[time-nuts] GOES time service

michael taylor mctylr at gmail.com
Tue Apr 8 22:50:36 EDT 2008


On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Bruce Lane <kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com> wrote:
>         I admit I was somewhat annoyed. It can't have taken much overhead to provide timecode through the GOES data stream, and I really liked my old TrueTime 468.

I'm not sure, but I suspect it was considered a both non-priority
information and a bygone legacy, and it may of introduced a constraint
not in terms of bandwidth, but terms of wasting a fixed throughput due
to wasted boundaries around the timing signal to ensure the timing
signal's accuracy is not reduced by the transmission of a growing
number of weather and climate products (NOAA is in the weather
business) and I believe it may of been a restriction in relation to /
interfered with operating in 'Rapid Scanning Mode' which GOES uses to
produce frequent images of  small subsection of its normal coverage
during a severe weather event like a tornado or tropical storm.

Of course given the low cost of replacing GOES time receivers with
easily available off-the-shelf GPS receivers, which could be less than
$1000 to purchase a new (non-timing specific) commercial receiver, and
still end up with improved accuracy, it seems simply to be progress.



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