On 11/11/2017 11:11 a.m., Bill Shell N6WS wrote:
Thank you David for your comment. You understand my original point in asking for the option. All the other comments were trending to the need for the system clock to be accurate. It is the framing that needs the accuracy.
The several problems I foresee in using a timing average as a frame - it's only as accurate as the average, and if the number of decodes is small, and they don't happen to be particularly close and are off in the same direction, the average may not be particularly close to the correct time, so your framing reference gets set to the wrong time. And before long, someone on the correct time may not get decoded.
The second problem that I can foresee is that, over time, if everyone were to get lazy and just switch to using that option rather than dealing with their system clock, sooner or later the average is likely to drift away from accurate time as there's nothing to correct the average frame reference other than probability statistics. And if you come up with a new install, you're not going to get decodes (and a framing reference) if everyone in your bandpass is six seconds off in the same direction. So I don't see using average decode timing option as being particularly wise - it creates a ticking time bomb (no pun intended) that kinda defeats the whole purpose behind standard time references.
A third problem comes when you're using a cheap Chinese clone computer motherboard like I am that has a really terrible clock. It runs VERY fast (a second and a half per hour) - and I have to set it twice a day at minimum for decodes to be reliable. How would I set it to the consensus time frame reference (problem 2) if that reference is no longer the NBS standard? No way to do that that I can see when my reference is far enough off that the decodes aren't decoding.
No, I think that sticking to setting the system clock to an NBS reference, however derived, is a better idea. Just spring for the twenty bucks and take a GPS dongle with you on your next DXpedition. In fact, Amazon has one that is on a USB cable, so you can stick the antenna out of the tent if you need to.
Scott Bidstrup TI3/W7RI ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ wsjt-devel mailing list wsjt-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel
