[time-nuts] LORAN time and date ?

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <4596A9C8.60404 at ieee.org>
            Bill Janssen <billj at ieee.org> writes:
: I notice that the LORAN station at Middletown is now transmitting nine 
: pulses instead of eight.

This is the new Loran Data Channel (LDC).

: Has anyone done anything with the data encoded in the ninth pulse?
: The ninth pulse seems to position modulated.  I built my own, bare
: bones, receiver and I would like to decode the info.

You are correct there as well.  You can find information about the LDC
at http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/loran/9th-pulse-modulation-ldc.html
which also contains a pointer to the format of the LDC chanel.  Among
other useful things, the time of day messages contain the UTC loran
time offset.  This should presently be 23, since loran time is 10
seconds behind TAI time (having tracked the rubber seconds until 1972,
then having forked at that time to not have leap seconds at all).
There's lots of other stuff in LDC, but the document that's on the web
site is a bit thin on details for some of it.

Warner