[CC-ARES-RACES] 24 hr, UTC, WWVB Clock at Wal-Mart

[JD Delancy]

KK6MC says there is "an Oregon Scientific model RM-103A clock at WalMart for
$12.56.. It sets itself to WWVB  6 times a day, has provisions for 24 hour readout,
can be set to UTC, has seconds readout, and comes with a battery! The digits are
large enough to read at a any distance by either a myope or presbyope. In short it
has  everything I want in a clock and is cheap. It also shows the date which is nice
as the most common error in DX QSLing is reporting local date rather than UTC date.
It also shows the year, but I am usually not that out of touch with reality. It
indicates that WWVB has a strong signal here and set itself (to Pacific time) after
several minutes. Neat!

The seconds display is nice for satellite work.

It says it sets itself to Daylight Savings Time, so I suppose I will have to set it
back to UTC twice a year.  I am going to tape the instructions on the back so I
remember how to do it.

At the Wal-Mart I went to, they were located in a special display. They also had an
orthogonal (black instead of silver, vertical instead of horizontal) model available
with the same features at the same price. -Dr. Megacycle KK6MC/5"


I went to two of the WalMart's in the area (Hollywood and LaPlata) today.  Neither
had the Oregon Scientific model but did have one from the Chaney Instrument Company,
it's called Atomix Clock and measures 8" by 9.5" by 1."  The Atomix syncs with the
National Institutes of Standards and Technolgy (NIST) radio station WWVB on 60Khz. 
It has a 12 or 24 hour format, requires two "AA" batteries (expected life expectancy
of one year), time zones of PST, MST, CST and EST selectable,  DST on/off, calendar
(mo/day/yr), temperature reading in "C" or "F" and time in hour/min/second with a
2.5 inch display.

The NIST broadcasts a time signal on WWVB continously and the Atomix clock syncs up
with it an average of six times during a twenty-four hour period. That provides
automatic time and date adjustments on the clock which makes it accurate to within a
"tick" all the time.

So what does this "jewel" cost?  About $25. I found it in the furniture part of
Walmart, they know it as the "Set & Forget" clock.

   jd