[Elecraft] Atomic Clocks and Aluminum Siding

[Stephen W. Kercel]

Dave:

 From the 1 callsign, I expect that you are located in New England. If so, 
you're on the ragged edge of the normal coverage of WWVB. It is likely that 
the location is giving you as much trouble as the metal siding.

Despite my 4 callsign, I am in New England (I live in Maine), and although 
my house is not metal-sided, my atomic clock (one of those solar powered 
MFJs with the big numbers) is located in the basement. What I have found is 
that the sync indication comes and goes. It often takes several days for 
the clock receiver to sync with WWVB. It will hold sync for a week or so at 
a time, but it occasionally drops out. However, I am in synch more often 
than not.

The resulting time reading is surely accurate enough for most ham purposes. 
When you lose sync after having acquired it, the cock loses accuracy, but 
very slowly. When I listen to the NCDXF/IARU beacons, they are always start 
at the beginning of the second as indicated on my atomic clock even if it 
has temporarily lost sync.

Personally, I would not recommend trying to modify the clock. In any case, 
before you start performing surgery on your clock, I offer a radical 
suggestion. Put the clock up in whatever position you want it to be for 
your ham operations, and just leave it. Do so for about a week. I suspect 
that there's enough signal leaking in through the door and window openings 
that the clock receiver will eventually (on the order of days) find the 
sync signal.

If you cannot get it to come into sync within a week, then you probably do 
need an outdoor antenna. I'm sure that many participants in this reflector 
could come up with a practical way to build a 60 kHz external antenna and 
hook it to your clock. If I were doing it, I would look for one of the 
commercially made antennas that are designed for the time servers that some 
computer networks use.

73,

Steve
AA4AK



At 11:03 PM 1/8/2005 -0500, you wrote:
>Atomic Clocks are great additions to the shack.  But how, pray tell, does 
>one get them to work inside a house with aluminum siding when you can't 
>put it next to a window?  I believe WWVB is on 80KHz, which is pretty 
>low.  Can one couple them to an antenna?
>
>thanks,
>
>dave belsley, w1euy
>
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