South Pole down there. They've
written to us and said, you know, signals booming
in. And we've also heard from, like, South Africa
and Madagascar are sort of the furthest large
areas from us. We're right below us is the Indian
Ocean. But as far as large cities, you know,
in South Africa, they've picked up both the 60
kilohertz broadcast and some of our HF frequencies.
pretty much can, you know, if you got the right
equipment, cover the world at the receiving end.
Yeah, it does really, really well. So that's
pretty cool that it's heard all over the world.
Well, you've been working on another project,
and that's the one we've been kind of waiting
on here for you to finish up. So Tell us about
this new project you've been working on and I
think there's a there's a little history behind
that too Yes You know a lot of people know we
used to broadcast on 25 megahertz back in the
60s and 70s and then you know with the energy
crunch in the 70s those of us who remember that
You know, energy was considered very expensive.
And so they they wanted to do away with the 20
and 25 megahertz broadcast to save power. And
they decided to keep the 20, but the 25 was gone.
And so all this time, all these years, you know,
energy isn't a big cost factor like it used to
be back then. So, you know, about four years
ago, we had an outage on 20 megahertz and Dean
Lewis W9WGV wrote to me to let me know that we
had an outage and I just want to know if it was
his equipment or ours and I said it's our equipment
went off for just a minute and he said boy I
assured you missed the 25 megahertz and I was
reading the email to the technicians and they
said well why don't we put the 25 back on what
what's the big deal why do we have it off anyway
you know it's not you know as far as power consumption,
you know, the 60 kilohertz WWDB, you know, broadcast
70 kilowatts, you know, another two and a half
kilowatts is in the noise. So, you know, so they
said, let's put it back on the air. And so I
wrote back and told Dean, you know, we're for
a couple hours, we'll put it on the air, you
know, for old time's sake. And we put it on the
air. And within a little while, a gentleman in
Scotland wrote us and said, Are you on 25 megahertz?
So he was the first to hear us all the way in
Scotland. We were only doing one kilowatt at
the time, but it was during the better part of
the sunspot cycle. So I called the broadcast
manager, asked him if we'd be able to stay on
the 25 for a couple days, and he was at a Rockies
game in Denver, and he called back during the
seventh inning stretch and said, yeah, sure,
go ahead, let's do this for a little while. So
the response was overwhelming. We heard from
so many people saying, oh, thank you so much.
Please keep it on if you can. And so we pretty
much just never shut it off. It's still on. But
at one point, I was reading an article in QST
by Eric Nichols, KL7AJ. And this was February
2013 article. And he was saying, you know, amateurs
need to contribute to the radio art. We do a
lot of talking, but we should be doing some science,
too. So I was intrigued. He talked about channel
probes and stuff like that. And so I wrote to
him and said, I'm kind of confined here by exactly
as much as I can do. I can't change the broadcast
any. And the signal has to be pretty much omnidirectional.
You know, that just pretty much leaves me with
an antenna that I can fiddle with. Is there something
that would be of interest to amateur radio scientists
that would be helpful? And he said, well, a turnstile
antenna would, you know, you could broadcast
for a few minutes horizontal north -south, horizontal
east -west. and do a right -hand circularization
and then do a left -hand circularization and
then a vertical, go back to the vertical and
go between those different modes. And he said,
you know, we could probably learn a lot about
the ionosphere doing that. So I've been pecking
away at it here for about two years, you know,
trying to shoehorn it in around the other things
going on at the station. And that's why it's
taken so long. I can't give it a high priority
since it's just an experiment. I've learned a
lot. I had to dust off the Smith chart, which
I haven't looked at in 25 years. That thing is
fantastic. I would encourage anyone who works
with matching antennas, and that's the tricky
bit, matching the antenna to the transmission
line. The Smith chart is amazing. I was looking
in my old double RL handbook, you know, our antenna
book from like the 1990s and they had a really
good treatment of it there and learned a lot.
