[Elecraft] Atomic Clocks and Aluminum Siding

[Douglas Westover]

Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit the WWVH site on
Kaua'i. I drove into the site, found the office, went in and there was
NO ONE there. Oh, well...I signed the visitor log and scanned through
it, noticing the large number of hams who had visited. I even recognized
some of the calls.

After 15 minutes with no sign of life, I was getting ready to leave, when
in walks the chief engineer decked out in his climbing gear. He had been
up on the 2.5 MHz vertical dipole doing some maintenance, saw me
drive in and climbed down to greet me! It turns out there is only one
person on the site at any one time and it's not manned at night or on
weekends. There are alarms on each of the transmitters which will
shut them down if there are any problems and dial the home of
one of the site operators.

So then I got the full 25cent tour. The transmitters are sort of ho-hum,
just off the shelf commercial 10kW rigs of various manufacture. There
might be a 20kW unit but I don't remember. What was of real interest
was the "frequency/time" room. A real ham shack!! Lots of 6' racks
with a variety of LMBs hanging by their power leads or coax. Old
pieces of gear gathering dust in a corner, a work bench with pieces
of gear and PC boards in various states of repair. All of the frequency
and time standards.

Any way, a very interesting place. The engineer wasn't a ham but was
used to dealing with the strange breed and was most gracious. I was
there for over an hour and I think he was just happy to have someone to
talk to.

Doug
W6JD

----- Original Message -----
From: <N2EY at aol.com>
To: <belsley at bc.edu>; <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2005 8:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Atomic Clocks and Aluminum Siding


> In a message dated 1/8/05 11:04:16 PM Eastern Standard Time,
belsley at bc.edu
> writes:
>
>
> > I believe WWVB is on 80KHz,
>
> 60 kHz.
>
> --
>
> Anybody else on this reflector ever been to the WWV transmitter site? I
was
> there circa 1992.
>
> 73 de Jim, N2EY
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