[Elecraft] Remote Operating Time Sync

[Dave B]

Hi.

WSJT-X is not that critical, you only need to be within a second (or two
at most) of UTC, & you can easily get well within +- 1 second with mk 1
finger and a call to the speaking clock, or listening to a broadcast
time signal.  Modern PC's don't drift that significantly over a few
hours (unless they have other problems) so that should be more than good
enough.


NTP sync'ing via mobile internet though possible, is often less than
great if it does work, some carriers block the use of that sort of
thing  But if there is no other choice, needs must.  But, rather than
use one specific time source (time.apple.com)   Try using  
pool.ntp.org   or  north-america.pool.ntp.org   if you are in the US
etc.   (http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/     Has lots of good information.)

That's a collection of independent time servers and the load is shared
between them, so they don’t get saturated like services like Apple (or
Microsoft) often suffer, providing a poor service as a result.   You may
find your mobile carrier has a NTP server you could use, but finding out
about it might be a struggle.

The phone's own time is fairly rigidly controlled, so just watching the
clock on that counting up to a minute, while finger is poised to accept
the next minutes time into the PC is also plenty good enough for the JT
modes.

Other solutions, depending on the accuracy wanted, revolve around the
use of a GPS receiver connected to the computer, and some time syncing
software that can use that.  There are many such programs for MS and
Linux, I don't know about Apple stuff, but Mac's run a highly customised
version of BSD, and there are similar programs for that OS, so...  
(Note, that they are not for the feint of heart to get installed
correctly due to the permissions needed.)

Any of those, you should get within a few ms of UTC easily.  Using a
specialist "timing" GPS receivers, and software that can use the PPS
signal (NTPD for example on 'nix, and Meinberg on Windows) to
continually monitor and correct the computers time, then you can get
within single figure microseconds of UTC (Using a real serial or
parallel port, not USB based.)  But that’s mega overkill for any of the
JT modes, but does have it's uses in propagation research and monitoring.

Lastly, don't get overly concerned about it all, else you'll be signing
up for the Time Nuts mailing list!  
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts

73.
Dave G0WBX.


On 16/06/17 00:48, elecraft-request at mailman.qth.net wrote:
> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Remote Operating Time Sync
> Message-ID: <9A61E777-F744-4BA2-8007-B43C95C6238C at wunderwood.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8
>
> Can you get internet by tethering to your phone? If so, the computer should sync with NTP pretty quickly, then hold to within a second while you are operating.
>
> You might be able to force a sync by opening the Date & Time control panel in System Preferences. MacOS uses NTP by default. If that doesn?t work, I?d unlock the panel, uncheck ?Set date and time automatically?, then recheck it.
>
> If you are of the shell persuasion, this will do the trick.
>
> sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com
>
> wunder
> K6WRU
> Walter Underwood
> CM87wj