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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: G Shock Signal Reception
From: Bruce J. Pennino
Date: 2014 Jun 30, 12:11 -0400
From: Bruce J. Pennino
Date: 2014 Jun 30, 12:11 -0400
Hello:
At Douglas Denny's suggestion I hung the watch outside on a metal pole (bird feeder without any feed). The pole acts as an antenna of sorts. Works great! Calibrates every time. If I put the watch on a wooden bench near the feeder, calibration is hit-or-miss. I just ordered from Mills Fleet Farm a desk top "atomic" self calibrating clock for $15.99 USD plus shipping. Big numbers and ideal for using with AH on a low table.
Bruce
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 2:41 PM, Bill B wrote:
___________________________________
Bruce
I'm near Indiana's north shore, so not as far from CO. My first
tabletop/battery powered RCC was a Sharp. It worked off and on for maybe
a week and over a period of 8 years has not received a signal since
either manually or automatically. My second table top unit is a
Presidian. It loses about a second a day (not good) but will reliably
reset in the basement of a brick house with 3/4" oak floors. I had to
put it in a steel ammo box surrounded by ammo against the basement's
west concrete wall and shooting through the garage floor to stop it from
receiving so I could rate it over a 10 day period. So it seems like some
are natively excellent, and some are just duds.
As to the Casio wrist watch, I recently purchased a $30 Casio Wave
Ceptor RCC with stainless band (tired of $10 band replacements on $20
watches). It may not reset on the first auto attempt, or a manual
attempt under iffy atmospheric conditions past midnight, but has never
failed to reset if left on the ground floor (on my wrist or on a counter
top). Having rated it over a 20 day period when new, I now leave it on
the night stand in the basement, and that little bugger resets about 80%
of the time. It might take several attempts and finally succeed at 4:06
AM EDT, but it gets it done.
Mine has the ability to shut off reception, so I did that to rate it
over 20 days when new. It runs 0.1 sec fast per day. A wonderful feature
is the ability to press the "D" button and it tells me the date and time
of the last reset, so armed with it's rating and time of last reset, it
is no big deal if it misses a reset or two.
This is a long shot, but unless you are that rare male who can resist
the urge to play with your new toy's features, could you have
inadvertently disabled the RCC feature? Not likely for a person of your
acumen, but other than that yours may fall into the "dud" category and
should be replaced under warranty. If you bought it through Amazon and
are within their return time limits, I would suggest sending it back for
a refund. Then purchase one with the display you want. A win-win.
As to rating it against a known standard and using the nist time.gov
site I hold the watch over the computer screen with the face next to the
computer second display and focus on the watch face. While not in the
Fovea centralis, I can observe the motion of the nist digits and if I
know the rough difference in seconds it is relatively easy to spot the
sub-second difference without shifting my eye.
The optimal solution is a time tick. I use a $40 pocket radio (Kaito
KA11) which can receive the 10 MHz and 15 MHz broadcasts. Despite their
claim that the nist computer display is "corrected for network delay," I
often see/hear a slight difference (maybe 0.2 to 0.3 second).
The above is a long ramble to suggest you have a lemon. Holding your jaw
and tongue in the right position, standing on your head in the
north-west corner of your yard while chanting won't alter that fact :-)
Bill B
On 5/12/2014 11:16 PM, Bruce J. Pennino wrote:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Hello:
>
> All comments appreciated. I have a solar digital Casio G shock with a
> black face and white/light digits. The major bottom row of digits for
> time are about 1/3 the diameter of the face. The day I sent my original
> email the signal was automatically received, but not received since.
> I've put the watch all over the house especially on the west side
> (towards Colorado) which seems to be best. Window sill does not usually
> work, but hanging from my curtain rod by a glass sliding door works
> sometimes.
>
> I'm going to try manual reception from different spots in house and
> yard. If anyone has thoughts about reception in yard please let me know.
>
> I just checked the G shock against a national time clock, and as fast as
> my eyes could jump from one to the other the watch is correct...maybe
> 1/2 second fast according to the standard. I'll check against USNO tomorrow.
: http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx?i=127739
