Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Dan Greenall who shares the following recording and notes:
Reception location: Ancaster, Ontario, Canada
Receiver and antenna: Hallicrafters S-52 using a longwire antenna
Notes: Prior to July 1, 1971, time and standard frequency station WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado was giving ID's in Morse code as well as voice every 5 minutes. They were best heard here in southern Ontario, Canada on 10 and 15 MHz.
WWV Station sign at WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Myke Dodge Weiskopf, who shares the following recording and notes:
BROADCASTER: WWV
DATE OF RECORDING: December 08, 1991
STARTING TIME: 0218
FREQUENCY: 5000 kHz
RECEPTION LOCATION: Rockford, Illinois, USA
RECEIVER AND ANTENNA: Unidentified boombox
NOTES:
NIST Radio Station WWV as it sounded on 8 December 1991 at 0218 UTC.
Due to the high cost of maintaining the aging drum-based voice announcement machines, NIST implemented a digital voice announcement system in 1991. The new male voice, belonging to Eric Smith, started at WWV on 13 August. The voice of WWVH belonged to Johanna Stahl. The voices were sorely lacking in high EQ at first, but were sharpened with an audio filter on 27 August. The modification did not help, and after months of equipment failures and complaints about the poor quality, NIST retired both voices on 11 August 1992.
An excerpted version of this recording is found on "At the Tone: A Little History of NIST Radio Stations WWV & WWVH." This unedited version is being shared by special arrangement for the Shortwave Archive.
Photo by Agê Barros
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Dan Greenall, who shares the following recording and notes:
Prior to July 1, 1971, time and standard frequency station WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado was giving ID's in Morse code as well as voice every five minutes. They were best heard here in southern Ontario, Canada on 10 and 15 MHz.
Reception location: Ancaster, Ontario, Canada
Receiver and antenna: Hallicrafters S-52 using a longwire antenna
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Dan Greenall, who shares the following recording and notes:
Early in 1973, WWV made this announcement that they would make regular broadcasts of planned ATM (Apollo Telescope Mount) schedules by the new Skylab space station.
Reception location: Ancaster, Ontario, Canada
Receiver and antenna: Hallicrafters S-52 using a longwire antenna
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Matt Todd, who shares the following short clip of the Ham Sci Ionospheric Scientific Modulation Test:
Date of recording: 3/10/2022
Starting time: 1908
Frequency: 15
Your location: Hu
Your receiver and antenna: SDRplay RSPdx with wire loop around perimeter of attic
Mode: AM
Notes: Ionospheric Scientific Modulation Test on WWV recorded March 10, 2022 at 1908UTC on 15Mhz in Hugo, MN.
Information about the signal from the Hamsci website: HamSCI's WWV/H Scientific Modulation Working Group is exploring possibilities for additions to WWV and WWVH's modulation that can be used for science purposes.
https://hamsci.org/wwv
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Myke Dodge Weiskopf, who shares the following recording and notes:
NIST Radio Station WWVH as it sounded in the 1980s. To contrast with other recordings of the WWVH station ID, note that announcer Jane Barbe does not say (her now-famous) “Aloha!” at the end of this version.
This recording was found at WWVH in 2015 on an undated cassette labeled “JB on Old Audichron TCG” (which stands for Time Code Generator, the device which reconstructs and plays back Jane’s voice over the air). As such, the precise broadcast year is not known, but it is consistent with the voice and broadcast format of the 1980s, until the introduction of the short-lived digital voice in 1991.
An excerpted version of this recording is found on "At the Tone: A Little History of NIST Radio Stations WWV & WWVH." This unedited version is being shared by special arrangement for the Shortwave Archive.
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Emilio Ruiz, who shares the following recording of WWV and notes:
Sad for the news, the closing of WWV is like close a park, a comunity place where scientifics and enthusiast of radio could learn and experiment not only about time, radio propagation too. I not have much money for bought radiofrecuency equipment for repair or make my own radios, i use WWV for that.
To go to the future it is not necessary to destroy the past, I'm teaching to children about science and technology and when talk about radio share with they the listen of WWV with old radio receiver (BC-548Q), for they the sound of ticks and the history about radio and time is a amazing topic.
I wrote this review (in Spanish) about WWV for those SWListeners and Radio Amateurs who do not spoke English,--I think can be useful.
I hope radioamateurs of U.S. can reverse the decision.
Broadcaster: WWV
Date of recording: 11/3/2017
Starting time: 14:00
Frequency: 15000 kHz
Reception location: Chiapas, México.