And so the ideas for matching an antenna to a
feed line are pretty numerous. And so, you know,
being a ham, I wanted to choose the optimum solution,
but I was realizing I didn't have time to go
through the many, many solutions. So. we came
up just with right now we're just feeding it
it's on the air right now left hand circular
polarization 25 megahertz and it's not changing
to any other direction or mode it's just left
hand polarization for now and i wanted to have
that up and running for the solar eclipse if
anyone could use it and so it's been that way
i need to put it back on the vertical polarization
and work more on the other different modes of
polarization. So looking forward to doing that.
And if KL7 AJ is out there listening, he needs
to call in and tell us more about channel probes
or you need to do a show with him on channel
probes. Once this thing's built, it's going to
be up to him or someone else who knows a lot
about the ionosphere to explain to people how
to use it. I'll build it. We just need someone
to explain what to do next, how to do the science.
I'm looking forward to some input. Yeah, there's
some cool science that happened with the Eclipse
looking at the ionosphere out at NJIT this week.
I'm looking forward to hearing some of the results
from them and find out. what all they were able
to learn from the Solar Eclipse Q So party on
Monday. And so it sounds like there could be
some stuff there. And, you know, I remember,
you know, back to the 70s, you know, WWV is always
kind of been the, you know, the standard that
was the reference that always used to see, well,
how's the band today, you know, and see how well
WWV's coming in, and of course set my clock and
everything, but I think I use that as kind of
a beacon kind of thing, a reference as much as
I do the time. So I'm glad you guys are able
to do that and on the air, given all that information.
A lot of people have written to me and said,
well, you know, this is really good for like
sporadic E and, you know, obviously now that
we're at the end of the sunspot cycle, you know,
things like sporadic E and meteor scatter appear
to be popular too. A lot of people using it for
that. So yeah, like you say, time, you know,
people might set their clock to it, but it is
useful as a probe for other science. So I certainly
encourage people to do that. Okay, very good.
Well, we are going to take a break and then we're
going to come back and take your calls with Matt.
And so if you have a question about any of this
stuff we've been talking about or some other
question about WWV, give us a call. The number
is 812. or give us a tweet or a call on Skype.
So I'll be back and we'll do that right after
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-NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261. Now here's
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at Tower Electronics for sponsoring the show
tonight to help bring you HamTalk Live. Coming
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Live, had a chance to hang out with them a little
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Hope if you got to Huntsville you you had a good
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visiting with people and so we had a good time
down in Huntsville. So If you haven't been, you
ought to check that one out. Well, it's time
for your calls now. So if you have a question
about WWV for Matt, give us a call at Again,
the number is 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638
-4261. Or you can Skype us. Just look for HamTalk
Live on Skype. We're there. And you can also
tweet us at HamTalk Live if you would want to
do that. And you know, I was joking around with
the all time, all the time slogan. A few months
ago on the show we played this little comedy
routine that was you know if if WWV was owned
by clear channel the I heart people That you
know do all the slogans and everything they had
all these punny slogans for time so Have you
ever thought of trying to use some kind of a
slogan for WWV Well, you know the All the time
all the time is been so far the best one I think
any of us have ever heard I haven't come up with
a better one yet. So if anyone's got any ideas,
you know that certainly will listen but that
seems to be the best one so far and that that
ad about Clear Channel buying us out that gave
a lot of people heartburn we got a lot of We
didn't know about it. It was a surprise to us.
We may have to pull that out of the archives
here in a minute, but the voice on there, I guess,
was actually the voice, the real voice of WWV
for a while. Is that right? Yeah, I guess you'd
have to ask the creator of that. It certainly
sounded like it. Like I said a lot of people
were upset when they they heard that they didn't
get that it was a joke something You know just
a small handful of people, but yeah, I Sure sounded
like Don Elliott Yeah, Doug Grant not not k1dg
the other Doug Grant told me it was the real
real voice of wwv for a while so That's pretty
cool. Now. What were you telling me about the
voice that's on now? Well, as everyone knows,
Don Elliott was the voice of WWE forever. And
until August of 1991, August 13, 1991, we actually
contracted to get some new time code generators.
