[time-nuts] Loran - any good for timekeeping?

[John Ackermann N8UR]

Hal Murray wrote:
>>The US is keeping Loran-C going as a backup for GPS as well.
> 
> ....
> 
> How good is Loran for timekeeping?  How does it compare to WWVB?
> 
> What sort of receiver do I need?  Any good how-to type web pages?
> 
> I'm in Silicon Valley.  The NIST map says that WWVB should work here, but my 
> quick try didn't get very far.  I was just using a small ferrite antenna and 
> I didn't check the tuning.
> 
> 

Loran can do great frequency measurement -- almost as good as GPS.  But 
for timing, it's not so hot.  The problem with current Loran is that it 
doesn't carry a timecode, or mark the second epoch.  It's possible to 
recover 1pps from Loran with a bit of work (the Austron 2100T receiver 
can do this) but it's not a trivial task, and in any event you need 
something else to disambiguate the seconds.

John