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Bob M.
 
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Default improving WWVB reception

I have several of these clocks at my house, including some atomic watches.
No problem (luckily) but the antennas aren't really that big, especially
inside the watch.

Someone suggested I could take another loopstick antenna and put it outside,
then run some wires back to the clock inside and wrap a few turns of the
wire around the clock's antenna. I would think that some tuning would be
necessary to get it to work well. I want to install a clock at a well
shielded radio station transmitter building and short of putting the entire
clock outside, I'm also running out of options.

Bob M.
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"Charles Schuler" wrote in message
...

Well, it would be if it worked. The clock synchronizes with WWVB
every night, and I had it working on my engineering bench. But with
it mounted on my air studio wall, it won't sync. I've tried three
different positions -- mounted flat on west, north and east walls. In
each position, I left it there for about a week to see if it would
sync.

I'm in Atlanta, so WWVB is generally west from me. I don't know how
the internal antenna element is oriented, but I assume it's parallel
to the big flat dimension of the clock, so either east or west should
have worked best. Obviously the building is attenuating the signal,
but I really want it to work in that room, so I've got to find a way
to improve the signal reception without moving the clock much from
where it's at.


There are some hints at the NIST website. I live in Florida and the
nighttime signal is much better than the daytime signal. This is also

true
for Atlanta, but not as much variation as at my location. One thing that
helps (sometimes) is to move the clock away from TV receivers and

monitors.
A 60 kHz antenna is a large beast, so there is nothing simple that you can
do in that department.