And Don Elliott's voice was on a big magnetic
drum. It was like a big cassette tape that It
was about a foot in diameter, and it just sort
of slowly rotated. And it had all these different
heads that sat above it that were elevated above
the magnetic loop. And as the time announcement
came up, it would, of course, donnelly, it sat
in the studio and said one, two, three, four,
and 10, 20, 30, 40. And so the computer, or what
you would call a computer, put together those
minutes and seconds and announcements to announce
the time each time. And so when the right moment
came around, the head would fall and say, you
know, at the tone, and then another head would
fall down and say, you know, so many hours, minutes,
UTC. And so that was the voice of WWE forever.
And then we digitized, well, we went to a digital
system, the new time code generator, and The
broadcast manager at the time, I wish he'd put
a crowbar in his wallet because we didn't own
The Voice. It was, I think, Autocron owned The
Voice. That was their equipment. We leased it,
and they said, well, we'll sell it to you for
$3 ,000. And I wish he had done that. And he
said, no, we're going to save money. We're going
to go with somebody else. And they hired Lee
Rogers of KSFO and John Doyle. to sit in a studio
and say all those things. And we put Lee Rogers'
voice on. And of course, going from Don Elliott
to anybody, nobody liked that. So everybody called
in and complained for a long time. And so then
we went with John Doyle. You know, people were
still unhappy, but you know, the trouble we went
through on the complaints we got, I wish we had
just paid the $3 ,000. I wish I'd taken that
out of my pocket and paid it because it would
have been so much easier than all the trouble
it caused. But John Doyle is actually the voice
now, and if you look at the Wikipedia page, I
think it's backwards, and I think that's my fault.
I told the technician, one of our technicians
was being interviewed, and I told him backwards.
and it got put in the Wikipedia article backwards.
So that needs to be fixed. But John Doyle is
the voice now, and Lee Rogers was the voice for
a little while back in 1991 or 92. So that's
the way it stands now. All right. Well, let's
just go ahead and listen to this. This is just
under a minute here. We'll go ahead and listen
to this. Now this is a spoof. This isn't real,
but this is somebody's Joke of what would happen
if? WWV was run by commercial broadcasters, so
here it is WWV all the time all the time Same
time same station every time WWV One two three
four Every second counts at WWV. For a good time,
call 555 -4 -WWV. WWV, for the time of your life.
We'll be back with the time on WWV in just a
minute. But first, here's another minute. Alright,
so there you go. There's another minute. in another
minute, so. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it is. It's
well, it's well done. I laughed and laughed and
played it over and over again when I found that
and just, you know, heard that same thing over
and over again on WWV so much. And then here
comes all time all the time. Yeah, I played it
for a lot of my friends. They thought it was
pretty funny. So, very good. Well, hey, give
us a call. It's 812 -NATAM -1, 812 -638 -4261.
And actually, we've got a question here in the
chat from Carl, KD9HQT, and wants to know, will
the voices for WWV and WWVH change in the future?
Will they change we have no plans for changing
them Jane Barbie is actually the voice They did
digitize her voice. I think they NBS owned her
voice and they did our she went into the studio
maybe and rerecorded but yeah, it's all Been
digitized and it's all the voices sit on little
chips and inside the timecode generators and
they'll play the right pieces at the right time,
but we have no plans to change the voices. And
we would like to change the announcement at the
top of the hour, because it doesn't include the
25 megahertz. But it's going to be a technological
nightmare. So we'll just have to say somewhere
else we're on 25 megahertz. All right, very good.
Well, again, if you... If you want to get in
here, we've got about three or four minutes left.
