[time-nuts] Yukon Energy causes time sync problems

[Bill Hawkins]

Tom, I don't intend to challenge your knowledge but to discuss
the subject. It's amazing what a different viewpoint can do, and
how difficult it is to share viewpoints in email.

As a person who grew up with synchronous clocks, when real men used
vacuum tubes, I find it incredible that a lightly loaded synchronous
clock motor could go any faster than the line frequency. It can go
slower if the bearings gum up with old oil and the motor drops out
of sync. That's why I say that the reference clock slowed down.

We can't resolve this until we know what Yukon was using for clocks.
I thought the article implied that their reference clock was a wall
clock somehow driven by some signal from some satellite. GPS wasn't
mentioned.

Bill Hawkins
BSME MIT 1960 (minor EE) (would have majored in EE but the old
rotating machinery was torn out and replaced by vector math)


-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas A. Frank
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2010 11:00 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Yukon Energy causes time sync problems


On Apr 10, 2010, at 2:17 AM, Bill Hawkins wrote:

> Read the quote again, please.

I did, which is why I am a bit confused.

> Their line clock was *faster* than the
> satellite clock. When they reduced mechanical power to slow their
> line clock to track the satellite clock, the customer's clocks slowed
> down.

Which is exactly as it should be.  It reads to me like their line  
clock malfunctioned and was running fast *when it had no cause to*,  
so they responded as expected (slow the generators), with the  
expected result (everyones clocks slowed down).

> The satellite clock was slow.

Yet my takeaway from the article was not that the satellite clock was  
in error, but that the line clock was.  It was running fast when it  
shouldn't have.

I can see where a line clock would run fast when it shouldn't, but I  
can't see where a GPS clock would run slow...

Tom Frank, KA2CDK
BSEE RPI 1985