{"id":33388,"date":"2018-08-12T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-08-12T10:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=33388"},"modified":"2018-08-23T06:52:27","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T10:52:27","slug":"wwvh-working-at-nist-hawaii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/wwvh-working-at-nist-hawaii\/","title":{"rendered":"WWVH: “Working at NIST Hawaii”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From left to right: Dean Takamatsu, Dean Okayama, Director Copan, Adela Mae Ochinang and Chris Fujita.
Credit: D. Okayama\/NIST<\/p><\/div>\n

Many thanks to SWLing Post<\/em> contributor, Eric McFadden (WD8RIF), who shares a link to the following article from the NIST website<\/a>\u00a0authored by Andrew Nobleman, a Grants Management Specialist at NIST. Eric notes that he first discovered this piece from an article in The Spectrum Monitor<\/a> magazine:<\/p>\n

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Time on the Beach: Working at NIST Hawaii<\/h1>\n

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has campuses in Maryland, Colorado, South Carolina and Hawaii.<\/p>\n

Now, I know what you\u2019re thinking, \u201cHawaiian campus? How do I get a job at NIST?\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps calling it a \u201ccampus\u201d is a bit of an exaggeration. Ensconced within the U.S. Navy\u2019s Pacific Missile Range Facility on the western Hawaiian island of Kauai (pronounced ka-why-ee), sits one of NIST\u2019s shortwave radio stations, perhaps best known by its call sign, WWVH.<\/p>\n

Kauai is a beautiful and remote island with unique climate diversity. In the middle of the island, you have one of the wettest places on Earth, Mount Waialeale (pronounced why-ah-lay-ah-lay), which receives an average of 1,148 centimeters (452 inches) of rain per year. Twenty-five kilometers away, the island\u2019s western coast gets a mere 56 cm (22 inches) of rain per year. This is where you will find the NIST radio station.<\/p>\n

WWVH\u2019s main objective is to broadcast Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)\u2014the official time for the entire planet\u2014throughout the Pacific region. Those signals help their audience coordinate, calibrate and synchronize their clocks and equipment, which are vital to telecommunications, internet connections and a whole host of other services.<\/p>\n

In addition to accurate time and frequency information, the station also broadcasts weather alerts and space weather reports.<\/p>\n

“At the tone \u2026”<\/h2>\n

From Alaska to Australia and from California to China, if you tune your receiver to WWVH, you\u2019ll hear Jane Barbe speaking to you. If you don\u2019t already know her by name, you may know her voice. It was her recorded voice that in past decades told callers who left their phones off the hook for too long (ask your parents), \u201cIf you\u2019d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Barbe died in 2003, her beloved voice lives on.<\/p>\n

WWVH actually broadcasts her voice using several frequencies: 2.5, 5, 10 and 15 megahertz. The different frequencies cast a wide net so that users of the broadcast will receive a signal regardless of interference from mountains, atmospheric activity or the time of day. This technique allows users to always have access to the correct time as well as the other information provided by WWVH.<\/p>\n

WWVH\u2019s sister station, WWV, broadcasts out of Fort Collins, Colorado. Both stations broadcast on the same frequencies. While WWVH uses Barbe\u2019s voice, WWV uses that of former San Francisco radio host Lee Rodgers, who died in 2013. If the ionospheric conditions are just right, users can hear both stations. In addition to using different voices, WWVH and WWV make their announcements at different time intervals to prevent overlap and confusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n