[time-nuts] Radio clock fails to leap

Scott Newell newell at cei.net
Thu Jan 1 01:17:29 UTC 2009


At 07:07 PM 12/31/2008, Tom Van Baak wrote:
> > My low-end Radio Shack 'atomic clock' did not handle the leap second.
>
>Scott,
>
>I'm not sure if any of the low-cost radio clocks handle leap
>seconds correctly. Clearly the analog clocks can't (there is
>no way to show the 61st second with clock hands). But even
>the digital ones that could, don't.

Well, this one certainly didn't.


>It's not a matter of reception. The WWVB leap second warning
>bit is set weeks or months before the event so the clocks have
>plenty of chances to know that there is an extra second at the
>end of the month. My guess is it's a matter of firmware or just

My point exactly!  And I was curious to see if it would do the right 
thing, since it could have all the needed info from the 
timecode.  I'm sure they just didn't bother to write and test 
firmware for such an exceptional event.


>Half of them don't even do daylight savng time correctly so it
>may be a bit much to ask that they handle leap seconds.

I think this one gets the daylight shift right, at least every time 
I've paid attention.


>WWVB receivers made by Spectracom and Ultralink do the
>right thing; but these aren't around anymore.

I'm going to check the timecode to see when the leap second warning 
bit went off.  As I recall, last leap they delayed the leap warning a 
couple of minutes.


-- 
newell  N5TNL 




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