Old Common, Day to Day Technology. Waht do you hang onto?

[k0ua]

Sorry. A thread about willfully using outdated products that then morphs into nanosecond clock technology is a thread hijack.

Ummmm no.. Many people consider the use of radio station WWV to be an archaic ancient technology and call for its dismissal on grounds that internet time sources are more economical that running a bunch of radio transmitters 24/7/365 and maintaining them. I happen to think not. Not to mention at least you have a time and frequency standard on the go where ever you go. Also the 60 Khz transmitter sets all of those "atomic clock" radios around the world.

 

[k0ua]

Here is another video of a shortwave listener in Finland's quest to receive WWV and WWVH (located in Hawaii). Something so easy for us to do here in the USA is very hard for him to do in Finland for the reasons he outlines. But he uses logic and his experience with HF radio propagation to succeed.

 

[Doofy]

Now, if we could just get those irritating digital clocks to reset after each little power bump...THAT would be be a technological breakthrough.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Ummmm no.. Many people consider the use of radio station WWV to be an archaic ancient technology and call for its dismissal on grounds that internet time sources are more economical that running a bunch of radio transmitters 24/7/365 and maintaining them. I happen to think not. Not to mention at least you have a time and frequency standard on the go where ever you go. Also the 60 Khz transmitter sets all of those "atomic clock" radios around the world.

I pretty much stick with the Daytime-Nighttime clock. In morning, evening, and sometimes in the middle there is Food Time. That gets me close enough. I'm not a ham, but have an old Radio Shack DX-440 that I can fall back on. We had a regional power outage last winter and all the local TV and radio stations went off the air for a couple of days. I could still listen to what was going on in the world. And of course my old Radio Shack weather cube kept right on receiving the NOAA weather station, which was the only thing on the air locally. So much for emergency preparedness. Radio stations used to have generators, but I guess they gave that up as a needless expense.

Old technology. Hmm. I still use a shovel a lot, and a splitting maul. I still have a hand crank ice cream freezer. I don't know if it's an antique because they still make them, but I have a Hobart Kitchenaid mixer that is at least 50 years old. I have all the attachments except the pasta maker, and am thinking about buying that. I keep an assortment of magnifying glasses a Mauser 1891, and a Winchester Model 97 that was manufactured in 1898.

There are a few things I keep around for sentimental reasons. I have a matched pair of Eico hi-fi amplifiers I built from kits in 1963. They were still working when I retired them, but they were getting a few stray voltages on the inputs. The caps got leaky, and I need to go through and replace them. I keep them around because they are the best sounding amps I ever owned. The output transformers are top notch. Couple an inductive source to an inductive load and you get true magnetic speaker dampening, not the inertial-elastic dampening that passes for high fidelity nowadays. I even still have the 10" woofer 3-way bass reflex speakers I built back then, though the cones could be replaced with more modern speakers. Now that I have the new shop building, they are getting to the top of the list to rock the man cave. Old electronics are fun.

 

[Jstpssng]

Now, if we could just get those irritating digital clocks to reset after each little power bump...THAT would be be a technological breakthrough.

:thumbsup:

On a similar note, my company pickup is tied into my cellphone via Bluetooth, so I also had it synced up with the clock . I came out of the woods one Friday and the clock said 4:10... and had I to get to the bank. I flew out of the woods and rushed into the bank with minutes to spare... only to notice that it was only 3:50. For some reason in that region the radio would jump an hour, yet the phone continued to show the right time. (As opposed to at my house, when the phone will jump to Canadian time.)
After it did that a couple more times I finally gave up and set the truck clock manually again.

 

[k0ua]

Now, if we could just get those irritating digital clocks to reset after each little power bump...THAT would be be a technological breakthrough.

One of these will fix you up. Never need setting. So called "atomic clocks". Again using the WWV signal.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=atomic+clock&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

 

[goeduck]

Ummmm no.. Many people consider the use of radio station WWV to be an archaic ancient technology and call for its dismissal on grounds that internet time sources are more economical that running a bunch of radio transmitters 24/7/365 and maintaining them. I happen to think not. Not to mention at least you have a time and frequency standard on the go where ever you go. Also the 60 Khz transmitter sets all of those "atomic clock" radios around the world.

^^^^ Yes. Old school that does not need the internet. I recall setting our clocks from the WWV transmitter in Colorado as a kid.

 

[k0ua]

^^^^ Yes. Old school that does not need the internet.

Yup... something to be said for minimum infrastructure.

 

[Jstpssng]

Yup... something to be said for minimum infrastructure.

Something like that thing which appears in the East every morning, and drops down into the west every night? That's about as low tech as you can go.

 

[k0ua]

Something like that thing which appears in the East every morning, and drops down into the west every night? That's about as low tech as you can go.

Ummm.. not so sure about the low tech part. The sun is the engine that drives all HF radio propagation. Without the sun, radio would be line of sight only. No ionosphere to refract signals. And while we know more all the time about how this mechanism works, there is much we still don't understand.