On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 1:31 PM, Mike Haynes <[email protected]> wrote: > Showing my age I suppose but when I was Elmered in radio we were told to > check frequency & time before operating.
It is still a good idea. I have been having problems with the NTP client in Windows not updating the system clock. I discovered this when I noticed that I stopped decoding WSPR even though it was clear from the waterfall that there was ample signal. So on start-up I do a quick check of all the WWV frequencies to check time and get a ballpark approximation of propagation. I think someone mentioned that NTP determines and applies a clock bias so that when there is no NTP the clock remains closer to real-time. That is indeed the case with a full implementation of NTP (xntpd) but I believe that many simple NTP clients just send out a query periodically and then reset the system clock with the answer. They don't bother to try to determine round-trip time or to average the replies in order to improve accuracy. It seems to me that a really desirable station accessory is a combined GPS-disciplined stratum-0 clock and frequency reference. I know that with the various digital modes, more and more of my operating depends on very accurate time and frequency. -- 73 de Brian, WB6RQN/J79BPL _______________________________________________ fldigi-alpha mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fldigi-alpha
