N.I.S.T. Defunding Radio Stations WWV and WWVH in 2019

I'm asking members here that are amateur radio operators (hams) and anyone who would like to participate to please write their Senators and Congress person to NOT defund the radio stations WWV and WWVH in Fort Collins, Colorado and Kauai, Hawaii. There is also a White House petition to sign.

You may wonder what the radio stations WWV and WWVH are all about. WWV was put on the air in 1923. It was used for time and frequency standards for the military. Now, not only the military use it in a limited capacity, electrical and electronic workers and hobbyists use it for many projects and repairs on critical electronic devices and alignments. It is also very important for the amateur radio hobby.

This is an exact quote from page NIST-25 of the proposed FY2019 NIST budget:
NIST Budget for 2019

"NIST will discontinue the dissemination of the U.S. time and frequency via the NIST radio stations in Hawaii and Ft. Collins, CO. These radio stations transmit signals that are used to synchronize consumer electronic products like wall clocks, clock radios, and wristwatches, and may be used in other applications like appliances, cameras, and irrigation controllers.."

Actually, WWVB at 60KHz is the "atomic" clock frequency. I do not know if it is included in the budget defunding. It probably is, though.

Here is a Wiki link to the WWV information:
WWV, Fort Collins, Colorado

Here is a link to sign the White House petition:
WWV and WWVH White House Petition

Thank you all...

I'm all for cutting the budget but I think these are worth saving.

who knows how many people around the world are using this for time checks, reception checks, tuning calibration, etc.

and severe weather updates.

I can't imagine they cost that much to operate.

edit; I signed the petition and emailed my congressperson.

a reply to: ElGoobero

Somewhere in the budget notice it was stated that between 6 and 10 million dollars are needed to keep the sites up and running. I'mm assuming that's per year.

The budget URL worked when I copied it, stand by let me see what I did wrong...


It was changed. Must have skeered them...
NIST 2019 Budget
Starts on page 102
And it isn't there, now!??

You can’t kill the time standards! Signed thanks for bringing it to attention.

Thank you, All!!

Many fond memories of checking analog clocks against WWV time. Much of that was setting up clocks on Friday night for the Saturday bird races.

I think the station still has a valid purpose.

a reply to: NightFlight

NIST Fundamental Measurement 2019-Budget hasn't changed. That NIST page has been up since February 09, 2018. Funny that nobody picked this up sooner.

According to EE Times there are 2 petitions:

The drive consists of two petitions, each needing 100,000 signatures. One has a deadline of Sept. 15, while the other deadline is Sept. 17. Unfortunately, the petitions both call for continued funding of WWV and WWHV. That's unfortunate because unless everyone who signs one also signs the other, they may both fail.

Sept 15th petition
Sept 17th petition

August 11th ARRL article

-dex

Are they even talking about opening up the freqs? Or will they just leave it as a dead zone if they do end up shutting them off? Seems it would be cheaper to run what they have then to mess with reallocating them or having small hams trying to keep up the service at least locally. I personally feel we should leave some legacy systems broadcasting on a channel or two especially historic or technically important such as the time standards. I feel we lose a lot by completely shutting off legacy services I think it’s interesting for the younger kids to explore the tech of yore in use still and they can access it with cheap legacy hardware, it’s what got me into tech so much.