[time-nuts] Trimble Thunderbolt no longer determines the correct date

Bob kb8tq kb8tq at n1k.org
Fri Aug 11 12:53:21 EDT 2017


Hi

The whole “offset frequency” simulcast thing is pretty old. It most certainly pre-dates
GPS. It’s actually old enough that the first OCXO I ever designed at Motorola went into that kind
of system. The “time sync” thing came along a while after that.

There’s always been a lot of infrastructure gear that goes on chugging for a *long* time. 
Budgets are pretty skinny for a lot of very important stuff. That doesn’t just go for the
gear, it also goes for the payroll to support them. Maybe it should not be so, but in most 
of the places I’m aware of, it is.

Bob




> On Aug 11, 2017, at 12:26 PM, Tom Van Baak <tvb at leapsecond.com> wrote:
> 
>> The E911 installation, in the news, is just one of several. Others are hospitals,
>> fire stations, etc. using different dispatch systems.
> 
> Hey, at least important things like mobile phones, ISP's, Google, Amazon, FedEx and Starbucks aren't affected ;-)
> 
>> In a wide-area simulcast-overlap paging system, the transmitters in the same
>> coverage area are carefully set to all transmit at exactly the same time.
> 
> That's fine. And very clever. But why is this "life safety" system tied to GPS, to a particular vendor, to a particular model of receiver (that clearly states in the 


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