So give us a call at 812 -638 -4261 or tweet
us or get on the chat here. Now, while we're
waiting to see if we get anybody here, let's
talk a little bit about the time correction because
every once in a while you got to throw in an
extra second. So how do you do that? Well, that's
it. Yeah, it's a everyone's favorite subject
and that gets us a lot of publicity, you know
the radio stations and TV stations in Denver
and Across the country are interested in that
The their the leap seconds and not being random.
They are irregular uh... not random but uh...
every few months maybe every eighteen months
twenty four months we do put one in i think it
was last december we were putting one in and
uh... that's because the earth's rotation is
slowly slowing down and that's primarily because
of the moon does title breaking on the earth
and is slowly dragging the The earth, you know,
dragging the oceans across the earth, and it's
slowly slowing us down. But the earth speeds
up, slows down from season to season, year to
year. And after it accumulates, we do a DUT1
correction. You hear the double ticks after the
top of the minute, and that tells you how many
tenths of a second we are ahead or behind the
sun. And so it's important to keep the sun you
know, the highest spot in the sky at noon time
or else it would start to drift. Our clock and
our sun would drift apart and you'd have 12 noon,
you know, sunrise, which nobody wants. And so
what we do is after a certain amount of tenths
of a second, we, or there's an observatory, International
Earth Rotation, I think in Paris, they send out
a notice to everyone, a bulletin that says at
the end of the year we're all going to do a leap
second. Excuse me. And so I don't know. I don't
think we have one coming up at the end of this
year. But after a certain amount of tenths of
a second accumulate, we actually stall the clock.
And that's done just by programming in December
31st. We tell it at the last minute or the last
second of the last hour or the last day of the
year, just it stalls for a second, adds an extra
second. You know, the time could generate. generator
actually reads goes from 59 seconds to 60 seconds
and so that gives the earth a chance to catch
up during that one second and usually we split
the difference and so then we're ahead just a
few tenths of a second and you can tell that
from the double ticks afterwards and it turns
out that I guess the scientists can actually
see the earth speed up and slow down in the sense
that the northern hemisphere has a lot more land
mass. And in the wintertime when it snows, the
angular momentum of the earth changes because
there's more mass up higher. And so the earth,
you know. slows down, and then when it melts
in the summertime and all runs off back in the
ocean, it speeds up again as the radius of the
Earth changes. So that was very interesting that
they could see that. They can measure it that
accurately. Yeah, that's some very precise measurements.
And what did you say? It was 10 to the negative
13th on the clock? Yeah, they have a purity of,
you know, about, you know, 10 to the negative
13, you know, which is, you know, 10 to the negative
9th is a nanosecond. And so then less than a
picosecond of accuracy. Of course, we can't broadcast
that accurately, especially from the HF, you
know, because it hits the ionosphere. Ionosphere
is always moving and so it accelerates and decelerates.
So the WWV signal is only good to about 10 to
the negative 7 when it arrives, because it's
been accelerated, decelerated, and bounces off
the earth and everything. WWVB, the 60 kilohertz,
you can pretty much recover about 10 to the negative
12 by averaging all those variations over several
days. And you can recover about what the cesium
is doing. So it works for a lot of people really
well. That's some interesting stuff, Matt. I
really am glad you were able to come on the show
and share that with us and talk to us. And we
are just about out of time, but that's some really
cool stuff. I always just kind of had this picture
of what WWV looked like and how it all worked.
And you're giving us a good glimpse into... how
that all goes. So thank you so much for coming
on tonight, Matt. You're welcome. Glad to be
here. Really appreciate it. Well, that is a wrap
for this week's edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks
to Matt Deutsch, N0RGT, the chief engineer at
WWV. And he's back to playing all time all the
time. So you can tune into us next time. Thanks
for listening out there in cyberspace and thanks
for writing in and come back at Thursday night.
9 p .m. Eastern Time next week. And to see our
upcoming guests, just go to HamTalkLive .com.
So thank you for your time this time. Till next
time, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7375.
And as always, may the good DX be yours. Thanks
for watching!