[time-nuts] Loran C returning to a station near you...

[Brian Inglis]

Look at how well a couple of projects have gone:

o  privatize NIST NTP server operation - the NTP pool is recommended everywhere
and good enough for most; separate providers supply high accuracy, precision,
and stability timing for financial markets internationally; and GPS serves the rest

o  provide WWVB PM decoders - older precision timing equipment no longer works; but
compatibility for RC "Atomic" clocks and watches was maintained; does not appear
that there is any commercial interest in developing decoders; the new PM features
might as well be dropped, or they could go back to the old AM format.

See also the UT1 NTP service http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/ut1_ntp_description.cfm
which states it will use IERS schedule A data, and may offer only the weekly official
projections rather than the daily rapid predictions, which vary by 0.1ms; they also
mention providing DUT1 and EOP data as a text string from a separate service.
They may be looking at this for a UTC like backup if the ITU drops the leapsecond.

But the US, EU, Russia, China, and Japan can each afford a GNSS constellation,
with upgraded features as desired.
If a country can not provide an adequate market for products, then they will have to
either do without a backup, ormake do with what markets elsewhere demand - eLoran.

OTOH the civil business focus of currently successful projects leads me to hope that the
ITU will be told to leave UTC alone as a legal and political requirement for solar civil
time, use TAI or GPS time if they want to keep to a uniform time scale, or come up with
a better time scale of their own.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis


On 2015-07-14 16:49, Bob Camp wrote:
> Not to be to much of a downer here but …..
>
> Loran for timing and an “Eastern WWVB” are two projects that seem to each have a
> life of their own. They seem to come up on some sort of cycle related to sun spots.
> Both have zero (or possibly less than that) percent mind share among those who
> would need to implement them into systems. Since there is major cost on the systems
> end, it would take “mandatory use” legislation to get them designed in. Without those
> design in’s, *having* a backup system is pretty useless. You are talking about billions of
> dollars and years of effort to hook them up ….
>
> If you are talking about “infinite budget” military systems, some of that may happen. I
> notice in the papers that “infinite budget” does not seem to apply to the US DOD these
> days. For commercial systems, nobody will significantly cut into profits to do something like this.
>
> Should they do this - sure. Will they do it - nope.

>> On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:49 PM, paul swed <paulswedb at gmail.com> wrote:

>> The reason to stay with the LORAN C style pulses is very very simple. It
>> allows our time-nuts Austrons and SRS to work. Its the only way I get any
>> of my tax dollars back. :-)
>> The good news is no official government person reads time-nuts.

>> On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 12:16 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
>> wrote:

>>> In message <55A4AC81.1030100 at rubidium.dyndns.org>, Magnus Danielson
>>> writes:
>>>> The safety is
>>>> relative, in that it takes quite a bit of more infrastructure compared
>>>> to the jamming of GPS, and that lies in the wavelength of the signal
>>>> than anything else.
>>>
>>> If the goal is a reliable backup for GPS, there are smarter ways to
>>> use the 100kHz band than Loran-C pulses, and there really isn't much
>>> reason to stay compatible with Loran-C receivers.