Receiver and antenna: Dipole antenna, Keenwood R-600
One of four WWV time code generators in late August, 2014 (Photo: Thomas Witherspoon)
Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Tom Laskowski, who shares the following recordings he has transferred from audio cassette. Tom includes the following notes:
I combined several audio files of some of the common time signal stations available back in 1981 and 1982 into one clip. These were made using a DX-302 which had poor image rejection and you can hear some stations behind WWV which shouldn't be there, such as RCI's interval signal at one point.
00:00 - VNG, Australia - August 16, 1981 on 12.000 MHz at ???? UTC
03:02 - LOL, Argentina - October 15, 1981 on 15.000 MHz at 2349 UTC
07:27 - BPM, China - January 16, 1982 on 10.000 MHz at 1255 UTC
08:38 - ZUO, South Africa - December 18, 1982 on 5.000 MHz at 0329 UTC
Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Brian D. Smith, recently contacted me; I was enthused when he described the recording he was sharing:
"This recording captures the last 5 minutes of WWV’s old format (giving the time every 5 minutes) and the first 5 minutes of the new format (giving the time every 1 minute), which took place on July 1, 1971 UTC.
Apologies for the less-than-stellar audio quality, but I recorded this as a 15-year-old fledgling SWL with limited knowledge of audio recording techniques. So I simply placed the microphone from my cassette tape recorder next to the speaker on the receiver and hit the record button. The signal quality wasn’t the greatest, either — lots of QSB and QRM — but I still managed to get what I was going for.
The resulting recording has accompanied me everywhere since then, preserved only on its original cassette, until 2008, when I finally decided it was time to learn how to transfer it onto my hard drive, burn it onto a CD and stop having to rely on the integrity of 37-year-old audio tape.
Even as a teenager, I regarded the WWV changeover as historic, and felt I should attempt to record it for posterity. Consider yourself posterity!"
Brian received this broadcast on 10 MHz care of a Hallicrafters S-108, with random length of wire attached to the back of the receiver serving as an antenna. Location was Franklin, Indiana.
As Brian mentions, the audio quality is a little rough, but this is still quite a treasure of a recording!
Click here to download as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:
OOne of four WWV time code generators in late August, 2014
Yesterday, I posted a brief article about the leap second that occurred between 23:59:59 June 30, 2015 and 00:00:00 UTC July 01, 2015.
I decided to record the leap second on as many shortwave time station frequencies as possible. The only viable options for me--based on time of day and my reception location--were the WWV frequencies 10, 15, 20, and 25 MHz, and CHU frequencies 7,850 and 14,670 kHz.
I was able to monitor four different time station frequencies simultaneously on the TitanSDR Pro. (click to enlarge)
Unfortunately, HF propagation was very poor yesterday, so the higher WWV frequencies--20 and 25 MHz--were completely inaudible, as was CHU on 14,670 kHz. There were numerous thunderstorms in our area, so static crashes were prevalent.
Still, since this was a first attempt to record a "leap second," I didn't want to take any chances. I had the Titan SDR Pro monitoring and recording two CHU and two WWV frequencies [screenshot], the Elad FDM-S2 recording WWV on 15 MHz [screenshot], and the WinRadio Excalibur on WWV's 10 MHz frequency, as well as recording the whole 31 meter band spectrum [screenshot].
In the end, the strongest frequencies I captured were CHU on 7,850 kHz and WWV on 15,000 kHz. WWV on 10,000 kHz was much weaker than normal and the band was quite noisy--still, it's readable, so I included this recording, too. Recordings follow...
The sign above WWV's primary 10 MHz transmitter (2014).
All of the recordings start just before the announcement of 23:59 UTC.
WWV added the extra second and higher tone, then continued with their top of the hour announcements, including a note about leap second (which begins after the 00:04 announcement). CHU's adjustment included a long second tone and period of silence.
WWV on 15,000 kHz using the Elad FDM-S2:
CHU on 7,850 kHz using the TitanSDR Pro:
WWV on 10,000 kHz using the WinRadio Excalibur:
One interesting note about the 10 MHz WWV recording above: I believe I may be hearing BPM China in the background. I'm curious if anyone can confirm this because I don't know BPM's cadence/pattern well enough to ID it.
The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA) is a collection of shortwave radio recordings that you can download or listen to as a podcast. The collection grows every day and includes both historic recordings and current recordings from the shortwave radio spectrum.
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